Who Played What??

[craig55]

The flaminco style guitar was actually an edit that George played in another session. It had nothing to do with Bungalo BIll.

[fredmeade]

I'm sure this has come up before, but I've never seen a definitive answer. I can't recall ever hear that anyone even *asked* it of the Beatles.

The opening chord to A Hard Days Night. I've seen a number varying posts in newsgroups swearing what it was, including a reference to George Martin trying to remember that it wasn't Harrison's RIC alone, but that with a combination of bass and piano....

[Me]

fredmeade: According to George Martin, he said to John he wanted a "big" sounding chord to open the song and John hit a Gsus4/D chord (G sustained 4th with a D bass) on his 12 string. If you read tab the chord he played was (going by "The Complete Scores")...

-3-
-3-
-5-
-5-
-5-
-3-

On top of that, George Harrison played an open version of the chord on his guitar that looked like this...

-3-
-1-
-0-
-0-
-x-
-x-

Paul did play a D Bass note as well...

-x-
-x-
-5-
-x-

There's no mention of piano.

HTH,
Me

[The_Ed]

About that "Bungalow Bill". I remember reading somewhere that it wasn't even a Beatle, but sampled from the Abbey Road archives. It's sort of hard to believe that George suddenly had Segovia-like chops that he was using in other sessions...

[M.Light]

Re "Bungalow Bill"--see "Who Played What"?-Part II..1/24....fyi!

[Tedster]

I've always gotten a pretty fair representation of the opening "Hard Day's Night" chord by playing:

3
3
5
3
3
3

Give it a shot...

[Rick_Harper]

I believe the guitar intro on "Bungalow Bill" was actually a key on the mellotron. Was at a Mellotron site once that mentioned it.
also, Re "who played bass on Abbey Road" -- if you have any boots of the trax before McCartney added the bass, it's probably Lennon... This is especially apparent on "You Never Give Me Your Money" - the other bass is in the mix, but barely, all those neat sliding 8th notes makes me think it's the Hofner, as it's the same tapewound sound ala "Dig A Pony"... My mind was blown a couple years ago when I found out there might not be a Ric bass on that lp at all, but a Jazz Bass. I've not seen pics of this, but supposedly there are some. I recall an interview in MIX Magazine w/ Chris Thomas, one of the engineers and he said (referring to that distorted sound on "Sun King" thru "Mustard") McCartney wanted EXACTLY the sound on record that was coming from his amp, and he used an AKG c-20 mic. set to omni directional.

Rick Harper