Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Ive Been in a beatle tribute band for 5 years now, and for that entire time....the chords to the chorus of nowhere man have been

E B A E
Hes a real nowhere man sitting in his nowhere land
A Am E
making all his nowhere plans for nobody

But i was watching Beatles Anthology (6?) and at one of the live concert scenes.....george plays

E B A E
Hes a real nowhere man sitting in his nowhere land
F#M Am E
making all his nowhere plans for nobody

????????? why!

I never noticed that, but without going into theory, he was probably just accenting the A chord with a C# bass note. (as he does in the 1st position while playing the lead break.)

Funny, I always played it, F#m A E, I never noticed it was Am, thanks.

Alex: I have always used F#m Am E. The F#m becomes particularly apparent when you are playing the lead break.

interesting....I have played it to the record 1000 times, I wonder how I could have missed that! I play the lead in an A position chord too....odd....im gonna give the record another listen

I agree with Peter, it's always been an F#m as far as I know. When playing live, if your bass player is anchoring his bass on the F#, between the two of you the F#m (or more precisely, an F#m7) is created. Assuming your sound man is doing his job, it would sound Ok to the audience.

Always played the F#m too, since 1965, when we Papoolas had to dissect records note-by-note in real time.

Hi Mark! ....and welcome to the forum!!

Thanks!

Wow, well ya learn something new each day

F#m is the "relative minor" of A major, so either one makes a good-sounding substitution for the other. Or, as Mark mentions, F#m7 and A/F# are essentially the same chord (so guitar-A chord + bass-F# note = A/F# = F#m7).

Wow, Doug, I couldn't disagree more. The whole mood of the song is altered without that F#m7...and I couldn't imagine replacing the Am with an A maj...

Boy, somehow I've apparently worked this song from the wrong way...but since I can't read a lick of music, I guess this can be expected. I have been doing it with a capo on the second fret working off the D...

Hi Paul, I think you misunderstood my message. Amajor is a substitution for F#m, NOT for Am. I didn't mention an Am chord anywhere in my message. (The confusion was over whether the correct progression was F#m-Am-E or A-Am-E, there's no question that the Am and E are correct.) Mark's point (that I reiterated) was that if the guitarist plays an A(major) chord and the bassist plays the note F#, *together* they make the F#m7 chord. Make sense?

Exactly Doug, I do that a lot with my bass. A lot of people hear it as 'wrong' though for some reason (especially the guy playing the A major). I also play inversions sometimes (the fifth instead of the root) and thirds, for example 'Aqualung' by Jethro Tull has lines with all inversions in them, not that I've ever played it but it is a good example.