Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Over in the Dudepit, I posted about a terrible clunker played by whoever played bass on the Byrds' "Spanish Harlem Incident" on their first LP. Maybe someone over here has heard it as well. Might have been Chris Hillman but Just after the third verse starts, there's an absolutely terrible low note that goes on for four beats. Sounds almost like a string broke and is flapping against the pickup. Money being tight and fidelity low in those days, I know why they didn't fix it. But it is laughable. Check it out.

It's Chris Hillman. He hits a bum F when he should have gone back to G. He good naturedly cites the gaffe as proof positive that the Byrds themselves played their instruments on all the songs on that album, except for "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "I Knew I'd Want You". He jokes that Joe Osborne, the studio pro who played bass on those two songs, would never have made that mistake.

Given what studio perfectionists the Byrds and producer Terry Melcher were, it's amazing that mistake was overlooked entirely in the recording and mastering process. Actually, it's never really bothered me. I always thought it was just some deliberate dissonance. But Hillman has said before that it's a bona fide goof up.

I always figured that they mixed bass and drums on one track and would have had to redo the entire take to fix it, although editing might have been possible with a good engineer. I still love that LP, though, especially "Don't Doubt Yourself, Babe."

Steve, Larry Knechtel played bass on Mr. Tambourine Man and the flip side I Knew I'd Want You.

Chris must have been having a senior's moment when he said Joe Osbourne's name.

Right you are, Jon. The senior moment may have been mine, however. lol!

I've always loved the F note on that recording. The F'ed note, if you will...I always point it out to my friends when I hear the song.

I always loved "I Knew I'd Want You", right from the start.

The Turn Turn Turn LP has great unnoticed cuts as well. "It Won't Be Wrong," for example. With a middle eight very reminiscent of the shuffle in the Beatles' "I Call Your Name"

Another of my favorite Byrd clunkers is the “John Riley” lyric:

“Or if he's drownded in the deep salt sea”

Drownded? lol.

Hmmmm...."A time to be bornded, a time to die"?

Oh yeah! I LOVE that song by THE BYRDSES.

I think they were more bass mistakes left on records than any other instrument. I know years ago you would just play through if you made a mistake unless it was really bad, and if the song felt good and sounded good otherwise that was your basic track.

You younger guys wouldn't believe some of the junk that used to get left on recordings. Cymbals falling over, people opening doors, spectators walking into the little booth you were playing in looking for the bathroom, etc. During the four-track days we just about had to make a map of what could be recorded in the first wave and then mixed down onto one or two tracks to leave the other tracks open for vocals, guitar leads and other fluff-stuff that really needed to be actively adjusted during the final mix. Basic tracks often ended up with so many different things on them that you took the best all-round group performance with no way to quickly "duck" a misplayed note on the board because the entire rhythm track would wink-out with it. I had an old B-15 that sometimes buzzed so loudly that you could hear it on the tape and we found that if you layed it on it's side it would often quiet down for some strange reason.

Time was money, too and in the early '70s we were paying $100 per hour in the studio, which was a lot of money for a struggling band. Recording a song or two for demos usually meant that the money we would make for the upcoming weekend's gigs was gone before it was even earned. Ate a lot of ramen noodles during that period....Basic tracks are pretty boring to play and after five or six attempts to get four people to all play a perfect one, you start looking at the clock and thinking about what it's costing and how far you're willing to lower your standards.

Another interesting thing was that they always stored the tapes wound backwards (tail first) on the reels. This was because the recorded sounds on the various layers of tape, wound on the reel, would sometimes "bleed" onto the next layer during storage. This could, and sometimes did, create a faint delayed echo a few seconds later that was audible on the recording. By storing the tape re-wound backwards, any echo would be displaced (either backwards or by enough time, I can't remember which) that it wouldn't be easily noticed by the average listener as some strange repeat of what they had just heard. Once in a while you can hear a little bit of bleed in quiet passages of old recordings.

Even with all the hassles, recording was really neat, even with only four tracks. It was the first chance most of us ever had to hear what our bands actually sounded like, since most of the modern gizmos which will do a half-way decent unofficial recording job at a club or concert hall didn't exist yet. I don't think I ever got my own track until 1972 when we went to L.A. and recorded at Elektra, where they had (count 'em) 16 TRACKS! It was a big breath of creative freedom, like being let out of prison. Somebody could screw-up and we could actually fix it. They also had these new-fangled gizmos called Dolbys that helped get rid of hum and other junk noise. My favorite thing was the nearby 24/7 instrument rental store. If I wanted a Hagstrom 8-string at two o'clock in the morning, we'd just go rent one. It's nice to know that the fun stuff is what you remember 30 years later (as opposed to all those times you had to lug a Sunn cabinet up four flights of stairs). But do listen carefully to old recordings. You never know what you'll find in there.

Is it true the last verse's vocals in "Yer Blues" is faint because the mic fell over?

Todd, that post is awesome. I've been through the recording process twice now, so I can understand how much technology has changed the game. Your post has me listening more closely to my favorite old recordings; thanks!