Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Does anyone know the last chord in the James Bond Theme ?

Good question. Definitely an overdub. The closest I can seem to get using only a 6-string is:

024002

I'd love to hear how that was recorded.

The famous chord! The correct way to play it is this, and it's quite a stretch.



If you can't manage the stretch, or you want to have a quicker fingering position, you can do the following. However, it's not the way it's done on the actual theme!



Took me a while to figure those out. When you asked, I decided to tab 'em up for ya!

Er, wait a sec...are you talking about the one on "Help!"? I'm not sure, but those tabs above are for the actual James Bond Theme. Not sure if they're the same as the Help version.

HELP?

while you're at it, could you throw up the opening chord to AHDN?

AHDN I always thought was Gm7sus4 played on the 12 string.
E---3
A----5
D---3
G----5
B---3
E---3

VERY IMPORTANT that a piano and bass strike on the opening chord to AHDN as well. This is essential for all those overtones! Thanks, Christian

A Hard Day's Night, I believe, is this:

e---3---
B---1---
G---0---
D---0---
A---0---
E------

Also try:

e: 3
b: 1
g: 2
d: 3
a: 0
E: 0

(F Add9)

But the 353533 chord would work great in a live situation if you didn't have the piano to accompany you.

On the AHDN opening one must also hit a D note on the bass. The chord described above (353533) is really just a G7sus (w/ a D on the bass). For years a friend of mine thought it was just striking the open strings all at once (the dummy).

BTW, the closing chord of AHDN is the same as the opening chord, but the 12 string is doing the little roll thing on an F chord (1st 4 strings only)w/ the pinky doing a pull-off on the G note of the E string.

As always, I bow to better guitar players than me. But the Sony published score agrees with Steve: the opening of AHDN as a G7sus4.
[Steve, you left out the '4.']
But also, Steve, why do you describe the chord as a "D on the bass?" The bass note in the chord you describe (353533) has the 'G' in the bass.

There are MANY ways to play a G7sus4. This one DOES have a D in the bass: xx0011.

This is the published one: 3x0011
(GxDGCF - 1-x-5-1-4-b7).
But Steve's barre chord sounds a LOT better.

I meant a D on the bass guitar, not as part of the Gsus7 (plus 4). Also gotta hit that piano chord as stated by someone earlier. According to my friend Dennis Taylor who sometimes posts here, there's also a D sus variation in there somewhere, but the main chord is as stated. The solo is the 12 string and a piano in unison.

Ahhh, gotcha, Steve, thanks.
Sorry for misunderstanding.

I'm trying to remember the solo in my head and I can't remember 12-string and piano. Jeesh, it's been a while. I'll have to listen to it again. One of my favorite Beatles songs.
I remember going to see the movie when it came out. Two friends and I took a New York City Transit bus to the theatre in Far Rockaway by ourselves. What, we must have been barely ten years old. I wouldn't let my ten-year-old do that now. Times have changed.

I also forgot to mention that I also heard people say (and even write it) that, that opening chord was just a strum of all the open strings. Where did that idea ever come from? Anybody who tried it would see it's not even close. Maybe somewhere at some time someone transposed it to an open tuning? Just wondering . . .