The Yardbirds' "Pounds and Stomps"

This morning I listened to the second disc of a two-disc compilation album of the Yardbirds (titled Smokestack Lightning), and "Pounds and Stomps" sounded very familiar to me.  I just figured out how to play part of it, and now I've confirmed that it's pretty much the same song as "He's Always There" from Roger the Engineer (which I wrote about three weeks ago).

Both songs start with a introductory drum figure that's almost a full two measures.  Then there's a descending chromatic phrase played eight times that constitutes a verse.  In "He's Always There," it's just single notes on guitar and bass (G F# F E), but in "Pounds and Stomps," the guitar plays chords based on those same notes (G major F# major F major E major).  In the second and fourth verses, after that E note, the bass adds a quick E B E phrase.

Then, there's the chorus section.  In "He's Always There," the bass doubles the vocal melody ("I'd like to get to know you, sure...") while the guitar doubles select notes.  The first phrase is A B E; the second is A B D; and the third is A B E again.  In "Pounds and Stomps," those three-note guitar phrases are in the bass, and the guitar plays major chords with those notes as the roots.  At the end, the bass plays a string of E notes that leads back into the verse.

The liner notes for this compilation aren't any help in trying to figure out the chronology.  For "Pounds and Stomps," it says only, "1983" with a P in a circle, which apparently means the song was first published only in 1983.  Its not being released at the time would seem to suggest it was a precursor to "He's Always There," which was released in 1966.  "Pounds and Stomps" is credited to Samwell-Smith and McCarty where all of the Roger the Engineer songs are credited to all of the Yardbirds, which would also suggest that "Pounds and Stomps" is a precursor to the more refined "He's Always There."  I should also note that "Pounds and Stomps" is instrumental where there are lyrics in "He's Always There."  Of course, this is all conjecture, but it seems unlikely that the two songs were meant to be distinct when they're so similar musically.

The Yardbirds' "He's Always There"

This morning I listened to the Yardbirds' Roger the Engineer, and I noticed something about the melody in "He's Always There."  The first two lines of the "I'd like to get to know you, sure..." section have the same melody except for the last note.  They're both E G B A G A B, but the first (and third) line ends with an E note where the second line ends with a D.  For the second line, the melody goes higher, which musically represents the "one step more" mentioned in the line itself ("And take this thing just one step more").

The other instruments sort of underline this representation too.  For that section, the bass plays the same notes that are sung, and the guitar part plays the last three, adding further emphasis.  For the first (and third) line, it's A B E, but for the second, it's A B D.