The Searchers' "When I Get Home"

Near the beginning of last year, I realized that there can be some interesting connections between a song's tonic chord (the tonal home) and "home" in the lyrics.  I just listened to the Searchers' "When I Get Home," and - because I already know the chords - I found some interesting ones.

The song starts with a riff in F major, but then changes keys to E major.  There are some chords in the progression that don't really fit into E major though.  At the end of the first line (on the "see" in "just wait and see"), there's a D major, and at the end of the second line (on the "be" in "like it used to be") there's a G major.  For both of those though, that foreignness sort of works.  There's the anticipation in "just wait and see" (the tension of a D major chord in E major) and a recalling of days past in "like it used to be" (the otherness of a G major chord).  Similarly, in the second verse, that G major corresponds to the "go" in "wherever you go," providing a tonal example of that "wherever."  At the end of each of the first two verses, "When I get home" is sung to an E major chord, the tonic (or "home chord") in the key of E major.

After the bridge though, there's a key change to F major.  Musically, there's a sense of some movement happening, and the lyrics match that.  The first line of the third verse is "You'll hang on a little bit longer, and we'll see it through."  Like the odd chords in the first two verses, there's an Ab major chord in F major for the "you" in "There ain't no nothing can stop me from reachin' you," implying 1) the distance between the singer/speaker and his girl and 2) that not even a wonky tonality will keep him from her.  Then the third verse ends with "When I get home" repeated over an F major chord (the tonic, "home chord," now that the song's moved to F major).  The riff that started the song comes back, and the lyrics end, but then the song goes back to E major.  Because of that sudden and unexpected key change, the stability of the "home" that was just sung to the tonic chord is undermined, and the listener is left with a sort of unsettled feeling.  The song doesn't really resolve musically, and the singer/speaker is "five thousand miles from you" again.

The Searchers' "When You Walk in the Room"

I'm in the midst of the first disc of a two-disc set of the Searchers.  I've been transcribing a few of the songs (mostly just the ones I know how to play), and I noticed something in the bridge of "When You Walk in the Room."

The first two lines are:

Baby, it's a dream come true
Walkin' 'round 'longside of you

The missing letters in that second line struck me as interesting.  Instead of "Walking around alongside of you," it's "Walkin' 'round 'longside of you."  Of course, taking out those syllables might be purely for the sake of the syllable count.  "Walking around alongside of you" has two more syllables than "Walkin' 'round 'longside of you."  But I think those missing letters also betray that the "walkin' 'round" is a fantasy.

The line before says that "Walkin' 'round 'longside of you" would be "a dream come true," and in the next two lines, the singer/speaker admits that he can't even tell the girl "how much I care" and that he has only "the nerve to stare."  Clearly, the "walkin' 'round" is something that he's only imagining, and those missing letters seem to speak to that fact.  Like a dream compared to reality, there are some missing or changed elements.

The Hollies' "Pay You Back with Interest"

This morning I listened to the first two discs of a Hollies' compilation album (I'm listening to the final disc as I write this).  I noticed some word play in "Pay You Back with Interest" that I'd always misunderstood.

The title and a recurring line have the phrase "Pay you back with interest."  I'd always assumed that this refers to the financial sort of payment and interest, as if the singer/speaker had a debt and had to repay the debt and the interest accrued.  But listening to it this morning, I realized that that's not really the situation (although since there are also the lines "It seems unfair to leave you / And sell myself the way I do," that other financially-focused parsing seems to be hinted at).  The interest is actually the denomination with which the singer/speaker is paying his debt.  It's an ablative of means where I'd always thought it was an ablative of accompaniment.

The song describes how the singer/speaker has been "travelin'," "wanderin'," and "movin'" and how he comes home only when "tired out."  He's been neglecting his girlfriend, and his paying back with interest is his promise to be more dedicated to her in the future.

That's probably pretty obvious, but it was enlightening to discover what the song's really about after not having really paid attention to the lyrics for years.

The Zombies' "Time of the Season"

Yester-day I listened to Ben E. King's "Stand by Me" on a compilation album.  The bass part sounded suspiciously familiar to me, but because the version on that compilation was a re-recording instead of the original, I had to go and listen to the thirty-second sample on Amazon to make sure what I heard was in the original recording too.  And it was!

My favorite band is the Zombies, and over the past four years or so, I've been trying to learn every part to every song they recorded.  Over the last few months, I noticed the same recurring phrase in the bass parts in three of Rod Argent's songs.  It's the 5th, 7th, and octave notes of the scale of whatever key the song is in, and it's in a rhythm of two eighth notes (the 5th and 7th) then two dotted quarter notes (the octave, twice).

I had to learn the bass part to King's "Stand by Me" to be sure, but it follows this same pattern (or, rather, since "Stand by Me" is older, those Rod Argent songs follow the same pattern).  In interviews, Argent frequently mentions the Zombies' Christmas show at the Brooklyn Fox in 1964 and how Ben E. King and the Drifters were an-other act on the same bill, so I'm assuming he was familiar with "Stand by Me."

In King's "Stand by Me," that 5th, 7th, octave phrase is in A major (so, E, G#, A, A).  In the Zombies' songs, it's in E major in "Tell Her No" (B, D#, E, E), in C major in "Whenever You're Ready" (G, B, C, C), and in E minor in "Time of the Season" (B, D, E, E).  After I realized that connection, I kept playing that part, just because I was so excited I found a precedent for this motif I'd found in these Zombies' songs, and I discovered that there's a further similarity between the bass parts of "Stand by Me" and "Time of the Season."  After that 5th, 7th, octave phrase, there's a diatonic descent in the same two-eighth-notes-then-two-dotted-quarter-notes rhythm (A, G#, F#, F# in "Stand by Me" and E, D, C, C in "Time of the Season"):

(click the image to enlarge it)

So for the first four bars of the verses, the bass part in "Time of the Season" is the same as the bass part in "Stand by Me," just in E minor rather than A major.

The Moody Blues' "I Know You're Out There Somewhere"

An-other thing I noticed while listening to the Moody Blues' 20th Century Masters compilation album is the backing vocals for the last verse of "I Know You're Out There Somewhere."  None of the other verses have separate backing vocals (those that are there merely double the lyrics of the lead vocals), and they're appearing for the last verse is significant because of what the lyrics describe.

The whole song up to that point is the singer/speaker trying to "find you somehow" and "return again to you."  Because the last verse has echoing sort of backing vocals ("echoing" in the sense that they repeat some of the lyrics from the "proper" verse), it seems to imply that the speaker/singer is getting close, which the lyrics themselves describe too:

Yes, I know it's gonna happen
I can feel you getting near
And soon we'll be returning to the fountain of our youth
And if you wake up wond'ring
In the darkness I'll be there
My arms will close around you and protect you with the truth

The backing vocals are:

Know it's gonna happen
Feel you getting near 

If you wake up wond'ring
You know I'll be there
Protect you with the truth

Where those first four lines echo the lead vocals, the last ("Protect you with the truth") is sung simultaneously, achieved a double-tracked effect.  There's a progression in the last verse from the echoing backing vocals to the meeting of the two vocal tracks in last line, just like the singer/speaker has been searching for the whole time and will finally "close [his arms] around you."

The Moody Blues' "The Story in Your Eyes"

This morning I listened to the 20th Century Masters compilation album of the Moody Blues.  I noticed an interesting melisma in the last verse of "The Story in Your Eyes."

When the final line is over
And it's certain that the curtain's gonna fall
I can hide inside your sweet, sweet love
Forevermore

The "more" of "Forevermore" has (I think) eight syllables instead of the usual one, so it provides a sense of continuation and eternity that, obviously, the "forevermore" itself means.

The Four Tops' "Walk Away Renee"

This morning I listened to a compilation album of the Four Tops (in the 20th Century Masters series).  Over the last year or so, I've come to like their version of "Walk Away Renee" a bit better than the Left Banke's original, but I noticed something new about it.

The lyrics in the chorus are:

Just walk away, Renee
You won't see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You're not to blame

In the Four Tops' version, the lead singer doesn't sing that second line ("You won't see me follow you back home").  That omission emphasizes the speaker/singer's absence that the line itself mentions.

Herman's Hermits' "Ooh, She's Done It Again"

Listening to original albums is sometimes weird because half of the songs I've never heard before and the other half I'm quite familiar with.  I hadn't heard Herman's Hermits' "Ooh, She's Done It Again" before, but I found something to say about it.

Two thirds of the way through the last verse, the time signature changes from 4/4 to 3/4, right before the line "Such beauty takes their breath away."  That same line is in the first verse too, but that time signature change emphasizes it here.  Along with the breath taken away, there's a beat taken away from each measure.

Herman's Hermits' "Jezebel"

One of the reasons I wanted to get this CD set of original Herman's Hermits albums is because it has "Jezebel."  I'd heard a live version of theirs a few years ago, so I wanted the studio version.

This is just a minor point, but they include the riff from "Peter Gunn" in the instrumental backing.  I have two other versions of "Jezebel" (by Edith Piaf and Gene Vincent), and neither has that feature, so I'm assuming that it was the Hermits who first put the two together.

Herman's Hermits' "Saturday's Child"

Along with working my way through my existing collection, I'm still listening to a CD a day of the CDs I got for Christmas.  To-day, it's the second disc of a two-disc set of all of Herman's Hermits' U.K. albums, so it has There's a Kind of Hush All over the World and Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter.

There's a Kind of Hush All over the World has "Saturday's Child" on it, which I was sort of surprised to discover is the same song as the "Saturday's Child" on the first Monkees album.  I think I might like Herman's Hermits' version better, but the only specific thing I can point to that I think is better than the Monkees' version is the melisma'd "wild" in "She drives me wild."  Instead of only one syllable, there are five.  It provides a greater sense of the wildness, where in the Monkees' version, that "wild" doesn't have a melisma at all.