Wednesday 16 March 2011

Hey Bulldog. Beatles Isolated Tracks

I promise not to overuse wikipedia in the future, but it was just full of fun facts for Hey Bulldog. I was pleased to see that I am not the only one who also loves Paul's bass in this:

During the recording, Paul McCartney started to bark without warning. The next lines, initially written as "Hey bullfrog", were changed mid-song to "Hey bulldog". This became the song's title.

Geoff Emerick, the Beatles' engineer, would subsequently claim this was the last song the band recorded that featured a team dynamic with enthusiasm from every member. He also praised the performance in his book Here, There, Everywhere, saying "Paul's bass line was probably the most inventive of any he'd done since Pepper, and it was really well played. Harrison's solo was sparkling, too--one of the few times that he nailed it right away. His amp was turned up really loud, and he used one of his new fuzz boxes, which made his guitar absolutely scream." When the group reconvened in the studio in May 1968 for the The Beatles sessions, their group cohesion had already been undermined by the business, artistic, and personal differences that would culminate in their eventual break-up.

McCartney spoke fondly of "Hey Bulldog" in 1994: "I remember (it) as being one of John's songs and I helped him finish it off in the studio, but it's mainly his vibe. There's a little rap at the end between John and I, we went into a crazy little thing at the end. We always tried to make every song different because we figured, 'Why write something like the last one? We've done that.' We were on a ladder so there was never any sense of stepping down a rung, or even staying on the same rung, it was better to move one rung ahead".



3 comments:

  1. You've accidentally put the drums for I Am the Walrus here instead of Hey Bulldog. Can you please fix that? Thanks for posting all of this.

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  2. Sorry to word it in this way but, geez you really like the Beatles. I only have the Best of albums.

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