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  • 20/20 Lennon Specal Last Night

    From nyarlathotep1@nyarlathotep1@hotmail.com (Norbert) to rec.music.beatles on Mon Dec 9 12:54:59 2024
    From Newsgroup: rec.music.beatles

    Anyone see it? I sat through about 20 minutes of it. Mintz and Gruen
    are not worth my time.

    DF producer Jack Douglas made a few appearances. He recalled asking JL
    what the secret to great songwriting was, and Lennon answered: "You
    tell the truth and you make it rhyme."

    Douglas also recalled that guitarist Earl Slick so wanted to work on
    Double Fantasy that he pretended he could read sheet music when he
    couldn't, which ended up giving the others some amusement.
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  • From super70s@super70s@super70s.invalid to rec.music.beatles on Mon Dec 9 17:59:08 2024
    From Newsgroup: rec.music.beatles

    On 2024-12-09 12:54:59 +0000, Norbert said:

    Anyone see it? I sat through about 20 minutes of it. Mintz and Gruen
    are not worth my time.

    DF producer Jack Douglas made a few appearances. He recalled asking JL
    what the secret to great songwriting was, and Lennon answered: "You
    tell the truth and you make it rhyme."

    Douglas also recalled that guitarist Earl Slick so wanted to work on
    Double Fantasy that he pretended he could read sheet music when he
    couldn't, which ended up giving the others some amusement.

    Thanks for the tip, I'll see if I can catch it on my cable provider's
    "Rewind TV" feature.

    As for reading sheet music, legend has it none of the Beatles could either.

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  • From pamelam1@pamelam1@mindspring.com (pamina58) to rec.music.beatles on Wed Dec 11 14:35:00 2024
    From Newsgroup: rec.music.beatles

    John said somewhere that he had people who notated his music for him.
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  • From nyarlathotep1@nyarlathotep1@hotmail.com (Norbert) to rec.music.beatles on Wed Dec 11 17:26:48 2024
    From Newsgroup: rec.music.beatles

    One would expect sight-reading in an experienced session guy, though.
    This is not a put-down of Slick. He that career without a standard
    session player's skill? More power to him.

    John likely had others do formal charts for him, but he could do his own
    basic ones with the chord listed; I've seen images of them somewhere.

    And we've qll seen McCartney calling out songs' changes to the others in rehearsals.
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  • From super70s@super70s@super70s.invalid to rec.music.beatles on Wed Dec 11 13:53:51 2024
    From Newsgroup: rec.music.beatles

    On 2024-12-11 17:26:48 +0000, Norbert said:

    And we've qll seen McCartney calling out songs' changes to the others in rehearsals.

    Any good musician can listen to a song and tell you which chords are
    playing, even I can do that and I'm a mediocre guitarist who rarely
    plays anymore. Doesn't necessarily mean you can read notation.

    BTW I didn't get to see the special, the local ABC affiliate apparently pre-empted it for some football recap (you were talking about Sunday
    night weren't you, I wasn't even aware 20/20 aired on Sundays).

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  • From nyarlathotep1@nyarlathotep1@hotmail.com (Norbert) to rec.music.beatles on Wed Dec 11 21:29:48 2024
    From Newsgroup: rec.music.beatles

    My feeling was that Slick failed disastrously at pretending to be
    reading the charts, giving much amusement to his session mates, and this
    is why Douglas told the story.

    Anyway, yes, the 20/20 episode ran on the 8th. If it's any consolation,
    you didn't miss much. The portion I saw was mostly Mintz and Gruen
    going through their dreary routines.
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  • From pamelam1@pamelam1@mindspring.com (pamina58) to rec.music.beatles on Thu Dec 12 13:00:27 2024
    From Newsgroup: rec.music.beatles

    The Beatles knew chords, they knew voicing, they learned 3-part harmony,
    which is counterpoint.

    Learning notation, per se, might have inhibited their style of creating,
    which is through playing first. Or, they might even have been fibbing
    about not 'reading' music, as part of the myth that they were untrained musicians...when they were, in fact, quite sophisticated...you see them flipping from major to minor chords, using tritone substitutions,
    rethinking old progressions...savvy stuff...
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  • From nyarlathotep1@nyarlathotep1@hotmail.com (Norbert) to rec.music.beatles on Thu Dec 12 15:17:35 2024
    From Newsgroup: rec.music.beatles

    There are also artfully-placed major 6 and 7 chords in their music.

    Lennon and Hqrrison employed time changes in some of their songs, which
    isn't common in popular music. Harrison undoubtedly knew what he was
    doing; I suspect Lennon's time changes were unconscious. Harrison
    basically said as much; that when he questioned Lennon about this aspect
    of some of his songs, Lennon wasn't aware of it.
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  • From nyarlathotep1@nyarlathotep1@hotmail.com (Norbert) to rec.music.beatles on Sat Dec 14 21:03:22 2024
    From Newsgroup: rec.music.beatles

    The recent 20/20 JL Special is now on Youtube.

    For what it's worth, I could not sit through the thing.
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