I am envisioning the face-melters of tomorrow sitting in their parents’ basements, carefully reading these instructions. They must regard you as a special Rock Oracle. Continue to serve them!

Thanks for the nice read, keep up the interesting posts…..

The cymbals do sound slightly phase-y during that break. I’m sure there are lots of tape edits throughout the song (apparently it was a nightmare mixing this song). I’m guessing, however, that the meter wasn’t affected, though. It would be too coincidental to lose/gain what amounts to exactly one eighth note, don’t you think?

i could swear that there’s a tape edit prior to a short rest in the guitar part. i wonder if that throws “off” the meter at all?

i’ve always found zep awesomely fascinating with their combination of lock-step power and nimble looseness (which the stones parlayed in a completely different manner), as well as that combination of bombast (this entire song) and subtlety (what you just wrote about!).

EAS

I do take issue with your comment that discussions of lyric writing are out of the scope of this blog. I think any and all facets of creating a successful song are worthy topics. I know I don’t talk about lyric structure that much (if at all), but it’s mostly because I don’t have the dorky nerd terms to describe them in their full geekery.

And yes, that last verse is a good’un.

I think that last verse is especially clever, as it really changes the thematic direction, has a couple clever puns for the folks paying attention, and I’m a sucker for the not-so-subtle irony of dissing Nashville in a song that comes out of Nashville. That’s so punk rock.

There is a good quote from Paul McCartney in the 1995 documentary that I am going to steal here. This quote shows, I think, that the Beatles were, in fact, doing a fair amount of calculation (as well as feeling of course):

McCartney: “We were just trying to improve all the time, and we’d listen to something that somebody else had done, and we’d just try and beat it a bit. We’d try and beat what we were doing. And, I mean, by the time we got to something like ‘From Me to You,’ it was nice ’cause the - I remember being very pleased with the chord in the middle, which was different from what [plays piano]. Going to that minor chord there was like, ‘Ooh, you know this is something we haven’t done before.’”

I like the idea of leaving in the backing vocals for the third chorus despite having the lead taken out. That would add a nice little continuity.

Also, I might make the 2nd half of the B section (the class / glass lines) instrumental at least once, probably the first time, to give it more impact…

Theory’s goal isn’t necessarily to divine the writer’s compositional processes - it also helps us understand what exactly we’re listening to. The main question here isn’t “Is this why he wrote what he wrote?” but “Is this why we hear it like we hear it?”

Also, I doubt you could really say that writers don’t “calculate” - good songs rarely just pop fully formed out of the guitar. Good songwriting is a continual process of reinventing and reimagining (for a good example, check out Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and then find the YHF demos that are floating around the interweb, and see how much the songs evolved…)

I think if you follow through my discussion of the chorus in “Help” closely, you’ll find that I am actually showing how simple the structure is. The musical terms may appear complicated to someone not versed in music theory, but they represent simple concepts that any musician can inherently learn and feel without knowing the terminology.

Lennon assuredly may not have consciously constructed this song using the description I have provided. However, Lennon at this point in his life obviously had a highly trained ear, i.e. a refined sense of “feeling” and “hearing.” I am thus arguing that unconsciously, through probably trial and error as well as experience, Lennon can be seen using simple yet elegant musical devices in this song.