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Friday Influences Thread 10-18-13


Lee Knight

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Come out and play!

______

Bread. So corny... almost single handedly responsible for the soft rock movement in the 70's. Spawning the Air Supplys and John Ford Colleys and Lobos of the world. But Bread, and David Gates... these guys were special. The thought that went into those melodies, those chords, and... those arrangements. The simple bending of traditional structure. Taking minimal material, a couple verses, some simple lines for a chorus, and then presenting those wonderful tunes... it's enough to break my preteen heart. And it did. I hear Bread and all the early crushes and longing come back. But listen now with an analytical ear.

 

We're in A, but it sounds like the guitar is playing the D chord shape so I'm guessing a capo at the 7th? Makes it sound like a harpsichord, something pop music had been getting some of just a few years prior.

 

Intro

The guitar plays a 1 bar little figure that just hangs on A, 2 times, 2 bars total.

 

Verse1

Note the guitar just pedals that little figure staying away from the low tonic note, letting the bass do its descending line we all know and love. A, A/G#, A/F#, A/E... D, Dm, A/E, E... at which point the guitar plays a high E, highlighting E in the bass on the A chord, stays there as the chords goes to an E proper. A/E, E... and let's repeat the whole thing 1 more time. Before moving on... look at the melody. Besides the nice note choices and the brilliant melodic rhythm, just note the overall structure.

You sheltered me from harm
>Kept me warm

>Kept me warm


You gave my life to me
>Set me free

>Set me free

 

I simple statement, answered and reinforced by 2 little pushes of agreement, kept me warm, kept me warm. I love just that.

 

PreChorus

Bm, D, E. That Bm is the perfect pre chord. The ii. If it hasn't been heard yet, like here, it really says, "I'm really getting ready to make my point, pay attention!"

The finest years I ever knew
were all the years I had with you

Prior to the pre, we've only we've only heard a guitar, voice and bass. But now on The finest years...on that 1, we hear the drummer really dig in on the ride cymbal's bell, DING! and a Nashville strung acoustic guitar is added up the middle really getting aggressive with the strumming pattern in a cool way, yet compressed and tucked back to not overwhelm... and then the drum fill... that drummer? That's Mike Botts. he played the tubs on Andrew Gold's Lonely Boy. Another great soft rock groove.

 

Chorus

Just listen to the groove in that chorus for a second... the 16th note pick ups before the 1 and 3 kick. Annie 1... Annie 3... great simple groove. Where'd he get that?!?!

:A, Bm E, D: just to have you back again. As everything goes away but the sustaining guitar's D chord and the resolution back to A. At which point we get 1 bar of intro guitar playing a slightly different figure.

 

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PART TWO

 

 

Verse2

 

STRINGS! They were mono and buried in the first chorus, but here? Yeah, I can hear them. Note the harmony being introduced on the 2nd "what it's of". If you're gonna repeat again, why not give them something extra. Not so soon though, but right before they say, "haven't we heard this before?"

 

Youtaughtmehowtolove
What it's of, what it's of.

 

But now we really get something extra. And this is what kills me about Gates. The changed melody on  

 
You never said too much,
But still you showed the way

 

That's brilliant ^^^. But wait?!?!? On "and I knew" below, we get a whole new chord. Isn

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Lee Knight wrote:

 

 

 

 

Having been a disc jockey for 15 years (from 1968 to 1983) I had many opportunities to listen to Bread songs on a regular basis, and this ^ is my favorite. (David Gates wrote it about his father.)

Some interesting facts about Gates, from Wikipedia:

Originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, Gates was surrounded by music from infancy, as the son of a band director and a piano teacher. He became proficient in piano, bass and guitar by the time he enrolled in Tulsa's Will Rogers High School. Gates joined local bands around Tulsa. During a concert in 1957, his high school band backed Chuck Berry.[2] Later, Gates released his first local hit single, "Jo-Baby," a song he had written for his sweetheart, Jo Rita, whom he married in 1958 while enrolled at the University of Oklahoma.

In 1961, he and his family moved to Los Angeles, where Gates continued writing songs, and he worked as a music copyist, as a studio musician, and as a producer for many artists

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This'll crack you up, Lee.

I actually quite like this and a (small) handful of Bread songs. (It was the often excellent, hired-out lead guitar work that drew me in, I'm guessing.)  I also quite like "Guitar Man" -- but stuff like "Make It with You" really annoys me and my gut flips upside down and I reach to pull my ears off  the sides of my head when I hear even a few notes of "Baby, I'm-a Want You." 

EDIT: I'm listening to "Guitar Man," now and maybe I was a little too enthusiastic. Still, a bit of guilty pleasure.  wink.gif  

PS...rhythm AG in "Guitar Man" sounds maybe like Nashville stringing?

 

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Well you know, there's nothing like loving sappy Romanticism while having a cynical American heart. You are a man after my own heart. Nothing gay here. :-) and nothing better than French romance with a major dash of Romanticism. K.D. Lang made it to work and why can't we?

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