Talk:Good Day Sunshine

Folk Rock ????

Folk Rock ????????? Where in the fucking hell is this song Folk Rock ?!

In the mind of someone who has never heard Unhalfbricking; unsourced: it's gone. --Rodhullandemu 21:17, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Guitar / Piano Solo

I have two suggestions:

- "Mark Lewisohn did not mention a guitar track" I would add to that "and there is no audible guitar in the song" - because there are obviously two pianos but I can hear no guitar. I think the credit in "Personal" should be altered accordingly.

- "and thus in the released version the solo sounds faster than it was actually played" I think this is misleading, because the piano solo does not sound faster, it is faster because it was sped up after recording it in half speed. George Martin and the Beatles often did that with piano takes and guitar solos, to be able to play the difficult parts more correctly or to give the final sound a different timbral quality. Both Goeff Emerick and George Martin discribe this process in their autobiographies.

I suggest to look up what Lewisohn says about this or to delete this part of the sentence completely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8109:9840:1A34:EDE5:1003:A5D4:5EE1 (talk) 21:20, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

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Bass controversy

Here is another debate about who played what and this time, it's about who played bass on "Good Day Sunshine": some sources say it was Paul while others say George. Which is correct? If the bass guitar tracks resembles the sound of a Rickenbacker 4001S, then it would've been an overdub by Paul, but if it was a Burns Nu-Sonic bass, then George may have played it. Another theory is that George may have played bass, but it was replaced by Paul's bassline for the final release.

Robert Rodriguez says in his book that Paul dispensed with George and John's instrumental contributions for the recording of the basic track, but contrary to George's claims it wasn't always the case with Paul's songs, and thus it implies that Paul played bass. OTOH, www.beatlesebooks.com claims that George played bass on the song, but that website definitely needs to have the factual errors corrected and fixed up by Dave Rybaczewski, probably because he relied too much on Geoff Emerick's memoirs with dodgy claims and factual errors (e.g. claiming that Brian Epstein was 37 when he died, but in reality he was 32) and not enough on Mark Lewisohn, John C. Winn or Walter Everett, who are obviously more reliable sources. I'm not badmouthing Dave, but he needs to revise some of the pages to correct all the factual errors or baseless claims and it should be pointed out that The Beatles didn't have 100% flawless memories - nobody does - which may explain certain misattributions said in public or to the press, but I don't know if it was caused by their drug use or if they always had faulty memories before even doing drugs or hitting it big. Until the studio documentation is disclosed to the public, should it ever be published in book, I guess that the baseless claims will continue regarding the personnel on Beatles' songs.

In regards to Paul recording solo recordings on Beatles albums, it didn't happen as often as has been reported: true, he did record "Yesterday", "Blackbird", "Mother Nature's Son", "Martha My Dear", "Wild Honey Pie" and "Her Majesty" by himself (not counting the string and brass orchestrations scored by George Martin), but there were some occasions where he didn't consciously exclude George and John, like when he and Ringo worked together "Why Don't We Do it in the Road?", but George and John were unable to contribute to the song because they were elsewhere at EMI supervising string overdubs to "Piggies" and "Glass Onion" respectively, so it wasn't a deliberate exclusion on Paul or Ringo's part.

Another fact is that Paul wasn't routinely erasing and retracking George and/or John's guitar work/contributions or Ringo's drumming, from each of his songs, let alone entire albums, and the claims that he was routinely drumming on his own songs as well as replacing George and John's guitar parts cannot be supported by studio documentation. It is true that sometimes he replaced basslines played by George or John with his own, but he didn't replace George's guitar parts as often as reported.

61.69.217.3 (talk) 21:58, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Update

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "controversy" but anyway ...

Only just noticed this message after changing the Personnel credits, using Guesdon & Margotin (2013) as the main source. I wouldn't say their book is an especially authoritative or definitive source, but it is good for situations like this: they often acknowledge differences among the sources, or at least present a picture that reflects that. I'm not too familiar with Dave Rybaczewski's site but he does give a scenario that is entirely credible, imo, given that Mark Lewisohn, working from original session tapes and EMI recording notes, states that the band rehearsed the song at length – on piano, bass guitar and drums – and then taped three complete takes of the basic track with these instruments. John C. Winn's 2009 book supports this also (and neither author says anything about the bass guitar being re-recorded among their description of the overdubs that followed).

Although Ian MacDonald regularly cites Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, he seems to have ignored the latter's description of the two sessions in coming up with his personnel credits in Revolution in the Head. Here on Wikipedia, MacDonald's credits were almost the default for all Beatles song articles, for years, but I've long found them problematic (as I know others have). It's a combination of MacDonald sometimes being overly eager to credit McCartney with the majority of musical contributions, imo, and the picture having moved on through new information emerging since the late 1990s – which was the last time MacDonald substantially revised his book. Other sources have this new information, of course, and the more time goes by the more MacDonald's credits seem like guesswork.

Harrison was using a Burns Nu-Sonic bass on and off during the Revolver sessions. And as a couple of authors mention (Rybaczewski might be one), the part on "Good Day Sunshine" is noticeable free of ornamentation or McCartney-style "busy"-ness. I don't believe Lennon played any bass on a Beatles recording until 1968, when the band acquired the Fender VI bass. (I'm going to scuttle off and just double-check that point after posting this message ...) So, the Harrison bass credit seems the most plausible, given all the above, and I've presented it with mention of the lack of certainty over this. Robert Rodriguez does say something about McCartney's song, like "For No One", "dispensing" with Lennon and Harrison as musicians, but again, I think we can view that as guesswork on his part. And Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions is the authoritative text, if not quite perfect or error-free.

Hope other editors view it this way, too ...? JG66 (talk) 06:07, 18 September 2020 (UTC)