I want to hold your hand backing tracks | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Unfortunately, these are not of great quality, coming off YouTube (can’t attach my own copy of a high quality backing track as an mp3 which is far superior in fidelity and clarity) but…..for those, again who have the ears to hear or are open minded, again, at approx. 8 seconds into it, Lennon’s low register but still fairly plain Rickenbacker is joined by something else, and that “something else” to help significantly thicken his guitar, creating a mesh or virtual wall of slightly out of phase sound is NOT extreme compression, not flange or any other effects that Abbey Road didn’t even have in 1963, not studio ambient effects, not a Vox organ guitar prototype which John received after October 1963, not Jimi Hendrix, and not George Harrison later superimposing his own guitar to parallel John which one of the authors of Recording the Beatles offered as a possibility, it iS nothing more and nothing less, than Martin adding the Hammond RT-3, inhouse Abbey Road organ to John’s guitar but with extreme precision and stealth so as NOT to give away there are keys involved which is why he refrained from doing a glissandos as he did on I Wanna Be Your Man just a few days or week before the recording sessions if IWTHYH and This Boy . This time the organ was saturated & massively compressed in addition to the heavy leslie effects and under Martins crafty hands, he carefully superimposed just the low 5th intervals and hammer on 6th tones to blend in with John’s Rickenbacker during the verses and then again, the low fifth interval keys during the middle eight sections (while John is strumming open chords as heard on the higher quality backing track isolated as an mp3), but just enough to have a profoundly intense effect on his guitar track without being conspicuous. The presence of the organ is heard, in the form of adding the bizarre out of phase effect notably at 0:13 seconds, 1:17 and most of all at 1:59 on the B7 chord. During the refrains (the title), while the Hammond is hitting the low keys, root, fifth and occasion third tone during the C to D to G to Em sequence, if you listen carefully on this low quality recording, you can hear John’s guitar slightly above the low, saturated organ tones hitting plain vanilla open versions of C, D, G and Em etc. but its hard to hear on this version. On the high res version I have, you can also clearly hear John’s guitar strumming plain chords during the middle eight sections of Dm to G to C to Am while the organ is hitting low tones integrating with Pauls bass intervals but the low organ keys are slightly more pronounced on the second middle eight. In fact, he’s playing exactly the same chord forms (or inversions) he plays on live video performances of that tune. No surprise. 

Martin used these methods throughout the Beatles catalog most notably his superimposed windup half speed piano on top of George’s 12 string intro, and solo in a Hard Days Night where he had George play the solo at half speed then Martin added his piano then later sped it up to normal speed and pitch giving the 12 string guitar and piano sound that shimmering quality it has on a AHDN .

He also superimposed a piano on the twelve string solo for Any Time At All along with many other tracks like You Really Got A Hold On Me , etc., where Martin superimposed keys just to fill out vocal lapses or other instruments but only in specific sections where it wouldn’t be obvious. For those unbelievers, believe what you want, sure, that image of them performing IWTHYH on Sullivan is forever burned in our memories making us think we only hear, as on the videos, bass, two guitars and drums and some of you just cannot crack that bias and really listen to John’s rhythm track with an open mind as if it would be heresy to even consider the fact Martin superimposed the Hammond on top of it (to SOUND like a guitar) which is why it does and yet…everyone admits how “strange” or “odd” or “bizarre” Lennon’s guitar sounds on that track…no kidding.. if you added a full blown Hammond, just using the low end keys under the finger tips of George Martin to your guitar, it would also sound incredibly full and a bit anomalous. Dave Davies of the Kinks constantly tried to replicate John’s guitar sound from IWTHYH as demonstrated on You Really Got Me, All the Day and all of the Night, and most notably, parts of Tired of Waiting but he could never hit in on the money. He got the closest of anyone I heard but what was missing was………you guessed it:-)