Personnel:
Cliff Wilson: Vocals, Fender bass, electric guitar, piano, tubular bells
Cliff Hochberg: Drums
Clarinets 1 & 2: Russell Labe
Bass Clarinet: Jean Anne Gould
Additional Clarinet: Daniel Beerbohm
Tuba: Tom Spain
Why this song is on the album:
When discussing which songs we should include on the album, Brad said, “When I’m 64 has to be on it, right?” This is another song about marriage, but it hadn’t occurred to me to include it because of the unusual instrumentation. But Brad seemed so sure I didn’t question it, I just did it. I’m really glad I did because this was a blast to record.
Performance notes:
The Beatles performed this song in the key of C and at a slower tempo. After completing the recording, McCartney was dissatisfied and had the engineers speed up the tape to bring it up to the key of Db, and bring the tempo up to the now-familiar 140 beats per minute.
I did the same thing with my recording, but when I speeded it up my voice sounded like a munchkin, so I re-recorded the lead vocal in the new key. All other tracks were recorded in C and sped up to Db.
I transcribed the clarinet trio note for note, as best I could. It may or may not be a perfect transcription, but it’s pretty darn close.
Russ did an amazing job with the clarinet parts. Particularly impressive is the way he dynamically shapes the lines and perfectly matches those dynamics across the two parts. It’s both impressive and wonderful.
Before recording this song, I did not personally know any bass clarinetists, so I found Jean in a Facebook group for pit musicians, where I am always looking for my favorite type of gig. She was the most professional musician to participate in this entire project. She came into the studio and played the part perfectly the first time through. We did it a second time — just because — and we were done.
Tom Spain played the tuba part wonderfully and stuck around to add tracks for A Day in the Life and Hey Jude.
Cliff Hochberg played the snare and hi-hat with brushes with his usual meticulous attention to detail, with some particularly nice, delicate cymbal work.
How it’s different from the Beatles’ version:
Of the 18 songs in this collection, this is the one that is closest to the Beatles’ original. The big change is the addition of the tuba. As a lifelong bassist who plays pretty much all genres of music, I recognize a bass part that really belongs on a tuba; I stopped accepting Dixieland gigs many years ago because those bass parts really just belong on a tuba. I feel the same way about the bass part to this song. I do play along on the electric bass to add some sustain to the part, but I think the tuba in this recording is a big success.
The other small change is in the lyrics. Rather than “Doing the garden, digging the weeds” I sing “Doing the garden, digging Louise” because she’s the one who I hope will still be needing and feeding me on 1/26/22. And I dig her.
Fun facts:
McCartney wrote this song as a teenager, and would play it by himself on the piano whenever the power would go out during a gig in Hamburg.
When this song was recorded in 1966, the engineers were mostly concerned with getting the mono mix right, because very few consumers had stereo equipment. The stereo mixes were an afterthought and were often of poor quality.
CCW