Since last November, I've been slowly reading Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. A couple weeks ago, I read the entry for 6 October 1964 (p. 49) in which Lewisohn claims that "Eight Days a Week" was "the first pop song to feature a faded-up introduction."
Yester-day was Chuck Berry's birthday, so I listened to some of his music and rediscovered that the introduction in "Down Bound Train" also fades in. "Eight Days a Week" is from 1964, but "Down Bound Train" is from 1956.
Here are screen clippings of the wave forms:
"Down Bound Train"
"Eight Days a Week"
I'm not sure if "Down Bound Train" could be classified as a "pop song," but it's certainly a song with a faded-in introduction that predates "Eight Days a Week." Likewise, I'm not sure if the Beatles were familiar with this particular song (although they certainly were familiar with other Chuck Berry songs) or if the faded-in introduction of "Down Bound Train" had anything to do with the faded-in introduction of "Eight Days a Week."
A couple days ago, I learned a little bit of the bass part for "Eight Days a Week." I had the introduction (which is just a string of D notes) and three arpeggiations during the verses. I started recording it yester-day, but then I thought I should work on getting a bit more (which I why I posted the notation for "From Me to You" instead).
In addition to getting the whole bass part, I referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for the chords, and in doing that, I learned the opening and closing phrase on lead guitar. The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook says that the opening and closing chords on rhythm guitar are played on the 10th, 12th, and 15th frets, but I was extremely skeptical of this because the rhythm guitar is acoustic and it's difficult to play that high on acoustic guitar. It's not that hard on electric guitar though, so I discovered that those 10th, 12th, and 15th fret parts are actually the basis of the electric guitar part.
I'm not sure my electric guitar's intonation is right, so those high-fretted parts don't sound the greatest. I'm not sure of the accuracy of the rest of the electric guitar part either, but at least most of it is indeed staccato chords.
Haply, because of the fade-in, you can't tell that the three instruments I recorded over the original track don't all start at the same time.
In filing my recording on my computer, I discovered something that probably should have been obvious a long time ago: "Eight Days a Week" is the eighth track on Beatles for Sale.
