"I'm Waiting For The Day" - ever wondered what the track in the background is?.......

There is another recording faintly audible in the background during the opening few bars of the mono mix of "I'm Waiting For The Day" on the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds. For those who want to know, it's "(You Got) The Power Of Love" by the Everly Brothers:

"I'm Waiting For The Day" backing track (40 second mp3 sample)

"(You Got) The Power Of Love" (30 second mp3 sample)

Why it's there, I've no idea!

 

How did you find that out?

 

I was listening to the outtakes and heard it clear as day!

I've changed the above clip of the Everly's tune to what I think is closer to what is actually bleeding through on the Beach Boys track.

I've found the section I believe is playing (although there are three possible sections) and I've also reversed the phase two samples short of being totally inverted to make the backing clearer while still being able to hear the vocals.

Why this was allowed to happen on a professional recording is anyone's guess!

 

Very cool that you figured it out. I'm still trying to figure out what is playing behind the Honeybus' Can't Let Maggie Go.

 

Is this the same track that is bleeding through at the end, before the final tympani beats?



Dan

 

That is incredibly wierd. How the hell did that happen? Anyway, great catch Mal

 

My theory:

Somebody was listening to the radio, that song was playing, and it got picked up during the recording, maybe in the control booth even. Brian had guests in the studio at that time, I believe. Maybe Danny Hutton was goofing around during a session and fiddled with the radio in between takes. I doubt it is deliberate.

Alternate theory:

The studio used recording tape that had that song on it already and it didn't erase all the way.

 

If, like me, you are still getting the Everly Bros clip in stereo then it's the old one. Even though I changed the clip, the old one may be cached somewhere - if you are having this problem you can hear the new clip here:

"(You Got) The Power Of Love" (30 second mp3 sample)

 

Good detective work, Mal.

The piano intro was also recorded onto recycled tape stock, as the out-takes on both bootlegs and the official Sessions box set proves.

Now, what's the track running in the background at double speed on the Little Richard "Keep A Knockin'" session tape?

 

Yup

 

According to this site, "(You Got) The Power Of Love" was recorded on 3rd February 1966 but it doesn't say where.

Since the Everly track does not appear to be on the multi-track tape for the backing track of "I'm Waiting For The Day" I think it is safe to assume it became involved at a later session.

Keith Badman lists two dates after the initial tracking session for "I'm Waiting For The Day" during which the Everly's track could have become imprinted onto the Beach Boys track.

6th March 1966 at Western Recorders - studio 3, when strings and woodwind were added as well as a vocal overdub.

10th March 1966 at Columbia - studio A, for vocal overdubs (on the 8-track presumably).

Does anyone know where "(You Got) The Power Of Love" was recorded? I would imagine it was at one of these studios and a tape from that session was used the following month for the Beach Boys session.

Stranger things have happened......

 

Bleed-through from previous recordings is a phenomenon I've been particularly interested in over recent years.

It's my belief that today's tape machines 'see' previous recordings which contemporary tape machines would have been completely, or almost completely, blind too.

I've experienced this with my own 4-track cassette recordings. In 1988-89 I made recordings on a humble Amstrad Studio 100. Yeah, I know. A dreadful machine. For teenagers in a bedroom studio however, in the pre-digital age, it really was the only affordable way to record anything with overdubs.

One thing that I became aware of quite quickly when moving onto 'better things' from the Tascam camp, was that Amstrad tapes, when played on a Tascam, would retrieve an objectionably high amount of the previous recording(s) on the tape. Yet, during the crossover period when I still had my mate's Amstrad to try them on, you heard nothing at all of these.

Similarly, whereas recordings made on the Tascam *appeared* to completely erase previous recordings, when taking THOSE tapes and playing them on an even more modern deck, yet again the previous recordings showed through to the same extent Amstrad 'undertracks' did when played on the Tascam. The cassette deck, in this case by the way, being the one I bought in 1996 and which still serves me solidly to this day, a Technics RS-BX501.

When I came to remaster my 4-tracks in 2000/1, the Amstrad tapes now had undertracks that at times were at almost 1/3 the strength of the actual recording to be retrieved.

This did of course mean that on one particular piece where an experimental melody line had been added but wiped (leaving a track supposedly 'vacant'), I was able to lift this satisfactorily enough to produce the illusion that that track had never been wiped in the first place!!!

It therefore doesn't take a genius to see that a similar story will hold true for professional playback equipment, in that undertracks previously masked by the bias floor on later recordings 'show through' to the more sensitive playback heads of modern gear. Certainly although I haven't used studio-grade analogue tape equipment in recent years, I would stick my neck out and say that they must surely have some sort of bias gain controls that can 'focus' the head 'before' or 'behind' the actual signal - if not to accidentally capture the undertracks, to recover high frequency signal which would otherwise sound withered when played back to standard spec.

 

One thing that most owners of 4 track cassette multitracks don't know (in my experience) is that the track placement of the 4 tracks is different to the two pairs of stereo tracks on conventional cassette equipment.

This fact has caused some amusing anecdotes from time to time. One, a few years ago, someone at a church had purchased a used 4 track cassette deck, but brought it back to the store from where he'd purchased it, saying it was defective, as the old recordings on this tape he was trying to use were still very audible. The 'old recordings' were the Scorpions album on the pre-recorded cassette he was trying to record over! He'd put sticky tape over the erase-prevention slots too. I asked him if the machine erased it's own recordings successfully. It did. And it also worked fine with new, blank tapes as well....duh....

 

Absolutely...and the hotter the signal you recorded, the louder the bleed-through would be when you tracked over it!

But that makes perfect sense anyway...

 

Surely in a professional environment the tapes should be bulk erased before being re-used.

I guess whoever bulk erased this one didn't do it properly. Either that or this case was an exception and they just taped over in the regular way and the deck wasn't aligned properly (or the deck used to record the Everly track wasn't).

 

OK, thanks to chip's response in this thread we now have the location for the recording "(You Got) The Power Of Love":

United Recorders, 3rd February 1966

Now, Western Recorders and United Recorders were basically two studios next door to each other on Sunset Blvd (street numbers 6000 and 6050 respectively) which, I believe, were both owned by Bill Putnam in 1966. Indeed, they were sometimes referred to collectively as United Western Recorders.

Therefore I think the session during which the Everly track became part of the Beach Boys track must have been this one:

6th March 1966 at Western Recorders - studio 3, when strings and woodwind were added as well as a vocal overdub.

A work tape from the February '66 Evely Brothers session seems to have been recylced for the Beach Boys session the following month. Why it wasn't erased properly is anyone's guess.

Incidentally, the engineer for that 6th March session was H. Bowen David - I wonder why he wasn't used more often on Beach boys sessions?........

 

Great story Mal! I wonder if the Beach Boys themselves knew that...

 

Brian Wilson heard of his propensity for hiding subliminal examples of his other engineering work deep within hit records?

I thought "I'm Waiting For The Day" was vocal-tracked at Columbia? The boots all seem to confirm that it's eight-track. Or am I getting confused again?

 

Yep, 8-track vocals recorded at Columbia studio A on 10th March '66.

However, according to Keith Badman there was also a vocal overdub session at Western studio 3 on the 6th March after the string and woodwind overdubs were finished.

[According to Keith Badman, the basic backing track was recorded on 1st March at Western 3]

 

I'm with you now. Yes, that makes sense.

Note to self: must read previous quotes carefully before posting to avoid making howling errors.

 

What I want to know is why Brian Wilson didn't notice it and demand that it be remixed?

 

Since Brian mixed it by himself, there are only two possibilities: He didn't notice it before release, or he thought that the mix was definitive regardless of this relatively small problem.

 

Maybe he was "waiting for the day" people found out. Someone should let him know (Bruce still around here?)

 

That is really neat Mal, I always wondered what that was! I had never heard that Everly Brothers song until now. Interesting that it's just as audible on the alternate version on Disc 3 of the Pet Sounds Box, with Mike on lead vocals. So...any ideas on what song is bleeding through at the beginning of "Wouldn't It Be Nice"?