PLASTIC ONO BAND 2021 BOX SET-THE NEW TRACKS

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mikec
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Re: PLASTIC ONO BAND 2021 BOX SET-THE NEW TRACKS

Post by mikec »

Doug wrote: Fri Apr 30, 2021 10:46 am RE: Working Class Hero

Mike,
Could it be that the date on the session sheet was changed to the 27th because that's when the rough remixes were done, and the attribution of the recording session to that date at points in the book is simply because someone used the session sheet as their source?
Could be that, or the same tape used on the 26th was also used on the 27th and they didn't bother to add a new date under the "notes" (same as they didn't care to add the date for the "insert" session), but.. a completely new tape was also used to record the rest of the "Working Class Hero" (10-12) takes and also was dated the 26th, maybe a simple mistake that was corrected on the recording sheet.... maybe not.
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Re: PLASTIC ONO BAND 2021 BOX SET-THE NEW TRACKS

Post by mikec »

Other curiosities and errors in the POB 2021 book:

REMEMBER
On pages 66, 67, 104 and 112 of the book that accompanies the Deluxe Box, it is confirmed on eight occasions (two of them showing photos of the original tape and the recording sheet) that the Master Take of this song was number 13, however, on the same page 67 it is erroneously mentioned five times that the master take is number 3. The full session is in circulation and was definitely Take 13.

GOD
The first 10 takes officially registered on tape boxes E099490-8T and E099489-8T on October 7, 1970 are with John on acoustic guitar. After Take 10 there were eight and a half minutes that were only named “JAM” (“Lost John”, “Goodnight Irene”, another take of “God” and dialogue); but there is an additional take of “God” that was NOT registered by engineer Andy Stephens which must have actually been Take 11 and is available on John Lennon Anthology; unfortunately it must continue to be part of “Take 10” since for Take 11 it was registered that John switched to piano. There the first confusion, because 11 takes were recorded on acoustic guitar and only 10 were registered.

On page 82 of the book that accompanies the Deluxe box it is confirmed that the first 11 takes on October 7 were with John on acoustic guitar.
On page 116 are described 4 Jams recorded that day during the session of "God": “Get Back”, “Lost John”, “Goodnight Irene” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.
So "Get Back" seems to be incorrectly placed before Take 10 as we know that John was on his acoustic guitar (as we can hear since Take 1 included in this new collection, as well as the following Jams that were played almost immediately one after another) and “Get Back” lets us hear John on electric guitar. This jam is likely to have come from the second session of “Well Well Well” the day before (tape E099491-8T) or at some other point at the beginning of the session on October 7th.
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Re: PLASTIC ONO BAND 2021 BOX SET-THE NEW TRACKS

Post by maul »

I’m wondering if there’s a chance to 'reconstruct' the correct take numbering of the bootlegs' material .
The most accurate boot seems to be the recent HMC releases that, -despite certain wrong or fancy numbering-, gave us a great number of outtakes, especially for three songs, on which we should concentrate attention: 'Remember', 'Hold On' an 'Love'.
after several days of crossed analysis i sadly discovered :cry: that the task of identifying ALL of the takes and place them in chronological order is almost impossible, struggling against:
1) wrong :roll: or omitted announcements
2) wrong or confusionary logs on reference sheets
3) wrong, omissive or confusionary annotation :?: on mastertapes
By the way: there is someone who has a BIG photo of rolls E099701, E099854 and E099855 please?
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Re: PLASTIC ONO BAND 2021 BOX SET-THE NEW TRACKS

Post by Doug »

Well said. I've been working on this for my review of the box, and came to the same conclusion. There are multiple levels of unclear or contradictory information in the documentation, which make things difficult, if not impossible to sort out. If we had complete tapes of all of the sessions... maybe... but we don't.
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Re: PLASTIC ONO BAND 2021 BOX SET-THE NEW TRACKS

Post by mikec »

maul wrote: Mon May 03, 2021 10:47 am I’m wondering if there’s a chance to 'reconstruct' the correct take numbering of the bootlegs' material .
The most accurate boot seems to be the recent HMC releases that, -despite certain wrong or fancy numbering-, gave us a great number of outtakes, especially for three songs, on which we should concentrate attention: 'Remember', 'Hold On' an 'Love'.
after several days of crossed analysis i sadly discovered :cry: that the task of identifying ALL of the takes and place them in chronological order is almost impossible, struggling against:
1) wrong :roll: or omitted announcements
2) wrong or confusionary logs on reference sheets
3) wrong, omissive or confusionary annotation :?: on mastertapes
By the way: there is someone who has a BIG photo of rolls E099701, E099854 and E099855 please?
Image
Excellent graphics !. On page one of this post I described it. That the “Hold On” and “Remember” session especially (as well as a couple of takes from the “Love” session) is a disaster if we focus on what the tape boxes say versus what we can hear in the Bootlegs. My original review had more detailed false starts and rehearsals between takes that were not registered by the engineers, but it sounded too "nerdy" so I cut it out. There are more than 42 “Hold On” takes, for example, if we count the false starts, breakdown takes, incorrect numbering, etc. I think HMC has a couple of tracks in the wrong place ("Glad All Over" one of them, but I have to check all my notes). We see that many of the POB sessions have similar errors in terms of numbering, takes not registered in the tape boxes ("God" from the Lennon Anthology, one of them, which is a Take that was not annotated in the session of October 7); and documentation in general.
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Re: PLASTIC ONO BAND 2021 BOX SET-THE NEW TRACKS

Post by beatlesondvd »

Here's my breakdown of the 'Hold On' session (sorted out by bootleg.official release).
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Re: PLASTIC ONO BAND 2021 BOX SET-THE NEW TRACKS

Post by maul »

Doug wrote: Mon May 03, 2021 11:04 am Well said. I've been working on this for my review of the box, and came to the same conclusion. There are multiple levels of unclear or contradictory information in the documentation, which make things difficult, if not impossible to sort out. If we had complete tapes of all of the sessions... maybe... but we don't.
mikec wrote: Mon May 03, 2021 2:29 pm Excellent graphics !. On page one of this post I described it. That the “Hold On” and “Remember” session especially (as well as a couple of takes from the “Love” session) is a disaster if we focus on what the tape boxes say versus what we can hear in the Bootlegs. My original review had more detailed false starts and rehearsals between takes that were not registered by the engineers, but it sounded too "nerdy" so I cut it out. There are more than 42 “Hold On” takes, for example, if we count the false starts, breakdown takes, incorrect numbering, etc. I think HMC has a couple of tracks in the wrong place ("Glad All Over" one of them, but I have to check all my notes). We see that many of the POB sessions have similar errors in terms of numbering, takes not registered in the tape boxes ("God" from the Lennon Anthology, one of them, which is a Take that was not annotated in the session of October 7); and documentation in general.
beatlesondvd wrote: Tue May 04, 2021 7:40 am Here's my breakdown of the 'Hold On' session (sorted out by bootleg.official release).
a collective thousand thanks for those invaluable informations

I’m hard –headed: yesterday i revised all, starting from the scratch and starting from the supposed easier :roll: :
I considered Remember’s relatively few takes they were easier to ‘reveal’, but i was pretty wrong: it’s a mess, like Hold On or Love

First of all it’s necessary to establish a minimal ‘solid ground’ from where to start: that is identifying the ‘big chunks’:
Take 3 (‘8:10’), Take 4 (‘9:00’) and Take 6 (‘9:40’)
HMC 048 has ‘’take 4’’ (8:44), ‘’take 5’’ (9:43) and ‘’take 8’’ (9:42)
In this case takes’ length can be deceptive, but if we take in account only the real ‘musical’ segment ’s length (without chats,pre-takes and whatever) all fall quite in place:
Take 3 (8:10) (‘musical portion’ 8:27) HMC 048 track 6 ‘’take 4’’ (8:44)
Take 4 (9:00) (‘musical portion’ 8:54) HMC 048 track 7 ‘’take5’’ (9:43) (George’s arrival at tape’s end reconfirms correctness of placement)
Take 6 (9:40) (‘musical portion’ 9:39) HMC 048 track 11 ‘’take 8’’ (9:42)


Now we can start to track the rest:
Reel E99485:
HMC’s track 2 is Take 1 (rehearsal 1) from 7 October and the subsequent track 3 obviously belongs to the same God Sessions
HMC’s track 4 is Rehearsal 2
HMC’s track 5 is the new (9 October) Take 1 ---and Take 2 (Breakdown)
(Mastertape’s Take 2 signaled length (circa 0:54) is ‘distributed’ between the end of HMC’s track 5 and chats at the beginning of track 6)
HMC’s track 6 is Take 3 (8:10)
HMC’s track 7 is Take 4 (9:00)
For this reel HMC sequence seems correct and ‘complete’, so, we go ahead

Change of Reel: E99486
HMC track 8 should surely be an undocumented take ‘x’, placed at tape’s start (0:00-0:46) before Take 5
HMC track 9 and track 10, combined, probably constitute the ‘breakdowned’ Take 5 (2:47)
HMC track 11 is Take 6

At this point of the reel we have five consecutive breakdown/false start takes (7, 8, 9, 10 and 11) , in six minutes
The HMC’s continuing sequence propose 7 ‘arbitrary’ tracks, actually containing 9 breakdowns/’takes’, in 5:40
The total length appears nearly to fit, so the problem seems only to distribute and ‘recognise’ the 5 ‘real’ takes contained in the seven HMC tracks

The mastertape shows that between take 6 end (13:10) and the real beginning of take 7 (14:15) there’s a ‘hidden’ minute that probably contains a further undocumented rehearsal or take ‘y’

So we can assume and summarise as follows :
HMC track 12 is undocumented Take ‘’Y’’
HMC track 13, 14 and part of 15, combined, approximately constituteTake 7
HMC track 15 is roughly Take 8
HMC track 16 is Take 9
HMC track 17 is Take 10
HMC track 18 is Take 11

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Considering also ‘Take Y,’ the mastertape notes shows takes’ lengths surprisingly matching with ‘coherents segments’ of breakdowns in the 5:45 section
This is not a conclusive ‘scientific’ attribution, nevertheless the showed correspondings should be considered more than a coincidence.

HMC track 19 is Take 12

Change of Reel: E99928
HMC track 19 is Take 13, but this is not the ‘backtrack’, this is a later stage, with Jew’s Harp overdubs

At this point of the analysis, when everything seemed to be relatively ‘working’, HMC shows further 11 minutes of rehearsals –totally not documented- in which John and the other are testing changes in the arrangement of bass lines or piano, we can hear: "Do you want to know the chords Klaus, it might help ?" or "Bring me the words and get Mal to bring the electric piano"

Does this ruin everything in the previous reconstruction? :o

The only way to explain this ‘extra sessions’ is to suppose they continued to rehersal takes after take 13, but in the end they decided to remain on the ‘old arrangement’ and work on the first 5 minutes of take 13, not bothering to document tk 14, 15 etc. on mastertapes notes

Is this credible? :?:

Take 13 lasted 9:00 but on mastertapes we can read: “take continues to 12.49 but this is not required for remix”,
actually we can hear take 13 surely ends at 8:47, so we already have 4 ‘unidentified’minutes that are not part of take 13 jam/coda

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A fundamental point in favor of this risky theory is that the reel have more than 11 minutes of reel’s free space, so if it can’t be proven at least it stands in the field of possibility… :?

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Re: PLASTIC ONO BAND 2021 BOX SET-THE NEW TRACKS

Post by kolive »

Fantastic work in sorting all this out!
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Re: PLASTIC ONO BAND 2021 BOX SET-THE NEW TRACKS

Post by mikec »

beatlesondvd wrote: Tue May 04, 2021 7:40 am Here's my breakdown of the 'Hold On' session (sorted out by bootleg.official release).
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applause!! Still a lot to dig in
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Re: PLASTIC ONO BAND 2021 BOX SET-THE NEW TRACKS

Post by mikec »

Page 1 with the full review has been upgraded today May 4th, with some details I’ve left out the first time, it was too “wordy” but I think it really works now as these kind of details are absent on the official book that comes with the Deluxe Box set; tape rolls for Mother and other tracks explained better, etc.

Now, following the suggestion that it would be easier to understand some curiosities from the recording sessions of the Plastic Ono Band album by showing photos of the tapes where the Takes were (or not) registered, here is an example about what we talked about “God” and the Jams included on the new official release.

The first 10 takes officially registered on tape boxes E099490-8T and E099489-8T on October 7th, 1970 are with John on acoustic guitar.
Between Takes 10 and 11 there are eight minutes and 13 seconds that were only named “JAM” which correspond to the following tracks: “Lost John”, “Goodnight Irene” and another take of “God” (that additional take of “God” with John on his acoustic guitar was NOT registered by engineer Andy Stephens which must have actually been Take 11). We almost have 7 minutes available from it, it seems we are only missing a few dialogues and riffs. To have the most complete sources for this “JAM” we need:
1-“Lost John”, John Lennon Anthology CD 1 ASCOT Track 21 (which starts with 18 seconds coming from the end of the original Take 10 when John tells he’s going to switch from guitar to piano, then tape cuts and re-starts when this jam is already in progress. This same track also appears on the new POB box but without the initial dialogue from take 10)
2-“Goodnight Irene”, Plastic Ono Band Ultimate Mixes JAMS DISK/BLU RAY/DIGITAL (It ends at the same point where the other “Take 10” of “God” in “John Lennon Anthology” begins)
3-“God”, John Lennon Anthology CD 1 ASCOT Track 2 (starts at the same point where “Goodnight Irene” ends)

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If we only follow the numbering on the tape box, this take of “God” must continue to be part of “Take 10” or the “Jam” because for Take 11, it was registered that John switched to piano. There the first confusion, because 11 takes were recorded on acoustic guitar and only 10 were registered. This “second” Take 10 or the actual Take 11 of “God” from John Lennon Anthology , was believed to be Take 4.
On page 82 of the book that accompanies the Deluxe box it is confirmed that the first 11 takes on October 7 were with John on acoustic guitar; however, Take 11 as it appears written on the tape box already has John on piano plus that eleventh was a breakdown take (B/D), see the photo, also the twelve and number 13 was marked as “False Start”, all three are part to what we now have as “YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE- JAM”, on the JAMS DISK, described on the book as part of Takes 12-13 (which they actually are), but if we count the time written on the tape box, it matches as being Takes 11, 12 and 13. This time the mistake is on the tape box though.

Now, regarding another mysterious information:
On page 116 are described 3 Jams recorded that day during this session of "God": “Get Back”, “Lost John” and “Goodnight Irene”.
"Get Back" seems to be incorrectly placed between Takes 9 and 10 (also described as “JAM” on tape box) as we know that John was on his acoustic guitar (as we can hear on Take 1 included in this new collection, as well as the other Jams that were played almost immediately one after another according to the book) and “Get Back” lets us hear John on electric guitar. But according to the official book, this “Jam” is “Get Back”, which is odd not only because of the instrumentation but also cause it only lasts 1:04 and that “Jam” is written on the tape box with a length of 1:58. But without having additional information or access to the tapes, we will never know.
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