In a pre-digital time when studio engineers recorded everything to tape, musical bloopers were far harder to remove. Simply hitting “delete” on ProTools wasn’t an option. Tape and time cost money, and so did flubs that wasted either. This proved to be beneficial for multiple reasons.
For one, musicians had to come into the studio on their A-game. There was no easy comping or autotune to disguise a bad performance. Besides the minor assistance provided by good gear and proper mic placement, what the musician had to give was more or less what the record got.
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But tracking to tape had another, more comical benefit: the inclusion of musical bloopers. When everyone in the studio was tracking live, one person’s mistake on tape meant everyone had to start over. Sometimes, leaving the blooper in was the better option. And sometimes, like with these four examples from the 1960s and 70s, the musical blooper made it better.
“Don’t Worry” by Marty Robbins
When Marty Robbins and his band began tracking his 1961 song, “Don’t Worry,” the live feed in the studio was different from what the engineers were hearing in the control room. So, when Robbins’ guitarist, Grady Martin, went to deliver his twangy solo mid-song, he had no way of knowing that a blown transformer had caused his clean tone to turn into a full-on buzz.
His guitar tone is so buzzy, in fact, that producer Don Law joked they should keep the take and bill it as “Marty Robbins and his Bumblebees.” Robbins, ever the showman, replied, “No, no. I’ll make a deal with you. We’ll leave it in there, but don’t put Marty Robbins and the Bumblers on it.” So, they kept it, and we’d argue that the utterly nasty fuzz tone of Martin’s malfunctioning guitar amp makes the otherwise saccharine country ditty that much better.
“Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” by Bob Dylan
Some musicians like to keep their arrangements airtight; others prefer a loosey-goosey approach. Bob Dylan has built his entire career riding somewhere in the middle. There are few better examples than Dylan’s 1965 track “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream.” The song begins like many Dylan songs typically do: rhythmic strumming guitar and Dylan’s half-spoken vocals.
But before the ten-second mark, the trademark musical bloopers occur. Both Dylan and his producer, Tom Wilson, can be heard laughing as they both realized they were listening to a previous, acoustic-only version of the track Dylan had recorded a couple of months earlier. In between near-breathless laughs, Wilson says, “Wait a minute now, man. Okay, take two.” The rest of the eleven-verse song continues, this time bolstered by a full band.
“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” by the Beatles
Despite most of the Beatles citing “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” as one of their least favorite songs they ever recorded, there is a passing musical blooper in the second verse that brings a moment of levity in the goofy but intrinsically dark song off Abbey Road. When Paul McCartney delivers the line, writing 50 times I must not be so, oh, oh, oh, he stifles an audible laugh on the word “writing,” pulling back the curtain into the Abbey Road studio.
Several stories have circulated about what McCartney might have been laughing at. Some suggest John Lennon mooned McCartney in the studio (McCartney had just gotten done singing the line, so he waits behind). Others say Lennon was only making faces. Another explanation is simply that McCartney was creatively pointing out the absurdity of the song’s murderous antagonist and the silliness of his classroom punishment. Either way, it brings a whole new character to the divisive Fab Four track.
“Eclipse” by Pink Floyd
Speaking of the Beatles…there is no small shortage of hidden gems, meanings, and unintentional film synchronization in Pink Floyd’s 1973 smash hit, Dark Side of the Moon. But unless you’re cranking the album through studio headphones, there’s a good chance you’d miss the musical blooper that occurs in the album’s final moments on the outro to “Eclipse.” In those few soft seconds, you can faintly hear an orchestral snippet of the Fab Four’s “Ticket to Ride” being played in the background.
The musical blooper is a product of overlapping studio schedules. Pink Floyd was recording Dark Side of the Moon at the same time that the Hollyridge Strings ensemble was tracking an instrumental version of the Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride.” Interestingly, one Beatle—Paul McCartney—almost found himself on that very Pink Floyd album had Roger Waters not found McCartney’s answers so performative.
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