‘Without a Word’, Word By Word
Hank talks us through select tracks from the new album
don’t Get around Much anyMore
Gary Taylor and my son Ben played rhythm guitar. Gary plays in my Gypsy jazz quartet, so he is good with the old ‘la pompe’. And although it wasn’t exactly a Django thing, it was leaning towards that at times. It was a sort of feel that I’d heard on Madeleine Peyroux’s first album, and I just always loved this track. Instead of doing it as a straight swing tune it’s got a slightly bluesy melody and we thought maybe it could work with this feel. So we kicked it around and it felt good. Then at the guitar solo, I just wanted to do something slightly sleazy and jazzy-bluesy, and I just got this horrible sound on the amp, had several runs at it and that was the one I liked. I tried to keep that one as spontaneous as I could, because I thought it would suit the feel of the track.
Michelle
The guy who did the accordion, Nunzio Mondia, also plays in the Gypsy jazz quartet – a fabulous player – but we wanted to have that slightly French ‘musette’ sound to the accordion. He’s got several accordions and so blended two together for an interesting sound. I didn’t want to copy The Beatles’ version, but again, feel-wise, you think, ‘Well, that is the right feel for the song,’ so I didn’t want to mess around too much, just do something a little different. I love the major to minor stuff
in there. We all recognise the solo as part of that song and most people can almost sing it. But what I wanted to do was not play it as squarely as Paul did, but slightly syncopate it.
alFie
I listened to Cilla’s version to make sure I had the correct tune – and I didn’t [laughs]. So I had to correct a couple of the lines and also the phrasing – I was phrasing it differently to the way it was written. It didn’t sound as good. So I listened to Cilla’s so I could go, ‘Oh, this is how the tune works.’ Then, of course, you try to impart your own feel. I often listen to the vocal versions to get a bit of inspiration, particularly if it’s a really nice version. I believe this was the song of which Burt Bacharach was most proud. Although I’ve learned quite a bit from the original, I still want to end up with my version, and the way that I want to express it.
theMe FroM ‘poirot’
Ever since I heard the theme on the TV series, I thought, ‘Wow, that is a great little tune.’ Then when this album came up I said, ‘I think it will work on guitar.’ As we grow older and perhaps more experienced, we appreciate the more complex pieces and structures, harmonically, than we did when we were younger and a bit more blinkered in what we would listen to. In this case, I was simply choosing tunes that I really, really liked – didn’t matter how simple or how complicated – that I thought would work on the guitar and I thought I could do something with. For Poirot, we had this crazy idea of doing a key shift and going to this blues shuffle on the end. We did it pretty much in one take.
‘doctor Who’ theMe
On the intro I thought I’d try a bit of a joke with really wobbling the arm to make it sound slightly 50s spacey, but then the band started and we got into the tune. Again, ever since I heard this tune I’ve loved it as a piece of music. It was so different at the time, and obviously the fact it was done by the Radiophonic Workshop with all those oscillators, pre-synthesisers, and everything. When I said to Ben, ‘I’d like to have a go at it,’ we both thought, ‘This might not work.’ But we worked out a routine and Ben went off and
did the arrangement and I was happy with the way it came up, bearing in mind there’s not a great deal of tune. The original lasts way less than a minute, so there wasn’t much we could do with it unless we started to really extend and do some trick stuff. I still love it as a piece of music.
WonderFul World
We all remember Louis Armstrong’s version, and I listened to it again a few times just to remind myself. I couldn’t remember clearly the bridge, for example, and I have impressions of tunes sometimes in my mind and when I get back to it I go, ‘Oh, it’s not quite what I thought it was.’ So I listened to it to get the tune in my mind, and Ben and I are just playing around and we got this little feel going, like you’re lying on a beach in Hawaii or something. We’re sort of, ‘Right, let’s go in this direction, keep it really simple, very basic.’ It was just what we did, and I enjoyed it – it is a lovely little tune. And I like the way the acoustic rhythm is so compatible with the Strat. They seem to work together like toast and butter.
cry Me a river
The Julie London version was the one I originally heard and liked so much. Then when it came into my mind that it would work well on guitar, I thought, ‘Right, let’s have a listen to several versions.’ I listened to Julie London’s, a couple of Ella Fitzgerald ones, one with some lovely work with Joe Pass, and a couple of other versions, even Sam Cooke. But they all tended to do it as this torch-song thing. I didn’t want to approach it in that way, so Ben and I kicked it around having a different rhythmic approach, and we came up with quite a sparse arrangement. My only regret is that after establishing the melody – and I know there is one solo in it, on the second bridge – I could have been a little more adventurous in one of the verses, maybe the third verse. But then I thought, ‘No, I want to bring it right back to the tune and just stabilise it back to its simplicity.’ Ben was saying, ‘You’ve got to do a solo there.’ And I thought that overdriven sound, which gives you that ability to sustain a bit more, almost a sax-like approach to it, would be good as a completely different tonecolour change. I tried a few different
approaches, all of which were rubbish, and I suddenly just came up with that solo and, ‘Ooh,’ I thought, ‘that works.’
the Fool on the hill
Paul has come up with a lot of great tunes: Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby… There was no specific intent to not do any John songs, they were just two that came to mind that I thought would work well, guitar-wise. Bruce and I went to see them in the beginning of ’63 when Please Please Me was in the charts and they were supporting Chris Montez and Tommy Roe. They were third on the bill, but this record was up in the charts, and I was already familiar with Love Me Do. I loved the energy of the enthusiasm and, funny to think, go and see them in those days and no-one’s screaming… George just fitted in. There was nothing flash about it. But they worked as a unit and that is what a band is all about.
aMerica
When we were working it out, we managed to come up with 5/4s and all kind of 6/4s. Then I happened to be Googling the track and I got a link to something like ‘Chords for America’. I ducked in and I saw the chart and it was all in 3/4. So I went back to the original piece and counted through, and it is all in 3/4; it’s just the placing of the accents and how the tune hits. But we did add some 5/4s and 2/4s. We had the chorus twice, but the third time we put three bars of 5/4, then it goes back to 3/4. The original sounds ridiculously complex. It was hard to do. It’s one of those pieces I’ve always thought was fantastic – the whole of
West Side Story is sensational.
Will you still love Me toMorroW
When The Shirelles had their first hit with it, I thought ‘What a great song.’ So we’re messing around, trying to do something different, and we got this little feel going. It was only when we were putting an arrangement together and got to the middle, the instrumental section, that we thought, ‘This sounds a bit Paul Simon-like.’ Although in fairness to Paul Simon and all the other African musicians, they’d done it first.