Red Rover
 

I've got a few things to say/questions about this song. First of all, I love it. One of my favourite Lindsey tracks now. To me it sounds very sad and the lyrics seem so tragic. The "anyone at all..." part just gets a big reaction from me, possibly because of the intensity of it.

But the lyrics... what are they about? I had never really analysed them but to me it always seemed some sort of tragedy, maybe about someone dying or something. Like I say, I never really studied them so I'm not sure. On the Soundstage DVD Lindsey says it's a song about how there might be gods experimenting on the human race and thinking it's all gone wrong. I can't see any way that this connects to the lyrics. Anyone have any ideas or thought? It has me baffled :shrug:

Last of all, any guitarists out there be able to help me work out what he's playing as the low melody (i.e. with his thumb) at the part that starts "Anyone at all..." in the Soundstage version? Just the first couple of bars of this section to get me going, please :D (I'm working with Db Gb Db Fb Bb Db tuning)

Cheers

I disliked it at first, but it's grown on me quite nicely.:nod:

I think Lindsey said he wrote this while thinking about God looking down on earth and seeing that the "experiment" wasn't going so well.

EDIT:Ah. You said that. Well, anyway. Did anyone notice that this part:

And I did hear what you said
Now I can go home

Sounds a lot like it says "And the lips you were kissing, night after night?" Or is it just me?

Erm... that is what he's singing. I never heard the "And I did hear..." thing. I just checked the SYW booklet to make sure and it is "And the lips you were kissing, night after night, all were bathed in blue, all bathed in white".

Thats weird, because almost every lyrics site has the first one listed. Okay then!

Yeah, when you mentioned those lyrics I thought "What part of the song is that in? I'll Google it" and the lyrics site I went to had the one's you'd listed, so I listened to the song again to make double sure. I'm pretty sure it's the "lips" version, but those lyric sites would cause a bit of confusion! :rolleyes:

Just because someone posted their version of the lyrics on the web doesn't actually mean they are the definative lyrics, Quite frankly, I'm amazed at how off some people are with regard to what they hear and interpret. The lyric sheets are included on that album... it doesn't take much effort to read them. On that note, whoever layed out the lyrics (on Say You Will) should be shot. So needlessly messy, with frustratingly odd line breaks.

Yeah, yeah...I've heard Lindsey's "gods" explanation, but to me this always sounded like another "got to get away from FM/Stevie" song. Essentially that the magic was gone and he needed to do his own thing before he got lost completly in the madness.

I love this song too.

I like the song alot, but I have always thought it was more suited to Lindsey solo than as Fleetwood Mac

"It's about gods, not God, but gods..."
 

Yes, Lindsey has said (I'll never forget Livia telling us about talking to Lindsey on a radio show about this song and the first time he told his gods story. LOL!!) he wrote it thinking about gods (like Zeus) looking down on earth and wondering if the world was going well and wanting to maybe pull the plug on mankind.

My 2nd favorite song of all time. I have my own interp on this song and it has to do with the death of Lindsey's father. It also reminds me of my grandfather and how his death affected my family and especially my grandmother.

I think it's about life & death & Rutheda & Greg & children & all sorts of themes jumbled up into one big aching desire to break through.

(Red Rover, Red Rover, send Lindsey over)

The studio version of Red Rover is played in open G (D-G-D-G-B-D) with a capo on the 3rd fret, and the live version is played in open G tuned down a half-step (Db-Gb-Db-Gb-Bb-Db).

I'm not sure exactly how it's played, I've always had trouble with this one.

The tuning you had, by the way, is the tuning for the live version of Say Goodbye. :cool:

Aside from the guitar arrangement--which seems complicated enough--there is the not small matter of the complexity of the meter of this piece. I'm not really sure what's going on in terms of beats to the measure, but either it's an unusual number (like a 5 or a 9) or there is something bizarrely syncopated between a more standard meter & the placement of the lead vocal line against that meter. When you listen to the song casually, it's hard to get the feel of the beat--it doesn't fall where you expect it.

Hehe.
 

I think that was Lindsey's point. ;)

Which was pretty much the initial comments/complaints about "Go Your Own Way" back in 1976.

Dammit, and I thought you were in this thread to bait Gerald.:lol:

Well, yeah, it's deliberate. It's definitely a conscious part of the structure. The composer probably spent months blueprinting the meter & the interlocking ambiguity of the vocals against the beat, & the beat against the instrument arrangement.

He seems to have taught it quickly to the backup crew. Maybe some of it is prerecorded when they play it live. It's probably a case of: Once you have the "key," it's a more natural flow. The funky thing is that, when I'm just listening to it without that "key," it's unparsable. At least for me.

So basically, he forgot to add the track that holds the time sig together!:p

The way I'm working with it (I'm trying to make a sheet music/tab from it with correct notation etc.) I have it in 6/8 time. There is alot of syncopation going on in it though. The low melody of the is mostly (but not always) playing constant quavers or semi-quavers and then the high melody (played by the fingers) seem to fall between these "constant" beats alot of the time. So far I have the first two verse tabbed and the MIDI playback I'm getting with my program is very similar to the actual version so I'm pretty confident about it so far. My only main problem is hearing the low melody at the start of the bridge (where he starts singing "anyone at all..."). Not with the rhythm or syncopation, but with hearing the actual notes being played because they start to get buried in the mix of the song at this point.

Thanks! I was wondering why some of the chords I had worked out didn't look the same as Lindseys finger positions on the DVD:thumbsup:

Red Rover is genuis personified. My fav track off Say You Will. Amazing!!!

Red Rover is magnificent - that guitar work is incredible. I like the live version better than the just-a-little-sped-up album version, though. More natural.

Edit: The lyrics mistake comes from when we just had the demo, and it originated with me. I was the first to transcribe his demos and I'm also the first to admit my transcriptions are flawed. I'm surprised it hasn't been corrected on the sites that still have it the old way, especially since we now have lyrics sheets! But perhaps they just never got around to it - I know how that can be!

You have a demo of Red Rover?

Nancy, is your demo the GoS version of RR or a different version? If you have another version, I'd love to hear it!! :wavey:

Here's the GoS version (in m4a format) for anyone who doesn't already have it: http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.ph...94C0933B1C2267

Sorry, I got so used to calling them "demos" - but it was finished, just unreleased. Sorry for the confusion - I know how annoying it is when one uses misleading terms.

What a brilliant song this is. I can't believe they managed to pull it off live. Then again, this is Lindsey Buckingham we're dealing with ;) :nod:

I didn't like it at all at first but it did grow on me a lot. Definitely stands out on SYW.
Great to hear it a bit slower on the live version too. I like hearing what he's actually saying every once in a while ;) Same with Say Goodbye.

The song has a 12/8 time signature in sort of a 1-2-3-2-2-3-3-2-3-4-2-3 feel. Try counting along with it and you'll get a better idea.

6/8 I worked, so I have 2 bars for every one you would have, but yes, I agree essentially. 12/8, 6/8 :shrug: Not too much difference unless you start getting into nitty gritties. I basically chose to divide it into more bars because it makes it so much easier to make a tab of it on GP5 since you have more "reference points".