Too Much Monkey Business- The Beatles (Live At The BBC Guitar Cover)

Thanks ‪@MichaelSokil‬ for lending me these guitars!

Too Much Monkey Business was written and recorded by Chuck Berry in 1956. The Beatles covered the song many times, starting in 1960 during their Hamburg days. But the most famous version was from September 3rd, 1963 for the BBC radio program Pop Go The Beatles. This live version appeared on their Live At The BBC compilation in 1994

It features a rare guitar solo from John Lennon on his Rickenbacker 325. To my ears, John is using the bridge pickup. It has a similar style to his other Chuck Berry-esque guitar solos, as heard on Long Tall Sally and You Can't Do That

George played rhythm guitar on his Gretsch Country Gentleman, most likely in the middle position. He does play some lead fills- at the end of each verse and during the outro

Both John and George plugged into their Vox AC-30 amps. John's tone has some slight crunch to it, so I drove my AC-30 a little harder

They downtuned their guitars to a slightly lower pitch, somewhere between G# and A. It’s still played in standard, with A chord shapes. But the overall pitch is lower than A440

I'm playing Michael's 1982 Rickenbacker 320B and his 2016 Gretsch Country Gentleman into my 2010's Vox AC-30C2X

INTERESTING NOTES:
0:06 John slides up to the 10th fret for D shuffle, but for the rest of the song plays D on the 5th fret of the A-string
0:08 George plays his pinky-stretching shuffles by hitting two strings at once with his pinky. Either A and D strings, or D and G
0:15 John plays D9 while George just plays Am. This happens every time in the song
0:40 George plays his A shuffle down on the 5th fret instead of 12th
0:48 John's guitar solo begins. He slides into an Am (XXX555)
0:54 John ends each phrase here on an open D string
1:37 George hits A instead of John. Then George alternates between A and D
2:04 George plays a lead riff to end the song. John slides up G, Ab, to A and they both end on an A bar chord

GEAR:
1982 Rickenbacker 320B
2016 Gretsch Chet Atkins Country Gentleman G6122-62 GE
Vox AC-30C2X
Neumann TLM-103

#thebeatles #gretsch #rickenbacker