Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!- The Beatles (Guitar Cover)

Thanks to ‪@MichaelSokil‬ for lending his Rickenbacker 320B!

Kansas City was originally recorded by Wilbert Harrison. Then Little Richard added the Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey section to the end and had a bigger hit with it. The Beatles started covering it in Hamburg in 1961

The studio version was released on Beatles For Sale, and was recorded on October 18, 1964. John played rhythm guitar on his Rickenbacker 325, and George played lead on his Gretsch Tennessean
Both John and George plugged into Vox AC-100 amps and George's tone had some slight amp distortion

I'm using my 1967 Gretsch Tennessean and Michael's 1982 Rickenbacker 320B. Both guitars are plugged into my Vox AC-30C2X and mic'd with a Neumann condenser. I used my Boss GE-7 equalizer pedal on the Tennessean part, to just tweak my midrange to be closer to the record

I covered this song on my channel in 2021, just doing the George part on my Tennessean. I didn't have my Vox AC-30 yet and some of the chord shapes are wrong-
   • Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey!- The Beatl...  

I studied the only footage of The Beatles performing this song live- on Shindig in October 1964. This helped me determine that George played the opening riff on the open strings, and that he used an interesting chord shape with his pinky on the A-string for G7 (and C7, D7) X5343X
   • The Beatles - Shindig (1964, Remastered)  

INTERESTING NOTES:
0:00 George plays the opening riff on the open D and G strings
0:03 John plays a C9 while George plays XX53XX
0:05 George hammers-on 3rd to 4th frets of G-string
0:08 John hits a D6 chord. George switches to the middle position
0:23 George plays a different stacatto rhythm here on D7. He uses this new rhythm more towards the end of the song
0:51 George switches to the bridge pickup for the solo
1:11 George slides up from F-sharp to G on the D-string for the end of the solo, then switches back to the middle position
1:14 John enters on G before the downbeat
1:34 John ends the beat on a D7, while George plays his pinky G7 chord X5343X
1:39 John emphasizes the upbeats on the high-E string here
1:56 John strums fast up and down 16ths on D7, while George plays a quick D7 then chromatic C to D
1:58 George plays double stop licks on the A, D and G strings mostly
2:18 John plays quick rhythmic up-downs on D7

GEAR:
1982 Rickenbacker 320B
1967 Gretsch 6119 Tennessean
Vox AC-30C2X
Boss GE-7 (Analogman Modded)
Neumann TLM-103

#thebeatles #guitarcover #rickenbacker