There is no evidance, either or. Besides the sound. Where is the evidance it was only acoustic?
If he uploaded it to youtube and it was whatever, I could belive that.
This was the second album of Van Halen. I don’t belive for a second it was just an audio recording.
You can even hear him say at the start “and again”, thats not just chucking something on the record, thats a good take from many, and there will no doubt be production on that.
You are welcome to imagine any scenario you like. I can only say that my ears, your ears and anyone else’s ears are the absolute bottom of any list of reliable sources.
I think at this point you should know that I don’t just SAY things. I try to gather all available credible evidence and I work from there to try to learn from Edward.
That credible evidence includes Edward’s own words, corroborated accounts from people who were there, photographic evidence, video evidence where available, etc. and I may have mentioned this before, but there are a few people who have heard all the outtakes from the entire catalog and that includes any direct to the board tracks that might exist. I know two of those people.
So when I say that the Ovation Country Artist hybrid nylon string guitar was used to record the track and that it was recorded with a mic and it wasn’t any other guitar and that there was no DI track from the plugged in piezo sound of that specific Ovation or indeed any other track other than the acoustic sound of that guitar tuned down almost a whole step with simple light compression and a bit of reverb, I’m not just saying it without any evidence.
To the best of my recollection from my conversation with one of those people who have heard and actually HAVE all of the alternate takes and isolated tracks from the entire catalog, the session for “Spanish Fly” was a difficult one. Troy’s excellent analysis of the track is really great and all the “airballs” and mistakes basically corroborate the story that I’ve been told about the recording of “Spanish Fly”. There were approximately 27 attempted takes of the piece. Between each take, Edward is heard to be cursing to himself and Alex is heard on the talk back speaker from the other side of the glass from Edward telling Ed several things…basically telling him he’s playing too fast, too slow, encouraging him to try again and again. And the outtakes from the session reveal that take 26 was THE take that we hear on the album. Edward did one additional take, but it wasn’t as good as the final album take. There were no edits, no electric guitars used and no, the electronics in the Ovation Country Artist were not used.
I don’t spread misinformation and I absolutely do not make statements based on my ears. So do with this what you will.
" There were approximately 27 attempted takes of the piece."
I’ve never heard that, where did you get this info? And please don’t think I’m disrepecting you. Not my intention.
That’s from Dweezil who has all of these alternate takes, but that was also confirmed by the other person I know that has also heard these takes. I don’t want to say who he is, but he is someone who was hired to work on remasters several years ago.
What are the chances the other takes with the studio chatter ever get released? Would be amazing to hear them……
In my opinion, the chances of that getting OFFICIALLY released are ZERO. But there is a definite possibility that it will be released unofficially on the Internet like the large cache of alternate takes and isolated tracks that were leaked about a year ago and the Donington ‘84 professionally shot footage. At this point, there isn’t much financial impetus for releasing any music or video for anyone. The music business is about touring now.
Yea, I was thinking something similar to the cool ‘78 stuff that got released earlier this year. So fun. Hope some maverick drops that stuff