I have to warn you: this song has
around 30 chords in it.
Thirty!
It's six time more chords,
than in Sultans Of Swing and 10 times
more, than in Six Blade Knife.
Seriously, Love Over Gold album is
home for epic songs, the longest
Mark's song ever—Telegraph Road and
the longest lyrics in his songs
ever—Industrial Disease are all here.
But maybe the title track is your favorite song?
Maybe it was your wedding song and you want
to play it on your own?
Give it a go and
don't be afraid of the amount of chords.
The structure is logical and even though
it's clearly a piano song, just like On Every Street,
it still works on a guitar and every chord
has its function.
Take a look at the chords,
how perfect the song is.
If it sounds beautiful, it will look beautiful.
So the first part starts on F/A. There's three ways
to play it.
Like that, like that and like that.
To Bb.
Then Gm7 (there's four grips possible).
To C, Gm7, F/A again, Bb again and the lick.
C bass is optional.
Then variation on the first four
chords starting with F. Gm7, Bb, C.
Then it's A7#5 (this is five) going to regular A7.
Bass is entirely optional.
To Dm, then quick C and Fsus4 to F.
One note difference.
I'm not going into too much of details about
the rhythm, I hope you get the idea of this
offbeat picking (1 and 2 AND 3 and 4 and).
Now this phrase is like the one that came before...
but ends with Bbmaj7 going to Bb6.
One note difference.
And yet again, just like
4 chords in the beginning, but going to F.
Very logical.
This lick is thumb-index-thumb.
Hit it as hard as possible.
And Dm followed by Dsus2.
One note difference again.
A little rake in the right
hand and a pull-off.
As fast as you can.
So, as you can see, the verse has a great deal
of copy and paste in it, very
similar parts—but different endings.
Now, pre-chorus is also looks harder on paper,
but in reality all it is is 5 chords, 4 of which
is the same thing.
Starting with Am/C (Am in D shape),
it's easy to go there through the previous chord.
Two fingers stays the same.
To G/B and
going down the same road—F/A, Eb/G.
This is D/F# which appear almost in every song,
one of the most frequent guests for sure.
This thing just goes one fret up and back.
With open D. To rather dramatic ending through
D7/A resolving to Gm.
Like a medieval piece.
This is Bbm, or Bbm6.
This is the pivot point
between two identical parts.
This time it goes to C, C/Bb and repeat
from the beginning.
I'll play it again just because it's so satisfying.
Before the chorus here's a clever idea from
the original recording—play regular 1st fret Bbm
(G bass is optional) and thenswitch to 6th.
Sounds perfect and leads to the chorus seamlessly.
Chorus is solid C for a while.
To Bbm6 straight from a couple of bars before.
Dm then, some random licks, quick Bb to C.
Of course this is the full harmony and Mark doesn't
play this Bb, but this is a crucial chord anyway.
And then all of a sudden—Ebmaj7.
Where did that come from?
But anyway, it leads to Gm7.
Then Bbm6 yet again,
A7#5 from the first part, and finally Dm7.
Then Mark hits you with this beast—it's like
F#7#9/C#.
It's [9, x, 8, 9, 10, x].
Then C13 [8, x, 8, 9, 10, x] going chromatically to C#/B.
An epic ending for an epic chorus and lyrically, the song.
And after all this complexity, going to solos over
the simple harmony is a relief: basically
Bbmaj7 going to C. And by the way the outro is
the basic harmony of the intro, too.
As for the solo itself, it's more like a
pre-written solo, not entirely improvised,
so just play or sing whatever comes to your mind.
And in the studio version three times
C chord goes into C/D.
I deliberately missed some chord variations,
like this Bbsus2 and Gm7 with the 7th on top,
because these are awkward to play and doesn't
sound good on a guitar (to me).
And the most important thing—from all of the songs
I covered here, if you sum it all up, it's 27 songs,
there's only 1 truly new chord in this song,
so nothing is impossible, just do it little by little.
Thanks for watching.
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