I love a good fade out! I was unable to locate an old Musician magazine interview with Ringo Starr on producer Richard Perry (or was it Perry himself, who would have talked about producing Ringo), but it had a great story about Perry, sitting among a cloud of pot smoke, riding the faders like a mad genius during the long fadeout of Carly Simon‘s “You’re So Vain.” Perry had a thing for fadeouts, thinking they were the key to a hit single. I don’t know if that’s still the case, but it got me thinking about a couple of my favorite fadeouts. Maybe you’ll start thinking about your favorite fadeouts as well.
Mott the Hoople‘s “All the Way from Memphis” contains one of the most exciting, slow-building fadeouts that I can’t hear often enough. The fadeout builds out of the song’s stomping rhythm, about 3:15 into it, with that squawking sax and a lead guitar that threatens to join in on the soloing and then finally does at the 4:10 mark. For the next 40 seconds, as the guitar takes over, the horns start chugging away in the background. In nearly 2 minutes of fadeout time, no one ever goes over the top; the chugging rhythm plays out as if for, well, a mighty long time after we can no longer hear what was being recorded.
I also like fadeouts that reference some other piece of music, the obvious one being The Beatles‘ “All You Need Is Love.” My favorite fadeout with a subtle reference, however, might be Jimi Hendrix‘s “Dolly Dagger,” which couples the intertwining aural equivalent of the optical illusion of a wheel spinning both forward and in reverse with the bass playing a nod to “Gimme Some Lovin'” on the final seconds of the fade.
What are your favorite fadeouts? And what makes a great fadeout for you?
I am a big believer in the importance of fadeouts. The key is to leave the listening audience wondering what happened after the faders droped to zero. Bringing in a new part right as the song fades, or having a drum/bass fill be the last thing is heard are cool ways of making that happen.
I like EC’s “Shabby Doll” or “Man Out of Time”
Best fadeout ever is “Marquee Moon,” because it makes the song seem an endless loop. Totally destroyed by the CD reissue that restored the real end.
I also love the shockingly quick fadeout to “Good Vibrations” and the exceptionally long, slow one to “Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy.”
The fadeout to the Pointed Sticks’ “Perfect Youth” is cool because if you listen REALLY closely you can hear the f-word at the last audible moment. I’m sure there are other examples of lyrics hidden in fadeouts?
That said, 99% of the time, I don’t like the fadeout at all, though it is always preferable to one of those drum-and-guitar-wank “big endings,” which to me instantly ruin any song, or the cliched 6th chord ending.
One fadeout I always notice is “Time of the season”. Rod Argent finishes a lick and then suddenly, voop! Song over…
Better than fadeouts are fade-ins.
I agree that the CD ending of “Marquee Moon” is yet one more injustice that some “completist” in the record industry has foisted upon listeners. The fadeout on the lp was perfect.
“Talking Tiger Mountain” reminds me of another favorite Eno fadeout of the “spinning wheel” variety: “Blank Frank”!
Now that I think about it, “Blank Frank” is not really a fadeout, is it? It just seems like it’s fading before it jumps into the next song. Strike that one!
On Ziggy Stardust the Soul Love fadeout into the first big honkin chord of Moonage Daydream
“Good Vibrations” has always bothered me. It’s like Brian gives us those rocking cellos and then the song is over. I could (and should) just loop that segent for about ten minutes and get the effect. I can’t he’p it!
TB
I was just listening to “I want You (She’s so Heavy)” on Breakfast w/ the Beatles this sunday, and admiring their decision NOT to go with a fadeout (the obvious / traditional thing to do).
But it made me think about how much i like a fadeout when it’s the right proportion for the song it carries to conclusion.
More Doors bashing: if only they had known the value of a good fade out early on. When I was in Junior high, my stoned, giggling friends and I would put that album on, and put the needle on the ending of each song. Whether it was a ballad, or a rocker, almost all of them end the exact same way: a john densmore drum roll, and then a symbol crash. you know…the “rock” ending. “Stupid doors” my friends and I would snicker.
Right now, the best example of a fade I can think of it as the end of the song “Houses of the Holy” where Page is soloing and the reverb on his guitar seems to increase a bit, and the guitar hangs around a little bit longer than the rest of the track.
Cool stuff.
There was this song by the band Everclear. It was a hit. I can’t remember what it was called, but it started out with this intro: “I am still living with your…ghost.” Anyway, the song kicks in and soings like it should have been the fade out. The rocking and singing sounds the classic rock fade out. However, it seems to be the entire song!
Van Halen had some groovy fade outs, too. Alex starts bashing the drums in the fade out of “Right Now.” I also like that guitar lick at the end of “Jump” which went on to become the intro and main riff of “Top of the World.”
TB
speaking of VH: the fade out of “one foot out the door,” which leaves us with a Page-esque flurry of sloppy notes, is somehow perfect for the song’s looseness, and the hasty rage the lyrics and melody express.
It’s like this: enter Van Halen, who kick a few things over somewhat angrily rather than playfully, and then exit van Halen.
What about the fadeout and then the re-fade IN?
Is “Helter Skelter” is the first to do that, other than songs that are “Part 2” b-sides of 45s?
I just remembered Soul Asylum’s “Passing sad Daydream” (from “While You Were Out”), which does that.
There’s also the Original Sins “Sally Kirkland,” which I think is my favorite example of this.
I like when the fadeout accomplishes something, like the “Marquee Moon” example mentioned above that makes it sound like the song is on that endless loop.
Two Beatles fadeouts that pull their own tricks:
The way “I Am The Walrus” fades out, with the orchestration seemingly growing more and more intense, while the chorus of voices splits off into two parts, Lennon starts making unintelligible noises and the King Lear samples return – it’s almost as if the song isn’t close to being done, it just happens to be done with you, the listener.
“Baby You’re A Rich Man” fades up and fades in with the clavoline playing, and the end result sounds to me like a caravan that you see/hear approaching and then moving on, almost like a musical doppler effect. The whole thing fits in nicely with the traveling the world aspect of the lyrics.
I’m not a big fan of the fake fadeout, although don’t the Beatles do it with “Hello, Goodbye” or some other Magical Mystery Tour song before “Helter Skelter”? I do love the fadeout/gimmicks at the end of “Hello, Goodbye” – one of Ringo’s shining moments thanks to the echo on this fills. As Alexmagic cites, “Baby You’re a Rich Man” is another great fade.
I never thought about “Good Vibrations” having a less-than-satisfying fadeout before, but I agree. It’s like Brian had to wrap it up when he heard Mom coming back from the grocery store.
Dukes of Stratosphear stuff has fade outs with a track or two coming back, Mole From the Ministry, What In The World, I believe. That’s the Magical Mystery working.
One fake fade-out I enjoy is the Buzzcock’s fade-out fake out on “Our Everything”, in which a fade out from a louder point is abruptly tacked on to the fade out.
I love the reverb drenched outro to “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” Now that there’s a song, ladies and gents! That riff! It’s sublime. I don’t care of it is some inverted Beatles tune. It rocks. Go, Nez,go!
TB
hellow good bye doesn’t fade back in.
they stop on the word “hellow-ow-ow…” and then come back in with “hey-bah…hey-bah-lo-ha…” or whatever the eff they sing there. and then they fade from that. but it doesn’t fade back in.
i can’t think of another MMT song that has a fakeout…although it DOES take “strawberry fields” a long time to wind down, and it seems like it comes back in after it’s over. but that’s not because they’re bringing the faders back up after having lowered they volume.
i agree, though: not a huge fan of the fade-back-in. i like the examples i cited, though.
there’s also a keyboard exhale at the end of “thank you” by zeppelin that feels like a fade-back-in.
and “over the hills and far away” does something similar. you think it’s over, but JPJ is back there noodling quietly on the keyboards, and then it gets loud again.
ahhh…and speaking of the buzzcocks, how about the monolothic fade in “I Believe”?
“there is…no…love…in…this…world…eh…nee…MOOOOOOOORRRR….”
over and over and over.
I got your back on that Monkees tune, I believe it’s the only one where Hrrundi has let me sing a solo part on in our various band recordings. I think fadeouts are the RULE in those Monkee singles, like The Girl I Knew Somewhere has that little snare roll in the fadeout that’s just cool.
alex, where you say that “baby you’re a rich man” fades up and in, do you mean at the beginning of the song? cuz it most certainly doesn’t.
it grows in intensity, but it has a clear first note.
you should record a version they way you described it, though. i like it!
The fade out-fade in is mostly played out, much like the hidden track on a CD, which was the fade out-fade in of the whole CD era.
The Beatles ones still work. I also the fade out-fade in of Roxy Music’s “In Every Dream Home a Heartache.” Really helps increase the creepiness of that song.
re. the Beatles “ones” (plural).
we’ve only come up with one: Helter Skelter. what are the others?
for a device that none of us think works very well, we sure are coming up with alot of examples we like.
I always like ” The Damage You’ve Done” by Tom Petty that fades IN. I feel like I am walking around the corner to see a band just as they are getting going (although there may have been a bad start, since it was self produced)
Bands that self produce go for the crash ending (the live ending) and producers tend to go for the cleaner fade out.
I am doing final mixes of my brother’s CD tonight, I have a 4 minute song that needs a fade out at about 3:15…should I go for the ridiculously long fadeout (45 second wind-down? ..especially since it is the last song and the longest by a good minute. Is the fade out…fade in too kitschy?
I may present both versions to the townspeople (who would then get credit as “co-producer” on this track????
do it, Jungleland. post them!
the fadeoutfadein is hit or miss.
go with your gut.
Sat, you’re right, I had it in my head that the clavoline faded up right at the beginning when the bass hits, but it doesn’t start up until a few seconds in (and probably isn’t even fading up anyway).
Isn’t the ultimate fadeout/fadein/fadeout the one on Suspicious Minds? There’s another full minute of chorus repeats after it fades back in.
In general I’m not that big a fan of fadeouts. For a while there really long repetitive fadeouts like the one at the end of Surf’s Up were a trend, the idea being that you put so many parts into a deep mix that you want to keep listening. I always thought that Spiritualized’s whole MO was making that kind of thing into the whole song.
Here’s a great but very obscure fadeout: Matthew Fisher’s I’ll Be There, where for two minutes he repeats the chorus more and more desperately, with more and more echo and reverb, and then the music is interrupted by a recording of a huge tree being felled, with its crash echoing through the forest. The end.
alex: i still like your idea for ‘baby you’re a rich man’ better than the real thing!
BigSteve: you probably know this, but just in case you don’t, it’s really Spacemen 3, Spiritualized’s progenitor, who pioneered the approach you describe above.
it’s interesting to me that you, someone with a more traditional musical background (but of course with VERY wide-ranging tastes) hear that as making the long fade into the whole song. A friend of mine who cut his teeth on punk rock (and nothing but), once described their approach to me as “making a whole song out of the beginning of a song, before it kicks in.”
Don’t know what the different interpretations mean, but I can hear what both of you mean. Either way, it’s like song stasis. He’s waiting for it to leave from its beginning, and you think it’s a prolonged ending.
But “Suspicious Minds” isn’t what I meant by a “fadeout / re-fade-in. It’s more like a fake fadeout. It gets noticeably quieter at 3.30, but it doesn’t come close to fading all the way out, the way “Helter Skelter” and the other examples I’ve named above do. Those songs go to *complete silence.* And that’s what I had in mind when I brought it up.
I’ll bet the fade on Suspicious Minds was more utilitarian: a user friendly cue for the DJ’s on conservative top 40 stations to start their manual fade there it if they were antsy or uncomfortable about the 4.32 running time.
I’ve never heard the Matthew Fisher song you describe, but if the tree crash interrupts the music, how is a a fade?
I’ve actually never heard Spaceman 3, but I agree with what you say about stasis. Even if you slowly add and subtract different elements, as Aphex Twin does on the Selected Ambient Works, the stasis is still in effect. When you think about it, stasis in music is quite a trick, since music by its very nature goes forward in time.
The Matthew Fisher track is a fadeout, because the listener assumes the music will fadeout since that’s the way those repetitive codas generally end, and then the sound of the tree falling fades out as it echoes through the forest.
Maybe that radio theory of Suspicious Minds is correct. I always pictured it as The King, who always recorded live, no overdubs, seeing the engineers fading out the track on the mixing desk and motioning to them to bring the faders back up because the groove was still working. That’s my fantasy of how it worked anyway.
I’m blanking on an example, but I like when musicians in the studio ‘manually’ fadeout, in other words, just play more and more softly until they stop, rather than having the engineer do it after the fact.
BigSteve, you might like Spacemen 3’s “Perfect Prescription.” At any rate, it’s where you should start if you’re interested. In general, they’re even more static (less dynamic, much more monotonous / trance-inducing) than Spiritualized. But that album’s the blueprint.
I think your elvis-in-the-groove “fantasy” is way cooler than my utilitarian-conservative-top-40 dj theory.
oh…shit..there’s a booker t. song that does the “manual” fadeout. i can’t remember which one it is now. it’s not “let’s go get stoned,” but that one does get awfully quiet before the pause, and the last chord blast. it’s an uptempo number based on a riff, not chords…maybe it’s “chinese checkers.”
it must be time to put discs 1 and 2 from the box set back on the iPhone. i had burned out on it for awhile, but lately, i find myself tinkering around with cropper riffs, so i’ve clearly got the itch.
sidelight question: what percentage of booker t. and the mg’s catalog is comprised of tunes that lots of soul jazz combos across america in the 50s / 60s played in strip clubs while the balloons popped and the feather-fans teased?
i think r.e.m. also used to do a manual fadeout some time around the “fables” >>> “lifes rich pageant” era. again, i can’t remember which song.
That kick-drum beat on Bruce Springsteen’s Racing in the Streets always gives me chills. It just comes out of the darkness and fog and seems to belong there. Beautiful in the long slow fade out.
It was actually one of Presley’s personal pizza deliverymen – he had two, one on call at the pizza shop and one at the studio to return the empty boxes to be refilled at the store for “that whole, uh… recyculation thing” Elvis had read about somewhere – who told the engineers to fade back up. Elvis had given strict instructions to always heed the advice of his pizza guys “‘cuz at least they know what I need, man.”
I always dug the fade in on The Lyres’ “Help You, Ann”.
Ditto w/bobbybittman on “Help You Ann”, which I feel was the best song of the ’80s.
A fadout that I like is the Chocolate Watchbands “Let’s Talk About Girls” where the guitar sizzles like bacon till the end.