Guitar Lessons by Patrick

Garage Bands in the 1960’s  ~ The Stopper Chord

My music mentor and I used to jokingly allege that the Beatles used one “weird” chord in just about every song they wrote…why? Our conjecture was that Lennon and McCartney wanted to keep garage bands from playing their tunes (and butchering them…), therefore, they added that one chord (or stopper) the average guitarist might not figure out.

Keep in mind that back in the day there was no Chordie.com, Ultimate-Guitar or Tabcrawler to learn songs from. We had to buy the 45 (no that’s not a gun) and play it over and over and over and over attempting to figure out the chords, riffs, licks, and such. Then came that stopper chord we could never quite figure out. Let’s see, it’s not quite a seventh chord, not a ninth, not a minor…what the hell is it? Forget it! Let’s play Little Latin Loupe Lou…

If we were still hell-bent on learning the song we’d simply go find a really good band hoping they might play the song we were working on…we would watch or “pick off” the chords they were playing. Of course we’d act like we were just enjoying the music trying to pick up chicks…but we had hidden agendas.

So that’s my conspiracy theory as to why Lennon and McCartney put in at least one difficult chord in most of their songs. I think I can prove my theory—when reviewing Beatle songs on the sites mentioned above, I swear it is a rare find that a musician presents a song that is actually correct. I typically laugh at how these young rock stars think Beatle songs should be played.

One last thing…and this is what really cracks me up—I routinely see these guys enter “Guarantee 100% accurate” and they list so many mistakes it’s ridiculous. I mean at least they could figure out the right key, eh?

Patrick Antrim Sr.