Two really good bits and their echo.

The first really good bit is on ‘Gimme Shelter’ when Mick Jagger whoops off-mic in response to Merry Clayton breaking her voice in the ‘just a kiss away refrain’. It happens at 3:01 on this version:

The second really good bit is Paul McCartney’s cry of ‘yeeaay’ at the end of ‘Twist & Shout’, which happens on this video at about 2:40.

These are really good bits because they capture forever, on those silently unwinding spools of magnetic tape, the moment when someone felt the pure spontaneous joy of what they were doing. The former is particularly cool because it captures Jagger being so bowled over by the power of someone else’s performance that he forgets all his usual front-man insecurity*.

But it’s the end of ‘Twist and Shout’ which has the real significance. It was recorded at the end of The Beatles first and only day at Abbey Road to record Please Please Me, and Lennon was suffering from a bad cold, drinking honey and lemon all day for his throat. As a result George Martin decided to schedule ‘Twist and Shout’ for the end of the final session as a means of saving Lennon’s voice, because the vocal, as interpreted by Lennon, was a notorious throat-shredder.

When it finally came time to record ‘Twist and Shout’, after nine straight hours of recording, Lennon’s voice was nearly shot and they were almost out of studio time. Everyone knew they only had one chance to get their traditional show-stopper on record – and boy did they make it count.

So that’s what you hear in that ‘yeah’: McCartney exalting in his mate’s reckless, exhilarated tearing-up of his vocal chords combining with his own spontaneous amazement and delight at what they’ve managed to create – perhaps not merely in that song but over the whole course of that day. It’s a moment which not only nails the fundamental Lennon-McCartney dynamic of the affable McCartney encouraging Lennon’s misanthropic genius, but which also shows four guys on the brink of transforming their lives forever. Finally, it’s a moment which captures the ageless, juvenile thrill of being four blokes in a band, a moment which was destined to be played and replayed in millions of little bedrooms by lonely kids needing to dream of a way out of their lives.

All of which brings us to this song, in which you can hear the compressed echo of all those hours kids like me spent playing those classic albums to death, listening to every riff and hiss and squeak for the hidden knowledge which would one day allow us to play like that.

* The horrible flip-side to the exhilaration of this moment is the rumour that Merry Clayton pushed her voice so hard during the session that she went home and miscarried; the Stones were never too far from tragedy.