Originally Posted by
Pippinwhite
I've got pretty decent on-ear, noise canceling headphones, and very good ears, and I swear I couldn't hear it, even though I had the volume up LOUD. Full disclosure: I was listening to the remastered version on Spotify. I don't have it on vinyl (boo!). You may not be able to pick it up EXCEPT on vinyl.
Having said that, it doesn't mean it's NOT on the studio track, buried down deep in an overdub somewhere. And that may be the only way you can really hear it, is if you have the knowledge and software to isolate individual tracks and hear each one.
We're talking analog masters here, not digital, so at some point, each track existed as an individual, physical reel of tape (again, sound/recording geeks, please correct me if I'm wrong). All the tracks were then layered over each other and mixed on to the master tape. Brian May from Queen has a fascinating story about how this was accomplished for "Bohemian Rhapsody." He said there were so many overdubs to create the desired effects, and the master tape had been run through the machine so many times, you could literally see through it!!
Soooo, it wouldn't surprise me if someone said, "Hey! Let's get a bunch of people in here and have them sing the chorus! Wouldn't that be cool!" I mean, the Beatles had their friends in the studio, marching around, dragging chains and honking bicycle horns during "Yellow Submarine." So, it's not unheard of. It's probably 20-30 people, maybe as many as 40, but to me, it doesn't sound like any more than that. It does sound like they're singing in a tunnel, with all the echo, but that may be a microphone effect.
In any case, they may have mixed it in with that verse, to suggest all the "voices calling", then later on, decided they didn't like it that well, and overdubbed it so it wasn't audible. It was easier to do that than it was to get rid of it completely, since again, we're working with analog, not digital. Sort of like covering up a bad tattoo instead of getting it removed altogether.
So it's very possible to do that in the studio, and not have it be audible to anyone who's not taking the song apart, track by track. Just my two cents' worth. It's also an interesting bit of Eagles' ephemera.
Thanks for posting the track, YEF!!