"You Told Me"

When I listened to the super deluxe edition of Headquarters a couple months ago, I felt that there was something ambiguous in the line "All these things you said you said sincerely" in "You Told Me."  I finally sorted out what it is.

The major difference is whether the first "you said" is part of a relative clause or not.  Rephrased in different ways, the line could mean either "All these things, which you said, you said sincerely" or "All these things you claimed that you said sincerely" (uninverted:  "You claimed that you said all these things sincerely").  In the first, the narrator affirms that the things were said sincerely; in the second, he seems dubious of the sincerity.

Headquarters

A couple days ago, I was writing out notation for what I know of the bass part of "Early Morning Blues and Greens."  (And, of course, while doing so, I found that I had some errors in my recording.)  Because I was already at the Headquarters album in my music collection, I tried figuring out some of the bass part for "You Told Me."  I'd figured out a bit of it before, but not to a high enough degree of accuracy.  (And on a different occasion, I figured out the chords, but I didn't feel they were worth posting about on their own.)  In any case, I realized that - for large sections - the bass parts for "You Told Me" and "Early Morning Blues and Greens" have the same rhythm:

I just put the notes on the middle line so that they're centered; the rhythm is what's relevant here, not the pitch.

It's not a very common rhythm (I'm pretty sure I haven't run across this rhythm in any other bass parts, and there seem to be some pretty common rhythms in bass parts), and it's a musical element that provides a bit of cohesion to the Headquarters album.  It's unsurprising then that - according to the liner notes of the deluxe edition of the album - both bass parts were played by Chip Douglas.