The one reason I'd say it's still somewhat different is the fact that these are the chorus's chords as well. HAND's chorus was i VI III VII, this one is i III VI VII. I don't see BJ writing a chorus vocal melody around a riff rather than the other way around.

I found the demo (it's on YT, didn't know it was so easy to find) and it's basically the same melody. Shanks started producing after they had to rewrite/discard what was almost a whole album right?

Bad memory here, would appreciate some help ;)

For HAND? No Shanks was there from day 1

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Really? I thought he was brought precisely to rework on the album. Thanks for the info.

Then it still begs the question, is it possible that he wrote the riff/had a big contribution on it?

I hear many say that Richie's contribution has disminished with each album, but I understood that he just got very lazy and the quality of the output was basically meh, but still all the heavy duty was on him like coming up with the solos, riffs, the main melodies... that sort of stuff. I even didn't know Shanks played guitars until BB (I haven't been paying much attention to the band since HAND, I have to admit it)

I guess (and I hope) Richie was very much involved at least until TC. So many say that his work could have been just anyone given the increasing poor guitars in almost every song, but I find it very hard to believe he would act like a session player and just swing by for the recordings. That would be such a bummer!

Anyway, even if his playing has been subpar for many years for whatever reason (and I have to admit that it's obvious even to anyone without musical ear), it's still Richie so to me his absence will always be present. I will always miss him because he added more than guitars, so if I didn't answer the OP question before, yes, I hear the absence.

That doesn't make sense, he cowrote every song on The Circle. Also Rick Parashar was brought in to produce the 4 new Hand tracks.

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That's news to me... I'm not sure that is true

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Its not. The first track for the album was written WITH Shanks.

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