THE INCREDIBLE RECORDING PROCESS OF GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING.

Track 11- Good Morning Good Morning: It’s somewhat unfortunate that “Good Morning Good Morning” is overlooked from being the inventive piece of psychedelic recording ingenuity that it was. Being the “Pepper” track with the most overdubs and “bounce downs,” the dour and somewhat depressing message of the lyrics is spruced up to make it an imaginatively energetic piece of art.

At the time of release it appears that the album was viewed as a whole and, therefore, this track was a distinctive element of the “Pepper” experience – hence it’s appearance at the beginning of the final Monkees episode “Mijacogeo” (aka “The Frodis Caper”) which first aired on March 25th, 1968. As time progressed, it became common practice to dissect the album track-by-track, identifying favorites and dismissing the less desirable. Hence, “A Day In The Life” has gone on to win the hearts of fans universally as the winning element of the album, while “Good Morning Good Morning” has declined dramatically in importance. But could this pure slice of Lennon ever be omitted as a non-essential ingredient of the “Pepper” album? I think not!

Sometime presumably in January of 1967, John recorded a home demo of “Good Morning Good Morning” in his home studio consisting of piano and vocals. The beats per measure were not parsed out like the finished version was, nor were the chord changes exactly the same. The words were worked out quite meticulously as in the finished product, however, and the switch in rhythm for the bridge (“everybody knows there’s nothing doing…”) is already in place.

John brought the song into the studio for the first time on February 8th, 1967, this being the second Lennon contribution to the “Sgt. Pepper” album after “A Day In The Life.” The group entered EMI Studio Two at 7 pm (or thereabouts) to concentrate solely on recording the rhythm track of “Good Morning,” the session described by engineer Geoff Emerick in his book “Here, There And Everywhere” as “a fairly straightforward rocker…that could have fit in with any Beatles album released to date.”

Much instruction from John must have been needed, so a good amount of time was undoubtedly spent working out the time signature changes and when exactly Ringo’s cymbal crashes, drum fills and rhythm changes were required, which he performed perfectly on the finished product as recorded on this day. Ringo actually played on a set with two bass drums in order to get the quick paced 16th note fills as heard periodically during the song. Other than Ringo on drums, the rhythm track consisted of John on electric rhythm guitar and Paul on bass, although he overdubbed a more perfected bass part a week later. No other guitar part is heard on this rhythm track, but a tambourine is heard, which leads us to believe that George rattled the tambourine as the only contribution from George on the song. No vocals were recorded as of yet, only off microphone instructions which did make it to tape and are barely audible on the version of the song appearing on the “Anthology 2” album. At the end of the rhythm track, as heard on “Anthology 2,” listen for both John and Paul saying “good morning.”

Eight takes of this rhythm track were recorded, the eighth being the best. With some disjointed but impressive drum fills from Ringo, this eighth take ends with a hearty cymbal crash which then ended the session at 2:15 am the next morning. The group all filed home for some needed rest to be ready to start recording another new song, “Fixing A Hole,” the next day.

Eight days later on February 16th, 1967, The Beatles were back in EMI Studios to continue work on “Good Morning Good Morning.” They convened in EMI Studio Three this time around, documents having them arriving at 7 pm to perform overdubs. John recorded his lead vocal for the first time, although this ultimately was felt it could be approved upon and didn’t make the final cut. However, Paul took to recording the finalized bass guitar part for the song, recorded with a good amount of reverb to give it a noticeable “wet” sound.

A rough mono mix of the song made by producer George Martin, Geoff Emerick and 2nd engineer Richard Lush with ADT (“artificial double tracking”) applied to John’s vocal, undoubtedly for John to take home to listen to what they had so far. With the four tracks of the tape filled, they then commenced to make two attempts of a reduction mix to leave space for more overdubs, the mixes numbered 9 and 10, the last being deemed “best.” Much deliberation on John’s part was needed to center his mind on just what the future overdubs would consist of. Geoff Emerick states that the song “sat on the shelf for the next three weeks while an indecisive Lennon made up his mind what kind of instrumentation he wanted to add.”

Only four days later, however, another mono mix of the song was deemed necessary to review the progress so far. This was done on February 20th, 1967 in the control room of EMI Studio Three by the same team of Martin, Emerick, and Lush. Perhaps John took the first demo home, and Paul wanted one too…or maybe they just forgot they already made one four days earlier. In any event, this was for demo purposes only since they were far from finished with the song. Both this and the previous mono mix were labeled as “remix 1,” which is not to be confused with the mono “remix 1” that was created when the song was complete. The production staff had a lot on their plate at that time, being that they were creating a masterpiece album. I guess we can forgive them for labeling the mixes incorrectly.

March 13th, 1967, or twenty-five days after the last recording session for the song, the group reconvened in EMI Studio Two to add an extensive overdub to “Good Morning Good Morning.” "For nearly a month, John had been ruminating about what kind of instrumentation he wanted,” relates Geoff Emerick. “He finally decided to add brass, but he was adamant that it mustn’t sound ‘ordinary,’ and he insisted that George Martin hire a horn section comprised of old Liverpool mates instead of the top-flight session musicians we had been using. The group, who called themselves Sounds Incorporated, were nice enough blokes – actually, they were a lot of fun, which explained why Lennon liked them so much.” Paul explains: “When we came to record it we used ‘Sounds Incorporated’ to do a big sax thing; they were friends of our who had been on tour with us.” Previous to this, George Martin had worked up a score for the horns to play “translated from John’s guidance on guitar,” according to Bruce Spizer’s book “The Beatles’ Story On Capitol Records – Part Two.”

“Sounds Incorporated,” which was shortened to “Sounds Inc.” by the time of this session, had quite a long history with The Beatles. This instrumental group was formed in Dartford, Kent in 1961 and was recruited to be Gene Vincent’s backing band in April of that year, holding that gig for over two years. In this capacity, they first met The Beatles while playing The Star Club in Hamburg in April of 1962, Brian Epstein eventually becoming their manager in 1963. This led to the group becoming one of The Beatles opening acts of their 1965 American tour. This history and they're getting along well with John, led the brass members of “Sounds Inc.,” some from the original lineup, to get the session booking for “Good Morning Good Morning.”

Six brass players were involved in this session, three saxophonists, two trombonists and one French horn player. Two of the sax players were holdovers from the original group and therefore were known by John, namely Barrie Cameron and Alan Holmes. The third sax man on the session was David Glyde. As for the trombone players, one was John Lee, but there is some mystery to the identity of the second player. Some sources identify this musician as Griff West, while Mark Lewisohn’s book “The Beatles Recording Sessions” identifies his name as A.N. Other but, since this doesn't match any other source, it can easily be assumed to be a mistaken reference to “another” trombonist. As for the French horn player, the same book identifies him as “Tom someone – no one can recall his surname!”

The session on this day was said to begin at 7 pm. “We were there for about six hours,” states sax player Alan Holmes. “The first three hours we had refreshments and The Beatles played us the completed songs for the new L.P.” Geoff Emerick elaborates: “First it was time for a little party. The Beatles had been cloistered in the studio for so long, they were clearly suffering from cabin fever. In addition, few people outside of our small inner circle had heard any of the ‘Pepper’ tracks, so as everyone sat downstairs catching up with one another and reminisced about old times, we were asked to play mixes of the completed tracks through the studio speakers.”

“This went on for a couple of hours, with George Martin growing increasing annoyed. He felt we were in the studio to work, and he was cognizant of the money EMI was spending on studio time; after all, he had to work to a budget. He tolerated it for as long as he could before wandering down into the studio and saying, diplomatically, ‘We should be moving along now, don’t you think?’ What else could the man say? He never wanted to offend anyone, but, as producer, he was answerable to EMI, so he was caught in the middle. The Beatles, on the other hand, couldn’t have cared less about the amount of time being spent on the record.”

“While George was busy being aggravated, I was studying the expressions of the Sounds Incorporated guys, trying to measure their reactions to the tracks we were playing for them. They were mesmerized! We knew that what we had been doing was exceptional, but it was gratifying to see that kind of response from people fresh to the project. From that point on, every time anyone came to visit The Beatles on a session, Richard (Lush) and I hoped that we would be asked to play back something that was completed, or in progress, not just because we loved hearing the tracks, but because we enjoyed seeing the stunned looks on their faces.”

Once recording finally got under way, John exerted his authority in a very insistent way. Second engineer Richard Lush recalls: “They spent a long time doing the overdub, about three hours or maybe longer, but John Lennon thought it sounded too straight. So, we ended up flanging, limiting and compressing it, anything to make it sound, unlike brass playing. It was typical John Lennon – he just wanted it to sound weird.”

Geoff Emerick adds: “He was adamant that it mustn’t sound ‘ordinary’…it took quite a long time to get a good take out of them because, throughout the session, John kept complaining that they were playing too ‘straight’ – he had a real bee in his bonnet about that. In the end, to satisfy Lennon’s demand that I take a different sonic approach, I shoved the mics right down the bells of the saxes and screwed the sound up with limiters and a healthy dose of effects like flanging and ADT; we pretty much used every piece of equipment at hand.” At 2:30 am the next morning, everyone filed out of EMI Studios for the night, apparently satisfied with the results of the day.

However, the song was far from complete. While attention was given to various other “Pepper” tracks, they returned to “Good Morning Good Morning” fifteen days later, on March 28th, 1967 in EMI Studio Two. The first decision was to redo John’s lead vocals, which they did first shortly after their arrival at 7 pm (or thereabouts). This filled the four-track tape, so they made a tape reduction of ‘take 10’ which reduced all of the elements to two tracks, this now being called ‘take 11.’

The next point of business was what would fill the gap in the solo section of the song. “Paul overdubbed a lead guitar part on the song,” Emerick explains, “which didn’t do anything to improve George Harrison’s mood. It seemed to me as if George was aggrieved a lot of the time…with good reason: Paul was playing a lot of his leads, and he had precious little to do. In addition, the one song he’d brought to the album had been rejected. (“Only A Northern Song.”) As we got into our fourth and fifth month of recording, the preparatory meetings at Paul’s house started to trail off, so the four Beatles began arriving at Abbey Road separately. Paul was almost always the first to come in, since he lived nearby, and George Harrison was often the last, so if Paul got an idea for a guitar part and Harrison wasn’t around, he’d sometimes say, ‘Well, let’s get on with it – I’ll just play the part myself.’”

So, Paul performed the blistering guitar solo on this song, even double-tracking it at a strategic place just before the final verse. Also, overdubbed on this day was backing vocals by John and Paul, which include the “good morning, good morning” harmonies and John harmonizing with himself during the latter half of the song. Since George didn’t arrive in time to perform the guitar solo and also didn’t make it for the backing vocals, one wonders if he made it in at all that day.

“It was in the middle of the night,” Geoff Emerick recalls about the session at that point, “and I thought we were about to knock things on the head, but instead he came up to the control room and initiated a long conversation with me. Apparently, he had been fretting about how to end the song – a simple fadeout was too ‘normal’ for him, so he had come up with a concept. The idea was that as the music was fading away, the sounds of various animals would be heard.” In the film “The Making Of Sgt. Pepper,” George Martin explains: “John wanted to finish this song with a collection of animal noises, starting off with a cock, identifying with the Kellogg’s commercial, and then each animal was capable of either devouring or frightening the one before it. I mean, we had a whole string of them.”

Emerick continues: “John had actually thought this through to the extent that he’d written down a list of the animals he wanted on there, in order. I loved the idea, and despite the late hour, Richard was sent off to the EMI sound effects library to fetch the appropriate tapes. We sat up with John until near dawn dubbing them on, George Martin and the others having long gone home. True, the premise kind of breaks down at the end – there’s a sheep chasing a horse and a cow chasing a hen – but it’s all in good fun.”

There were two tapes from the EMI collection used: “Volume 35: Animals and Bees” for the lion, elephant, dog, sheep, cow and cat, and “Volume 57: Fox-hunt” for the dogs chasing the fox, the bugle and the galloping horses. The order of the animal effects are cock, cat, dog, horse, sheep, lion, elephant, dogs chasing a fox with horses galloping, cow and finally a hen.

The majority of the animal sound effects were assembled on this day but were not overdubbed onto the song until later. With some overdubs to “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!” is performed at some point during this day as well, the doors of EMI Studio Two were finally closed at 4:45 am the next morning.

Later that day, March 29th, 1967, the group reassembled in EMI Studio Two sometime after 7 pm to finish off “Good Morning Good Morning” as well as begin a new song, this being “With A Little Help From My Friends.” The first order of business was to add a few more animal noises to complete the collage as we’ve come to know it, this then being overdubbed onto take 11. This completed “Good Morning Good Morning” for good, the EMI staff then turning to overdub the elaborate organ sound effects onto “Mr. Kite!” before work on Ringo’s vocal contribution to the album began. By 5:45 am the following morning, the session was finally complete.

With the song now finally done, a proper mono mix, as well as stereo mix, could be attempted on “Good Morning Good Morning,” this happening on April 6th, 1967 in the control room of EMI Studio Two from 7 pm to 1 am the following day. The same team of Martin, Emerick, and Lush worked hard to get both mixes done, the mono being tackled first. Two mono mixes were produced, the second being deemed ‘best’ for the time being.

Then they began work on the stereo mix. Geoff Emerick explains the mixing process for the song: “’Good Morning Good Morning’ ended up with the dubious distinction of being the ‘Pepper’ track with the largest number of overdubs, hence the most four-to-four reductions (premixes bounced between tape machines in order to open up new tracks). Despite that, it still sounds good, albeit a bit strident due to all the compensatory top end we had to add during mixing. There’s a lot of ADT on John’s voice, and on Paul’s lead guitar – in one spot, there’s a huge ‘wow’ on the guitar where the effect almost makes it sound like the note was bent. One reason why our Automatic Double Tracking worked so well was that it had a sweep oscillator control that you could actually play like a musical instrument, allowing you to constantly vary the delay time in response to the performance.”

“During the mix,” Emerick continues, “I also enjoyed whacking the faders all the way up for Ringo’s huge tom hit during the stop time – so much so that the limiters nearly overloaded, but it definitely gets the listener’s attention! Add in the flanged brass, miked in an unorthodox way, and it’s all icing on the cake; take those effects off, and the recording doesn’t have the same magic. That song serves as a good example of how simple manipulation can improve a track sonically.”

One discovery during the creating of the stereo mix is explained by George Martin in his book “All You Need Is Ears”: “The order we had worked out for the album meant that that track was to be followed by a reprise of the ‘Sgt. Pepper’ song, and of course I was trying to make the whole thing flow. So imagine my delight when I discovered that the sound of a chicken clucking at the end of ‘Good Morning’ was remarkably like the guitar sound at the beginning of ‘Sgt. Pepper.’ I was able to cut and mix the two tracks in such a way that the one actually turned into the other. That was one of the luckiest edits one could ever get...Sgt. Pepper himself was breathing life into the project by this time.”

Rather than admitting to a ‘lucky edit’ as if by chance, Geoff Emerick remembers it differently. “No no, that was no accident,” Emerick relates. “We fully realized that the cluck matched the guitar. In fact, it wasn’t a perfect match, so we shifted the cluck up in time to match correctly…I didn’t even have to alter the pitch of the cluck with the use of vari-speed, though I did tighten up the gap between songs by cutting out a bit of tape…It was a fantastic little thing which will always stick in my mind.”

It took five attempts at this stereo mix to get a ‘keeper,’ remix 5 being the best. The original rhythm track is entirely panned to the left channel while the horns and backing “good morning” harmonies are entirely panned to the right, as is Paul’s double-tracked accentuated guitar riff just before the final verse begins. John’s lead and harmony vocals are centered in the mix, as is Paul’s bass and entire guitar solo. There is some variance in the placement of the animal effects, however, some being centered in the mix and others appearing on only the left or right channel. They obviously took great pains to create an interesting audio landscape on this track as with many of the “Sgt. Pepper” songs.

On April 19th, 1967, the same production team of Martin, Emerick, and Lush assembled in the control room of EMI Studio Two from 7 pm to 12:30 am to look at improving upon the mono mix of the song. Although they already viewed mono remix 2, as created on April 6th, as ‘best,’ they wanted it to work better as a segue into “Sgt. Pepper Reprise” as they had done on the stereo mix. They put in great pains to create this mono mix, fourteen attempts being made (numbered 10 to 23 for some reason).

The finished version is markedly different than the stereo which most are familiar with. First of all, Paul’s guitar solo gets pushed down in volume to allow the vocals “people running ‘round, it’s five o’clock” to be heard more prominently, and his guitar is treated to an extra dose of ADT just after the lyrics “Meet The Wife.” As for the song’s ending, the music fades earlier allowing for only nine repeats of the “good morning” vocal lines instead of ten on the stereo. The fox hunt segment at the end of the animal sound effects is six seconds shorter in mono which then is faded into the hen clucking, this not matching up well with the guitar note on “Sgt. Pepper Reprise” as had the stereo version. All in all, the mono version ends up being six seconds shorter than the stereo and doesn’t include the ‘lucky edit’ they achieved on the stereo mix after all. So much for the claim that the mono version of the “Sgt. Pepper” album is the superior version. Not in this case anyway!

One final stereo mix of the song was made especially by George Martin for the release of “Anthology 2” in 1996. The purpose was to display the state of the song as of February 16th, 1967, which comprised the original rhythm track, John’s first lead vocal take and Paul’s overdubbed bass. The stereo landscape is accentuated ’by John’s vocals panned slightly to the left channel.

Be sure to join me tomorrow for a thorough account in creating ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise).

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