THE INCREDIBLE RECORDING PROCESS OF WHEN I'M SIXTY-FOUR AND LOVELY RITA.

Track 9 – When I’m Sixty-Four: The novelty technique that Paul demonstrated on “When I’m Sixty-Four” gained enough notoriety that he thought to reprise it on two later occasions in The Beatles catalog. The first was a semi-nostalgic approach as delivered in 1967’s “Your Mother Should Know” and then another full-blown flashback to yesteryear on 1968’s “Honey Pie,” clarinets and all. As with all sequels, no matter the medium, the original most often has the biggest impact and is the most popular. A true test that this is the case with “When I’m Sixty-Four” would be to ask any parent of a first-generation Beatles fan if they have a favorite Beatles song. I would venture to guess that this song would be one of the first to come to their minds…along with “Yesterday” of course.

Although Paul desisted from continuing to display his secret passion for his father’s style of music for the remainder of the group’s life (undoubtedly steered away from it by John’s attitude of it being “granny music shit”), he felt strongly enough about it to bring it back during his Wings days. Both “You Gave Me The Answer” and “Baby’s Request” do well to harken back to the likes of “When I’m Sixty-Four,” but as serious pieces of music without the humor. While all of these other songs work nicely and are well written, as one would usually expect of Paul, “When I’m Sixty-Four” seems to epitomize the style and feeling of the 1967 era best. So much so, in fact, that Julian Lennon’s version of the song, as used beautifully in a 2002 Allstate television commercial, shows the composition as nothing short of irresistible.

The Beatles entered EMI Studio Two at 6:45 pm on December 6th, 1966 to begin work on the song, the first duties of the day, however, being recording taped Christmas messages for ‘pirate’ radio stations “Radio London” and “Radio Caroline.”  After this had been finished, the group started rehearsing how they were going to present “When I’m Sixty-Four” on tape. “Because the group was already so familiar with the song,” explains engineer Geoff Emerick in his book “Here, There And Everywhere,” “the backing track was laid down in just a couple of hours.”

Only two ‘takes’ of the song needed to be recorded to get the rhythm track down properly, the second take being deemed the best. The instrumentation is Paul on bass, Ringo on drums and John playing some electric guitar phrases in the final verse. While George was present on this day, evidenced by his voice being heard on the Christmas messages taped earlier in the session, he apparently did not participate in the recording of the song at this point. Paul then goes back and adds some nice piano work as an overdub, thus completing the rhythm track for the evening, no vocals being added at all yet. At 1:50 am the following morning, they left the studios and took the next day off.

The next session for “When I’m Sixty-Four” was on December 8th, 1966 in EMI Studio One, the session only lasting three hours, from 2:30 to 5:30 pm. Only one Beatle was present during this session since only one was needed. Paul booked this time to record his lead vocals onto the existing rhythm track. One noteworthy feature of this single-tracked vocal was the audible smile in Paul’s voice just before the last line of the final verse; possibly in reaction to John’s previously recorded lead guitar passages which, while done tastefully, are somewhat out of place for a song that was meant as a throwback to the music of the 20’s. How many songs from that era have an electric lead guitar solo?

The next three sessions booked for the group saw much work being done on a remake of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” with “When I’m Sixty-Four” being left off for a little later. December 20th, 1966 was when that later time came, this session beginning at 7 pm in EMI Studio Two. All four Beatles were present this time around, Paul, George, and John recording the background harmonies heard in the bridges of the song. Ringo had the duty of strategically adding the sound of orchestral bells in the bridges as well.     In order to prepare the recording for more overdubs, two attempts at a tape reduction were made to clear up more tracks, the second attempt (labeled ‘take four’) was deemed the best. By 1 am the following morning, the session was complete.

It possibly was at this session, if not before, that Paul discussed with George Martin what was needed to complete the song. “As was usual for a McCartney song,” Geoff Emerick continues, “there were extensive discussions with George Martin about the arrangement. Paul kept saying that he wanted the song to be really ‘rootie-tootie,’ so George suggested the addition of clarinets.”  Paul adds:    “I did it in rooty-tooty variety style…George helped me on a clarinet arrangement.     I would specify the sound, and I love clarinets so ‘Could we have a clarinet quartet?’  ‘Absolutely.’  I’d give him a fairly good idea of what I wanted, and George would score it because I couldn’t do that. He was very helpful to us.”

The next day, December 21st, 1966, was the day that the clarinetists were hired to play George Martin’s score for “When I’m Sixty-Four.”  Paul was undoubtedly present for this session, he maybe being the only Beatle interested in the performance of clarinetists. Paul, however, didn’t quite get his “quartet,” since only three musicians were needed for the prepared score, these being Robert Burns, Henry MacKenzie, and Frank Reidy. “I scored it for two clarinets and a bass clarinet,” George Martin remembers in his book “All You Need Is Ears.”

“The clarinets on that track became a very personal sound to me,” relates Geoff Emerick. “I recorded them really close up, bringing them so far forward that they became one of the main focal points.”  As was usual for professional studio musicians, they nailed the performance in a very short time, the session being completed in only two hours, from 7 to 9 pm. “I remember recording it in the cavernous Number One studio at Abbey Road,” George Martin continues, “and thinking how the three clarinet players looked as lost as a referee and two linesmen alone in the middle of Wembley Stadium.”  George’s recollections were incorrect since the session was in the smaller EMI Studio Two, but the point is taken just the same.

Just after the session was complete, an hour was spent in the control room of EMI Studio Two (9 to 10 pm) to take the first stab at creating a mono mix for the song.     Three attempts were made by George Martin, Geoff Emerick, and 2nd engineer Phil McDonald, but these were made for demo use only and were not intended for the finished album.

The first try at making a usable mono mix of the song was on December 29th, 1966 in the control room of EMI Studio Three by the same production team of Martin, Emerick, and McDonald. Four attempts were made on this day, remixes 4 through 7, ‘take 6’ being marked as “best” for the US and ‘take 7’ as “best” for Britain. However, all this work was in vain.

According to Mark Lewisohn’s book “The Beatles Recording Sessions,” “The remixes of ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ done on 29 December…did not satisfy Paul. He suggested that they scrap all previous mixes and start again, speeding up the new mix to raise it by as much as a semitone, a bit difference.”  The new mono mix, created by Paul’s specifications, was done the next day, December 30th, 1966, in the control room of EMI Studio Two by the same production team of Martin, Emerick, and McDonald. They only needed one try, ‘remix 8’ being the keeper and used for the mono version of the “Sgt. Pepper” album in both the US and Britain.

But why did Paul want the mono mix to be speeded up? “During the mix," says Geoff Emerick, "Paul also asked to have the track sped up a great deal – almost a semitone – so that his voice would sound more youthful, like the teenager he was when he originally wrote the song.”  George Martin inferred similarly in print, but Paul remembers differently. “George Martin in his book says that I had it speeded up because I wanted to appear younger but I think that was just to make it more rooty-tooty; just lift the key because it was starting to sound a little turgid.”

At the turn of the new year, a decision was being made to issue a new single and “When I’m Sixty-Four,” it appears, may have been considered. “Brian was desperate to recover popularity,” George Martin recalls, “and so we wanted to make sure that we had a marvelous seller. He came to me and said, ‘I must have a really great single. What have you got?’  I said, ‘Well, I’ve got three tracks – and two of them are the best tracks they’ve ever made. We could put the two together and make a smashing single.’  We did, and it was a smashing single – but it was also a dreadful mistake. We would have sold far more and got higher up in the charts if we had issued one of those (“Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane”) with, say ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ on the back.”

Paul’s book “Many Years From Now” confirms this and specifies that “initially the single was to be ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ backed with ‘When I’m Sixty-Four.’”  The EMI documentation for the date January 2nd, 1967 show this as well, as tape copies were made of the recently made mono mixes for both “When I’m Sixty-Four” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” with the intended purpose being for the US, standard procedure for a new Capitol single release in the states.

The stereo mix of the song that was issued worldwide in 1967 wasn’t made until April 17th, 1967 in the control room of EMI Studio Two by George Martin, Geoff Emerick, and 2nd engineer Richard Lush.     Lush remembers listening to the mono mix on this day as a guide which caused George Martin to question the speed it was recorded. “He kept saying, ‘Surely it can’t have been that fast?’” Lush recalls.     They acquiesced and sped up the stereo mix just the same. The rhythm track, including the piano overdub, was centered in the mix, while the lead vocals and orchestral bells were panned entirely to the left. The clarinets and the harmony vocals are all panned exclusively to the right channel.

Another stereo mix was made sometime in 1999 for release on the album “Yellow Submarine Songtrack.”  This mix, which took them back to the actual master tapes, was made at Abbey Road Studios by Peter Cobbin, Paul Hicks, Mirek Stiles and Allan Rouse. The stereo landscape is quite different here, all vocals (lead and harmony) being centered in the mix with the clarinets panned mostly in the right channel, but not entirely. The rhythm track is still centered, but the piano overdub and the orchestral bells are only heard in the left channel.

Track 10 – Lovely Rita: “The song is a cartoon, a rock-‘n’-roll ragtime with a tongue-in-cheek narrative that brings the cardboard sitcom to life.”  So states Tim Riley’s book “Tell Me Why,” this being just one of the countless examples of critical praise given to the song. Even Ian MacDonald’s “Revolution In The Head,” who many times gives his honest but shockingly negative appraisals of Beatles songs, proclaims the piece as “imbued with an exuberant interest in life that lifts the spirits.”

Paul obviously didn’t think of the song as a ‘masterpiece’ (evidenced by him never performing it live until the 21^st century) but rather as a fun piece of literary fantasy. The creatively silly atmosphere evident in the recording studio that day exude the fun they had and the effect the song should have on us:    Simply stated - Don’t take it all that seriously – it’s just a touch of levity in an otherwise ‘heady’ album.     Perhaps it was best put by John Robertson in “The Complete Guide To The Music Of The Beatles”: “’Lovely Rita’ was a glorious throwaway.”

About half way through the “Sgt. Pepper” sessions, on February 23rd, 1967, the group entered EMI Studio Two at their usual 7 pm starting point (or so says the documentation) to begin work on the newly written “Lovely Rita.”  The first job of the evening, however, was creating a stereo master of “A Day In The Life,” which entailed a good amount of time with various mixing attempts and necessary editing. With this complete, everyone sat down at their instruments to begin the new song.

Eight takes were made of the rhythm track with all four Beatles playing simultaneously but on their own track of the four-track tape. Track one contained George on acoustic guitar, track two had John on acoustic guitar, track three had Ringo on drums and track four contained Paul on piano. Paul’s piano was recorded with a noticeable amount of tape echo to create the desired feel. The tape machine was running at a slower 46 1/2 cycles per second (instead of the normal 50 cycles) to sound somewhat faster on playback. ‘Take eight’ ended up being the keeper, even though they decided to ad lib for a little while at the end of the song, Paul vamping on the piano in a minor chord while both guitarists eventually stopped playing. Thinking that it sounded good that way, and realizing that it was customary to fade out an ending of that length, John is heard saying into his guitar microphone at the very end of the take, “Have ‘em leave it.”  John got his way – the vamping became part of the released song as did that final statement.

In Mark Lewisohn’s book “The Beatles Recording Sessions,” he mentions that take eight “had a longer piano introduction than on the record,” insinuating that something was edited out of the final version.     But, upon listening to the isolated rhythm track on the master tape, we hear Paul count off the song which then ushers in the introduction, this being of the same length of the released version. To give Mark the benefit of the doubt, he may be referring to one of the earlier takes in which they could have experimented with a longer introduction.

A reduction mix was then made of these four tracks which combined them all together into one track of another tape, thus becoming ‘take nine,’ which left tracks open for overdubs. The only overdub recorded on this day, undoubtedly after the other Beatles had left, was Paul’s bass. In his book “Here, There And Everywhere,” engineer Geoff Emerick explains: “With this track, Paul began the practice of recording his bass last, after all the other parts were already committed to tape. Being able to work off of all the other elements of the track – enabled him to hear the song as a whole and therefore create melodic bass lines that perfectly complemented the final arrangement. He would do those overdubs in the wee hours, long after everyone else had gone home. It would be just Richard (Lush) and me up in the control room, with Paul sitting on a chair out in the middle of the studio, away from his usual corner, working assiduously to perfect his lines, giving all he had to the task at hand. Richard would painstakingly drop the multitrack in and out of the record, one section at a time, until every note articulated perfectly and Paul was satisfied with the result. He, of course, was the ultimate arbiter, but he was also constantly peering up into the control room to see if we were giving him a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.”

These late-night bass performances from Paul allowed Geoff Emerick to put on his thinking cap and come up with ideas to capture these low frequency sounds better. “It was Paul’s desire for perfection that enabled me to finally come up with a recording technique that yielded the ultra-smooth bass sound he and I had been pursuing for years. They key was that we would move his bass amp out of the baffles and into the center of the studio; I would then place a microphone about six feet away. With the studio empty, you could actually hear a little bit of the ambience of the room around the bass, which really helped; it gave the sound a certain roundness and put it in its own space. The sound we crafted effectively transformed the bass from a supporting rhythm instrument into a lead instrument.”  After the bass track to “Lovely Rita” was committed to tape, the session was complete, it now being 3:45 am the following morning.

The next day, or should I say later that day, work on the song continued.     This day, February 24th, 1967, saw the recording of Paul’s lead vocals done in EMI Studio Two between 7 pm and 1:15 am the following day. Since Paul was the only Beatle putting anything down on tape on this day, it seems unlikely that any other Beatles was present, although they may have been there for moral support.     These vocals were single tracked only, Paul feels that double-tracking them was unnecessary. Like the rhythm track, his vocals were also recorded at 46 1/2 cycles per second to make them sound faster when played back. Another reduction mix was made to free up more tracks for future overdubs, two attempts being made, takes 10 and 11, making ‘take 11’ the master version up to this point. At 1:15 am, everyone went home.

With attention being given to other “Sgt. Pepper” tracks for the next week and a half, especially the new composition “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” the group finally returned to “Lovely Rita” on March 7th, 1967. They entered EMI Studio Two at 7 pm (rumor has it) with the purpose of adding the backing harmonies on the song.

"’Lovely Rita’ was another track where The Beach Boys influence really manifested itself,” Emerick continues. “Paul made a point of telling George Martin that he wanted the backing vocal arrangement to emulate the way the California singing group might approach the song. There were lots of fun overdubs on that track, including the four band members standing around a single microphone humming through a comb and paper, each priceless Beatle comb carefully wrapped with a single layer of the standard issue extra-scratchy EMI toilet paper that we were all constantly complaining about. On that same very silly night, they overdubbed the heavy breathing at the end of the song, with John looning about and sending the others – and Richard and me up in the control room – into fits of laughter. There were a few visitors to the studio that evening, including Davy Jones of The Monkees, and the joss sticks were especially prominent, ensuring that a splendid time was guaranteed for all.”

This fun session was the result, at least in part, of an effect that John heard in his headphones. “John always wanted repeat echo in his headphones,” Emerick recalls.     “It gave him more excitement. They’d finished doing the vocal on ‘Lovely Rita, ’ and he just started fooling around, using the echo as his inspiration.”  Also among the guests in the studio, that evening was folk-rock musician Shawn Phillips who reportedly sang background vocals with the group on the song. His recent studio work with Beatles friend Donovan undoubtedly got him his invite to the session. By 2:30 am the next morning, they all filed out and enjoyed the next day off from session work.

Two weeks later, after they had premiered three more “Pepper” tracks in the studio, they finally got around to finishing off “Lovely Rita.”  This session was on March 21st, 1967 in EMI Studio Two, starting at the usual documented time of 7 pm. The first order of business was performing vocals for the newly recorded song “Getting Better” which, as detailed in the history of that song, resulted in a near-miss catastrophe as John was left alone on the roof of EMI while experiencing an LSD trip.

John’s participation in the session was over at this point, him telling the others “I’ll just stay and watch.”  What he ‘watched,’ starting approximately at 10 pm, was they're figuring out what to do about the solo section of “Lovely Rita.”  Geoff Emerick explains: “The opportunity arose for me to make my recording debut on a Beatles album…but my shy nature let me down. After hours of attempting a Harrison guitar solo that never quite worked, they were stuck for an idea, and the frustration was starting to show. I distinctly remember standing at the top of the stairs in Studio Two and Paul’s shouting up at me, ‘Geoff, you tell us what the solo should be.’”

“My suggestion was that they try something on piano,” Emerick continues. “To my surprise, Paul asked, ‘Why don’t you play it?’  In a kneejerk reaction – and to my everlasting regret – I demurred; I was simply too embarrassed to demonstrate my musical skills. Paul shrugged his shoulders and took a stab at it, but he still wasn’t a hundred percent certain that it was a good idea, so he had George Martin play something instead. While Paul listened up in the control room, George reeled off a honky-tonk-style solo that was deemed acceptable, although, frankly, I wasn’t too crazy about it.”  This solo, according to “The Beatles Recording Sessions,” was recorded at 41 1/4 cycles per second to sound faster when played back.

Before Paul took John home to ‘come down,’ he made one final suggestion concerning this piano solo.     “In the true ‘Pepper’ spirit of experimentation, Paul asked me to screw things up, so the solo didn’t sound like it was coming from a piano,” Emerick recalls. “By that stage, I had already adopted a policy that no piano was ever recorded the same way twice. As a result, I was miking pianos from underneath, taping mics to the soundboard – anything to get it sounding different each time. This time around, I decided to place some sticky editing tape on the guide rollers of a tape machine that was sending a signal to the echo chamber, causing the tape to wow and flutter.     The end result was an audible, and quite interesting, ‘wobble’ in the piano sound.     It was yet another contravention of the rules that, with any band other than The Beatles, would have easily gotten me fired.”

With this solo put to tape, the recording of “Lovely Rita” was complete, it now being about 12:30 the next morning. Apparently, without The Beatles present, the released mono mix of the song was made by George Martin, Geoff Emerick and Richard Lush in the control room of EMI Studio Two. They worked quite hard at getting the right mix, making 15 attempts with the tape machine running at 48 3/4 cycles per second throughout the entire song. In the end, parts of remixes 11 and 14 were deemed the best which they then edited together. By 2:45 am, this infamous recording session was finally over.

The stereo mix of “Lovely Rita” wasn’t created until April 17th, 1967, in the control room of EMI Studio Two by the same engineering team. Two remixes were made, presumably the second one deemed as the keeper. The rhythm track was placed exclusively in the left channel with the bass guitar, and piano solo panned to the right. All vocals, which include the comb and toilet paper segments, are centered in the mix.

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

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