Around March of 1969, John recorded an acoustic guitar demo of his newly written song "Because” on a portable tape recorder due to his no longer owning his Kenwood home that had been equipped with a home recording studio. Due to his divorce from his first wife, Cynthia earlier that same year, he subsequently lost this house. Interestingly, in this demo, John strums his guitar instead of picking out the individual notes, and he sings "because the wind is low" instead of "high" as on the finished recording. It was also around this time that John recorded the unmistakable "Because" guitar picking that appeared on the track "Amsterdam" on the John and Yoko released "Wedding Album." This segment was recorded in a hotel room at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam, Holland, sometime between March 25th and 31st, 1969.
August 1st, 1969, was when Lennon first introduced the song to everyone in EMI Studio Two, the session beginning at 2:30 pm. Engineer Geoff Emerick, in his book "Here, There And Everywhere," remembers: "John had written the song on guitar, gently picking individual notes rather than playing chords, but he felt that something more was needed. 'Why don't I double your line exactly on harpsichord?' George (Martin) suggested, and Lennon quickly agreed. 'Yeah, great, that will help make it a little more classical-like too."
In an interview with Richard Buskin, George Martin explains that the backing track recorded on this day consisted of “John playing a riff on guitar, me duplicating every note on an electronic harpsichord, and Paul playing bass. Each note between the guitar and harpsichord had to be exactly together, and I'm not the world's greatest player in terms of timing; I would make more mistakes than John did." "I was tuned to your soul then," John was heard to remark during the session about his and George Martin's cohesive performances on that day." "We didn't have drum machines in those days, so Ringo was our drum machine,” George Martin explains, referring to Ringo counting off the takes and keeping the beat for them with soft handclaps. An interesting note here is that according to Paul's book “Many Years From Now,” when EMI was reducing their instrument collection, “Paul was able to buy the electric spinet which gives much of the characteristic sound to the track. He still has it in his recording studio” as of 1997 when Paul's book was published. According to Kevin Howlett's notes in the 50th Anniversary "Abbey Road" book, this instrument was a Baldwin electric harpsichord.
Geoff Emerick continues: “Ringo's job was to act as a timekeeper, a human click track; he was merely to tap out a steady tempo...for reference purposes only." It took them 23 takes to record the backing track on this day, only takes one, 16, and 23 making it all the way through the song. Paul's bass was on track one of the eight-track tape, John's guitar was on track two, George Martin's harpsichord was on track three, and Ringo's handclaps were on track four. 'Take one,' as featured in various 50th Anniversary "Abbey Road" editions, display a very professional performance which could very well have been used for overdubs and, after that, the released version. After this take concludes, John clunks his guitar and exclaims, 'I love it!" George Martin instructs Geoff Emerick in the control booth off microphone, "Geoff, could I have less harpsichord in my cans?" Ringo, who has a microphone, relates the engineer's request: "Less harpsichord Geoff?" John then humorously adds, "Is my hair alight, Geoff?" This causes laughter in the studio. After 'take 18,' John brainstormed what he wanted to add to the song as overdubs. "I just heard tamboura in it as well, just here and there," he exclaimed, referring to the Indian instrument that had been used on Beatles songs "Getting Better," "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," "Love You To" and "Within You Without You." This idea never came to fruition, however.
"Hunched over their instruments, deep in concentration, they labored for a long time on that backing track," remembers Geoff Emerick. "It wasn't really their fault: Paul, who was acting as surrogate producer (while also playing bass), was pushing them too hard that night, having them do take after take, playing way past their peak. When the exhausted trio finally came up to the control room to have a listen, they realized that they had laid down a perfectly good take an hour before. John didn't say anything, but he shot an embarrassed Paul a dirty look. Fortunately, they seemed too tired to make an issue out of it.” By 7:30 pm, 'take 16' was deemed best.
For the next two hours, attention was given to working out and recording vocals for the song. "Everyone agreed that the song was begging for big, lush harmonies,” Emerick recalls, “just the kind of thing that was George Martin's forte. Delighted to be contributing, at last, he spent (considerable time) with John, Paul, and George Harrison gathered around the piano while he worked out their complex parts note by note.” John explains: “As for the harmonies, I just asked George Martin, or whoever was 'round, 'What's the alternative to thirds and fifths?' as they're the only ones I know, and he would play them on a piano, and we'd say, 'Oh, we'll have that one.' So, I couldn't tell you what they are. I just know it's harmony.”
“The only problem was,” Emerick continues, “that George Martin had worked out nine harmony parts for The Beatles to sing, but we only had five tracks to record them on. That was resolved easily enough, have John, Paul, and George Harrison sing their three-part harmony together live, instead of overdubbing each part one at a time, and then have them do two additional passes to add on the remaining six parts. It was as much an aesthetic as it was a technical decision because their voices had always meshed so well naturally.” George Harrison recalls, “The harmony was pretty difficult to sing in, you know, we really had to learn it...We've never done something like that for years since a B-side; (sings) 'If you wear red tonight' and 'This is what I said tonight,'" referring to "Yes It Is," the 1965 B-side to "Ticket To Ride." George Martin relates: "John, Paul, and George sang the song in harmony...I was literally telling them what notes to sing."
A note of clarification needs to be made here. Geoff Emerick describes what George Martin worked out as "nine harmony parts," but it was only three-part harmony in actuality. John sang the mid-range lead vocal part, George sang a somewhat lower song, and Paul sang a high harmony in falsetto. This was then overdubbed twice more at a later session, them 'triple-tracking' the same three harmony parts that George Martin worked out for them. This created the lush vocals for the song.
At 10:30 pm, they had recorded the first set of their three-part harmony onto track six of the tape, leaving the other two sets of three-part harmony to be recorded after the weekend was over. With three open tracks still left on the eight-track tape, they called it for the night. However, after the weekend, The Beatles filed back into EMI Studio Two on August 4th, 1969, specifically to add the remaining vocals onto “Because.” They once again arrived around 2:30 pm and set out to reprise their stunning three-part harmony abilities as they had done with 1963's “This Boy” and 1965's “Yes It Is.”
“It was mid-afternoon,” Geoff Emerick recalls, “but the lights in Studio Two were dimmed way down low for atmosphere. The four Beatles – Ringo was there, too, providing moral support – were gathered in a semicircle, the sparse backing track playing softly in their headphones. To start with, everyone was standing up, but it quickly became apparent that this was going to be a time-consuming process, so they were soon sitting on regulation EMI hard-back chairs, not stools. To get the phrasing spot-on, Paul was making hand gestures, conducting the others. It would take more than five hours to get those vocals done, and though John's patience was sorely tried that afternoon, no one gave up. Perfection was the goal, and nobody was prepared to accept anything less.”
"George Martin took his place next to me in the control room, listening intently. Yoko was up there with us too, but she never said a word the entire afternoon. John, Paul, and George Harrison each had his own mic, but they were all being recorded on a single track, so I was focused on doing the balance. To keep the purity of the sound, I had decided to use no signal processing whatsoever – no compressors or limiters. That meant that I had to manually 'pot' the sound to smooth out the peaks and valleys – moving the faders up and down as it was being recorded – carefully following the dynamics of each word, each syllable. Fortunately, I'd had plenty of time to learn those moves during the long hours of vocal rehearsals."
“The three Beatles sang 'Because' over and over and over again that afternoon; they probably did each pass twenty or thirty times. Pitching was not a problem – they rarely sang out of tune, and they were good at remembering their parts – but it wasn't easy to get the phrasing precise, starting and ending each word at exactly the same time. Even John was unusually patient that day, though he rebuked Paul once or twice, at one point snapping, 'Jesus Christ, give me a break already...I wish I hadn't written the bloody thing!'”
“But John kept at it, as did George Harrison who, to my surprise, never uttered a word of complaint. They knew they were doing something special and they were determined to get it right. There was no clowning around that day, no joking; everyone was very serious, very focused. Their goal was to be able to sing each pass all the way through from start to finish – it was almost a matter of pride – but everyone was starting to get so weary, we ended up having to do a few drop-ins. Actually, we couldn't do too many even if we wanted to, because the breaths between phrases would make any drop-ins apparent.”
“That day I saw the four Beatles at their finest: there was one hundred percent concentration from all of them – even Ringo, sitting quietly with his eyes closed, silently urging his bandmates on to their best performance – all working in tandem to get that vocal nailed, spot on. It was a stark example of the kind of teamwork that had been so sorely lacking for years. It's tempting to imagine what The Beatles might have been able to accomplish if they could only have captured and sustained that spirit just a little longer.”
The first set of three-part harmony overdubs on this day was recorded on track seven, the second set was recorded on track eight, which resulted in nine Beatle voices captured on tracks six, seven, and eight. No stereo mix was made on this day, possibly an indication that they hadn't decided as of yet what other overdubs the song needed, possibly still considering a tamboura as John suggested at the previous session. These vocal overdubs were complete as of 7:15 pm, which allowed George Harrison to bring a couple engineers over to the control room of Studio Three to create stereo mixes of his “Abbey Road” tracks, “Something” and “Here Comes The Sun,” determining if more overdubs were needed for these songs as well. Nonetheless, the remaining Beatles apparently stuck around in Studio Two until 9 pm, undoubtedly listening to the lush nine-part harmonies they had just worked so hard to create.
A decision was made to complete “Because” with an overdub of an unusual new instrument that George Harrison had recently acquired. In November of 1968, while George was producing the Jackie Lomax album “Is This What You Want?” in Los Angeles, California, he purchased a Moog synthesizer, model IIIp. Undoubtedly because of the “no overdubs” policy that permeated the “Get Back / Let It Be” sessions of January 1969, it was not used during those recordings. But now, in early August of that year, according to the book “The Beatles Recording Sessions,” “George had his Moog transported into EMI for the 'Abbey Road' sessions, and with Mike Vickers (formerly of the British group Manfred Mann) recruited as expert consultant/programmer, The Beatles began to make constructive use of the instrument in the closing weeks of the 'Abbey Road' sessions.”
As interviewed for the book mentioned above, Engineer John Kurlander explains that “the Moog was set up in Room 43 and the sound was fed from there by a mono cable to whichever control room we were in. All four Beatles – but especially George – expressed great interest in it, trying out different things.” Engineer Nick Webb recalls: “I think The Beatles used the Moog with great subtlety. Others in a similar situation would probably have gone completely over the top with it. It's there, on the record, but not obtrusively. Perhaps they weren't sure it was going to catch on.” In September of 1969, John explained in a Radio Luxembourg interview: "The Moog plays the solo in 'Because.' You can make it play anything. Any style...freaky or just plain. It sounds like trumpets and things if you want it to." EMI engineer Ken Townsend recalled, "to get that French horn sound took a whole set of flight cases full of jack plugs and filters." Engineer Alan Parsons concurs: "It was a lot of work to get anything out of it, and you could only sound one note at a time, which was a disadvantage. Everybody was fascinated by it. We were all crowding around to have a look."
Examples of other artists around that time using the instrument in a more flamboyant way was Emerson, Lake And Palmer, and The Monkees, the latter group being the first contemporary artist to use the instrument on a pop record, this being their 1967 classic album “Pieces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd.”
At any rate, the song “Because” was the first Beatles track that featured this ground-breaking instrument, "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Here Comes The Sun," receiving Moog overdubs within the next two weeks. George Harrison filled both tracks two and four with Moog synthesizer overdubs on the session that occurred the following day, August 5th, 1969, in EMI Studio Two. John's guitar from the rhythm track was first bounced from track two to track five, while Ringo's handclaps on track four were recorded over, which were not necessary for the finished recording. At the 6:30 pm session, George played the synthesizer set up in Room 43, this performance being fed into Studio Two, overdubbing a melody line that mimicked the song's vocal line and then following suit once again, thus filling all eight-tracks of the eight-track tape. This took approximately three hours to perfect, following a vocal overdub onto the song “The End,” thus ending the session at 10:45 pm. With this complete, the recording of “Because” was done.
All that was left was to create the stereo mix of the song. This occurred on August 12th, 1969, in the control room of EMI Studio Two starting at 7 pm, the mix accomplished by producer George Martin and engineers Geoff Emerick, Phil McDonald, and John Kurlander. Geoff Emerick recalls: “I was so enamored of the sonic results of not using compressors or limiters that I even decided to mix the entire track without them. That was a first for any record I'd ever made; in fact, it was quite probably a first for any major pop recording done since the cumbersome devices were introduced in the early fifties. Yet every word, every syllable is crystal clear on the final mix, due to the time and effort we all expended on getting the song recorded right in the first place.” Two stereo mixes were attempted, the second undoubtedly being the better of the two. With two other “Abbey Road” tracks also mixed on this day, (“Oh! Darling” and “Maxwell's Silver Hammer,”) this mixing session was complete as of 2 am the following morning.
George Martin was so proud of the vocal work done on this song that sometime in 1996, in preparation for the release of the “Anthology 3” album, he and Geoff Emerick returned to the master tape of “Because” to mix and then officially release an a cappella version of the song. A treat that had been available in bootleg releases for many years. Omitting a bit of the open space between vocal lines and added reverb, Martin & Emerick’s version was a definite highlight of this successful compilation album.
A similar a cappella mix was made by George Martin and his son Giles Martin sometime between 2004 and 2006 for inclusion as the opening track on the 2006 compilation album “Love,” bird sounds from various sources being added in for effect. These sources include the “World Wildlife Fund” version of the song “Across The Universe,” the recording of the 1995 Beatles song “Free As A Bird,” and a wood pigeon “to make it sound more British,” according to George Martin. This interesting mix was also used as the opening sequence in the similarly titled Cirque du Soleil show, which had become a mainstay in Las Vegas.
Sometime in 2019, Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell created a new stereo mix of "Because" for inclusion in the various 50th Anniversary releases of "Abbey Road." While they were at it, they created a stereo mix of the instrumental 'take one' rhythm track as recorded on August 1st, 1969, complete with Ringo's handclaps and studio banter afterward.
Song Structure and Style
The structure of "Because" consists of 'verse (introduction)/ verse/ verse/ bridge/ verse/ verse (conclusion)' (or aaabaa). Each verse is ten measures in length, and the bridge is four measures in length, all measures being in 4/4 time.
The first instrumental verse comprises the first four measures being played exclusively by George Martin on harpsichord and then joined by John on electric guitar for the next four measures. After a pause at the end of measure eight, measures nine and ten add in Paul on bass and the nine voices of harmony singing “aah,” which pauses once again midway through the tenth measure.
The second verse, which is the first vocal verse, continues the ten measure pattern exactly as in the first instrumental verse but with bass and vocal harmonies throughout. Paul sings the highest harmony, which allows him to have some leeway in expressiveness in measures three and seven. The third verse then follows, which follows the exact instrumentation throughout, Paul subduing his high-toned vocalizing in the seventh measure this time around. At the end of this third verse, the phrase “love is old, love is...” precedes the bridge that follows.
The four measure bridge brings the song into a major key and introduces George Harrison's Moog synthesizer overdub, which precisely mimics the harpsichord/guitar pattern. The fourth measure concludes with another pause filled with the beginnings of the first vocal line of the fourth verse.
The fifth verse is a virtual repeat of the second verse, complete with Paul's high-toned expressiveness in the seventh measure. One difference here is that there is no pause in the tenth measure this time around, the vocalists extending the “aah” from the tenth measure into the first measure of the sixth verse that follows.
The sixth concluding verse then follows, which is entirely instrumental except for the nine-part harmonies singing “aah” in measures three through five, seven through eight, and then nine and ten. George Harrison comes in once again in measures one through three, five through seven, and then nine and ten with a melody line that mimics the previous verses' vocal lines. Measure ten then hangs in the air in anticipation of the song that follows, with all instruments fading away appropriately.
Painstaking effort was contributed by all four instrumentalists and vocalists throughout. Yes, all four Beatles extended much time and effort to achieve the desired results. John's final “Lennon / McCartney” contribution was given the deserved attention, given the fact that this was known by all to be the final touch to The Beatles' highly respected career.
Please feel free to leave any comments or corrections and share these articles plus this blog's website with your friends, especially Beatles’ fans. You and they might also enjoy knowing more about my Love Songs CD and my novel, BEATLEMANIAC. Just click on the “My Shop” tab near the top of this page for full details.
No comments:
Post a Comment