THE INCREDIBLE RECORDING PROCESS OF BEING FOR THE BENEFIT OF MR. KITE AND WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU.

Track 7 – Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite: It’s really quite telling how John quickly dismissed the whole “Sgt. Pepper” album – even as early as late 1967.  “When you get down to it, it was nothing more than an album called ‘Sgt. Pepper’ with the tracks stuck together.  It was a beautiful idea then, but it doesn’t mean a thing now.”  Regarding the elaborate production, he asserted back then: “I actively dislike bits of them which didn’t come out right…Some of the sound in ‘Mr. Kite’ isn’t right.”

While Lennon’s more earthy or personal tracks, such as “I’m So Tired” and “Strawberry Fields Forever,” are listed as his favorites, the playful and humorous side of his compositional style didn’t seem to mean too much to him in the long run.  Changing the poster’s reference to the “Celebrated Horse Zanthus” into “of course, Henry, the horse, dances the Waltz,” for instance, is pure Lennon tomfoolery.  The in-jokes and picturesque imagery of such a lyric do much to tantalize the listener, but apparently not much for John.

It’s no wonder that “Mr. Kite” shows up in most tribute productions about The Beatles, including the musical “Across The Universe,” Cirque du Soleil’s “Love” and even the critically panned 1978 film “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (with Maurice Gibb and George Burns singing lead, nonetheless).  The original recording of "Kite," being a spectacular piece of fantasy from the “Sgt. Pepper” album, is, without question, one of the outstanding highlights in most people’s minds.  John may have been quick to dismiss it, but most would beg to differ.

Inside Abbey Road with the red light on and tape machines rolling, this “pure watercolor” began to take shape on February 17th, 1967 in EMI Studio Two, session documentation indicating the session beginning at 7 pm.  After some rehearsal and experimentation with the arrangement, the first of seven takes of the rhythm track recorded on this day show that the circus-like feel of the song was already in place.

“In terms of asking me for particular interpretations, John was the least articulate,” George Martin remembers.  “He would deal in moods, he would deal in colors, almost, and he would never be specific about what instruments or what line I had.  I would do that myself…John was more likely to say (in the case of ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!): ‘It’s a fairground sequence.  I want to be in that circus atmosphere…’  So, it was up to me to provide that.”

The “circus atmosphere” was evident in the rhythm track especially by how Ringo played his drums, providing the drum roll to introduce each verse as well as splashing his open hi-hats on the two-and-four beats of each measure.  The other instrumentation on these rhythm tracks was Paul on bass, George Martin on harmonium, and George Harrison on maracas while John worked at perfecting his lead vocals.  (Note:  Paul related to Rolling Stone magazine in 2013 his recollections of adding the bass part as an overdub after the rhythm track was recorded, but listening to the original takes of the song, as witnessed on “Anthology 2,” reveals otherwise.)

Take one began with John becoming slightly irritated at engineer Geoff Emerick as can be heard on the 1996 release “Anthology 2” and explained in Geoff’s book “Here, There And Everywhere”: “John Lennon always had a precise title for each of his songs, and woe betold any of us who didn’t get it correct.  I learned that the hard way one night when I slated a take in a hurry and mistakenly shortened the title to ‘For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite.’  John immediately corrected me in an irritated tone of voice: ‘No, that’s “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite.”’”

‘Take one’ broke down just after the first measure because Paul slowly counted down the song as a straight 4/4 beat instead of a swing beat.  When it was quickly apparent that this wasn’t what they intended, Paul then demonstrated the correct feel on his bass to clue Ringo in on what was needed for the song.  ‘Take two’ had the correct tempo and feel, but broke down in the third measure of the first verse when John finished his first lyric line.  He slurred the words “Mr. Kite, there will be a show tonight” instead of leaving a small gap between the phrases, which spurred Paul to instruct John on how he should sing it.  “Let’s try and sort of see it as a big, get it in…and all the little breaks that are left for you to sing to,” Paul insists, he then quickly demonstrating to John how he envisioned the lyrics to be sung.

‘Take three’ apparently made it through to the end, John reduced to ‘dum-dumming’ the lyrics by this point as a guide vocal with the intention of overdubbing the proper lead vocals later.  By ‘take seven,’ they had their act together pretty well.  The tape was rolling while they were goofing around on their instruments, which prompted George Martin from behind the harmonium to exclaim, “OK, men, let’s go. The light’s on.”  After a countdown from Paul, this complete take was the ‘keeper.’  Onto this, John overdubbed his lead vocals as also heard on “Anthology 2,” this being recorded at 49 cycles per second instead of the normal 50 so his voice would sound slightly higher when played back.

Concerning the rhythm track recorded on this day, Geoff Emerick has a vivid recollection: “It did take quite a few tries to nail it down, though, which caused problems for George (Martin), because the harmonium required pedaling to get air through its bellows, kind of like riding a bicycle.  After playing it non-stop for hours on end, he finally collapsed in exhaustion, sprawled out on the floor like a snow angel – a sight that gave us all great amusement.”

At the end of this take, the tape continued rolling to hear John talking to George Martin about what overdubs he envisioned for the song.  “Well, we’ll have the Massed Alberts on by then, won’t we? ” John was heard to say.  The “Massed Alberts” were a British music/comedy group of the 50’s and 60’s that had at one point been produced by George Martin.  George’s patronizing response, according to Geoff Emerick, was “’Oh, honestly!’…That was his stock expression of disapproval whenever he thought someone was talking nonsense.”  Whether John was serious or just being facetious is not known.  What is known is that the “Massed Alberts” never made it onto “Mr. Kite!”

This instruction from John has been detailed by George Martin many times.  “He’d make whooshing noises and try to describe what only he could hear in his head, saying he wanted a song ‘to sound like an orange.’…John had said that he wanted to ‘smell the sawdust on the floor,’ wanted to taste the atmosphere of the circus.”

Geoff Emerick remembers this conversation in even greater detail: “John, as usual, was full of creative ideas but was having trouble expressing them in practical terms.  ‘What I want…is some kind of swirly music, you know?’  George Martin didn’t know.  Lennon persisted.  ‘I want the sound of a fairground around my voice; I want to be able to smell the sawdust and the animals.  I want to feel like I’m at the circus with Mr. Kite and the Hendersons and all that.’…his request didn’t seem all that outlandish, but he wasn’t exactly giving us specific directions in how to achieve his vision, either.”

Putting this instruction aside for the moment, the EMI staff made two attempts at creating a reduction mix of the song to free up tracks on the four-track machine for more overdubs, wiping out John’s lead vocal overdub in the process.  The second reduction mix was deemed the best, which now became ‘take nine.’  John then took another go at recording the lead vocals onto ‘take nine,’ this being the vocals you hear on the finished product.  The double-tracking of John’s vocals, as well as Paul and George’s harmony vocals at the end of each verse, were probably recorded at this time as well, although studio documentation fails to mention it.  A rough mono mix was then made of the song as it was thus far, studio documentation indicating that Paul, not John, took it home with him.

According to Geoff Emerick, the conversation between John and George Martin apparently continued in the control room before the session ended early the following morning.  George Martin told John, “’What we need is a calliope.’  ‘A what?’  ‘Steam whistles, played by a keyboard…you know, one of those tooty things’” Geoff Emerick recalls: “I was starting to get an idea.  ‘How about if we try what we did on ‘Yellow Submarine?’ I suggested.  ‘You know, cutting up some tapes of sound effects to try to create an atmosphere?’  By this point, Lennon had lost interest and was heading out of the control room in search of some new stimulation.  ‘Yeah, fine, whatever you think.’  George Martin turned to me.  ‘I think you may be on to something there, Geoff.’”  This apparently ended the session at 3 am with George Martin considering various alternatives to make John’s vision a reality.

Having the weekend off, the next session took place Monday, February 20th, George Martin had time to look at his options. “I thought that it might be possible to get hold of a steam organ and actually use that,” George Martin recalled.  “But, that was a bit of a wild idea and too cumbersome, and it would have taken much too long for it to be done.” Geoff Emerick remembers: “Despite their enormous size, a few phone calls were actually placed to see if one was available for hire – to no avail.”  Mark Lewisohn’s book “The Beatles Recording Sessions” relates: “Only automatic models were available, played by punched cards. There were no hand operated models around.  The fairground sound would have to be created inside Abbey Road using other equipment.”

The recording staff of George Martin, Geoff Emerick and 2nd engineer Richard Lush assembled in EMI Studio Three on February 20th, 1967, at the usual starting time of 7 pm to work out this dilemma. “We were in Studio Three that night because our usual haunt – Studio Two – was in use by another artist,” Geoff Emerick explains. “George Martin must have block-booked them in for just a month or two; it had never taken any longer to do a Beatles album, and he wouldn’t have had any way of knowing beforehand that much greater amounts of time would be spent of ‘Pepper.’ As a result, the group’s gear wasn’t in the studio with them; it was still being stored in Studio Two, where we would be returning for most of the rest of the album.”

Meanwhile, in the control room, George Martin planned his strategy: “I knew we needed a backwash, a general mush of sound, like if you go to a fairground, shut your eyes and listen: rifle shots, hurdy-gurdy noises, people shouting and – way in the distance – just a tremendous chaotic sound.”

George Martin then seriously considered Geoff’s previous suggestion of using cut-up sound effect tapes to get the job done. In his book “All You Need Is Ears,” George Martin gives the details (however, suggesting it was his initial idea and forgetting they had done it before the previous year for “Yellow Submarine”). “I got together a lot of recordings of old Victorian steam organs – the type you hear playing on carousels at county fairs – playing all the traditional tunes, Sousa marches and so on. But I clearly couldn’t use even a snatch of any of them that would be identifiable; so I dubbed a few of the records on to tape, gave it to the engineer (Geoff Emerick) and told him, ‘I’ll take half a minute of that one, a minute and a half of that one, a minute of that one,’ and so on.”

“‘Then what do I do with them?’ he asked. ‘You cut that tape up into sections about a foot long.’  ‘What?!!!’ ‘Cut it up into little parcels about a foot long, and don’t be too careful about the cuts.’ Clearly thinking I had lost my senses, he did it, leaving me with a bunch of foot long pieces of tape – about sixty in all.  ‘Now what?’ ‘Fling them up in the air.’ Believing by now, I suppose, that the world had gone completely insane, he did as asked.  ‘Now,’ I said, ‘pick them up in whatever order they come and stick them all back together again.’ The poor chap couldn’t contain himself. ‘What did you do that for?!!!’ You’ll see,’ I said.”

“After he had laboriously stuck them all together again, we played the tape, and I said: ‘That piece there’s a bit too much like the original.  Turn it round the other way, backward.’  We went on like that until the tape was a whole amalgam of carousel noises, but meaningless in musical terms because it was composed of fragments of tunes connected in a series of fractions of a second.  It was an unreal hotch-potch of sound, arrived at without rhyme or reason; but when it was added as a background ‘wash’…it did give an overall impression of being in a circus.”

However, while this was being done in the control room, things were getting a little tense out on the studio floor. “Because they couldn’t play and jam,” Geoff Emerick remembers regarding the group’s instruments being secured in another studio, “the four Beatles were getting impatient with how long it was taking us to assemble the sounds. They were out in the studio area amusing themselves as best they could, but they kept popping into the control room, saying ‘Aren’t you lot done yet?’ At one point John came in, and he was actually quite aggravated, but Paul calmed him down, saying, ‘Look, it’s a process, and it just takes a certain amount of time. You have to expect that.’”

The “process” was completed on this day, nineteen pieces of tape being edited together to comprise “some thirty seconds of background sound,” as Geoff described it.  “It really worked well,” George Martin proudly related. “And of course, John was delighted with the result.”  This compiled sound effects tape was not superimposed onto the master tape on this day, however, this waiting until more overdubbing was done to the song first.  After a preliminary mono mix of the song “Good Morning Good Morning” was created, the session was over, being already 2:15 am the following day.

With many other “Sgt. Pepper” tracks taking precedence, “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!” took a backseat until March 28th, 1967.  The group entered EMI Studio Two at 7 pm (or thereabouts) and spent most of the day doing extensive work on “Good Morning Good Morning.”  Eventually, by approximately 3 am the following morning, attention was paid to “Mr. Kite!” by adding a series of overdubs.

“We always loved ‘The Morton Fraser Harmonica Gang’ when we were kids” remembers Paul in the documentary “The Making Of Sgt. Pepper.”  “It was a little TV thing…but it was those giant big bass (harmonicas), and John used to play harmonica, so we always liked that. But, when I heard them on ‘Pet Sounds’ – there’s a lot of bass harmonica, (Brian Wilson) uses that.  It’s the instruments he uses and the way he places them against each other.  It’s very cleverly done.  It’s a really clever album.  So, we were inspired by it, you know, and nicked a few ideas.”

Andy Babiuk’s book “Beatles Gear” states that “the group happened upon a pair of Hohner bass harmonicas to accentuate the chord changes” of the song, this being the first overdub performed on this day.  As to who played the harmonicas on this overdub, a picture exists of this day showing George Harrison playing one of the huge bass harmonicas while John plays his normal size Hohner instrument.  Add to this George Martin’s quote that “The Beatles’ road managers Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall played mouth organs” and the book “The Beatles Recording Sessions” adding Ringo into the mix, this undoubtedly made for an interesting and possibly humorous overdub session.

Two more overdubs were performed on this day, one being an “oom-pah-style organ played by John,” as described by Geoff Emerick.  Interestingly, the second overdub consisted of Paul playing an electric guitar solo, as reported on by Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall in a magazine piece for the June 1967 issue of “The Beatles Monthly Book.”  A picture from this day is included in this piece showing Paul playing his newly acquired Fender Esquire electric guitar.  This guitar solo is evidenced in the second half of the first instrumental section of the song.  By 4:45 am, the session ended with yet more extensive work to be done to “Mr. Kite!” 

The next recording session for the song occurred the following day (actually later that same day), March 29th, 1967 in EMI Studio Two, again scheduled to begin at 7 pm.  After some final work on “Good Morning Good Morning,” the elaborate sound effect montage created for “Mr. Kite!” was superimposed onto both the waltz instrumental section and the close of the song, it being predominantly heard during the ending.  The work on this song began approximately at 8 pm on this day.

George Martin explains a further overdub performed on this day: “When we came to the middle section of the song, where ‘Henry the Horse dances the waltz’…John said he wanted the music to ‘swirl up and around,’ to give it a circus atmosphere.  As usual, having written a great song, he said to me, ‘Do what you can with it,’ and walked away, leaving me to it…John and I did our thing on two electric organs, a Wurlitzer and a Hammond.  John was to play the basic tune, and around it, I was to play the swirly noises – chromatic runs based on it.”

“Unfortunately, my digital capacities on an organ fall short of spectacular, and I found that I couldn’t achieve the speed I wanted for these runs.  So I told John:  ‘What we’ll do is to slow the whole thing down by a half.  You play the tune twice as slow and an octave down, and I’ll do my runs as fast as I can, but an octave down as well.  Then, when we double the tape speed, it’ll come out all nice and smooth and very swirly.’  Of course, we could always have got a professional organist in to do it, but our attitude was ‘Why the hell!  Why should we let someone else in on our fun?’  Besides, we were doing it all off the top of our heads:  to bring someone else in would have meant delay and a lot of tedious explanation.”  So, George Martin pulled off his half-speed trick once again as he had done on 1965’s “In My Life.”

By around midnight or so, the focus was put onto a new song, which was eventually titled “With A Little Help From My Friends,” which took the session to 5:45 the following morning.  The finishing touches for “Mr. Kite!” were still to come.

March 31st, 1967 was the final recording session that included “Mr. Kite!” although it is possible that The Beatles were not present for this session at all.  This was, in fact, a session intended for creating mono mixes for the album, this beginning at 7 pm in the control room of EMI Studio Two with the production team of Martin, Emerick, and Lush.  After the mono mix of “With A Little Help From My Friends” was complete at around 8:30 pm or so, George Martin made his way onto the studio floor to add a couple more overdubs to “Mr. Kite!”

It looks as though the focus was on the final seconds of the song.  Geoff Emerick describes these overdubs with these words: “Later on, ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!’ was embellished with…chromatic organ runs and a glockenspiel – both recorded at half speed.”  A glockenspiel is a xylophone-like percussion instrument usually constructed with high pitched metal plates.  George Martin apparently played this complicated organ run at half speed and then played the same run on the glockenspiel on top of it as another overdub to compliment the conclusion of the song.  Since it is not documented anywhere, he undoubtedly performed the pounding piano chords that introduce the final verse as an overdub on this day as well.

This being accomplished, it was time to construct the mono mix of the song.  Seven attempts were made, the fourth attempt being deemed ‘best’ and ready for inclusion on the mono edition of the album.  This mono mix is noteworthy for more presence being given to the sound effects in the waltz instrumental section of the song.

The stereo mix was made on April 7th, 1967, in the control room of EMI Studio Two by the same production staff.  Eight attempts were made for this mix, presumably the final eighth mix being the best.  The original rhythm track is panned to the left channel while all of the vocals are panned to the right.  George Martin’s melodic organ riffs are panned to the right channel as well, while the harmonicas are centered in the mix.  The sound effect montage is more subdued during the waltz instrumental section and is heard primarily in the left channel at that time, but this montage spans the stereo landscape in the conclusion of the song to create a tantalizing experience when listening with headphones.

Sometime between 2004 and 2006, George Martin and son Giles Martin returned to EMI (Abbey Road) Studios to create special mixes of many Beatles tracks for the Cirque du Soleil show “Love.”  “Mr. Kite!” got special treatment on this day, a new mix being created with less of a stereo separation than the original (all vocals centered) but with many surprises.  Horse sound effects from “Good Morning Good Morning” are heard during the “Henry the horse” waltz section, laughing from the end of “Within You Without You” is heard during the line “a splendid time is guaranteed for all,” and then the conclusion of the song merges the heavy winding ending of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” with some blood-curdling screams by Paul from “Helter Skelter,” all enclosed in heavy reverb and then ending suddenly with nothing but the wind blowing.  It sounds as if George Martin may have finally given in to some pot smoking of his own!

Track 8 – Within You Without You: Thrust upon the world at large in 1967, Indian music and philosophy as introduced by George Harrison through “Within You Without You” appeared as just another element of the emerging drug culture.  The sound of sitars, dilrubas and tablas, along with lyrics about seeing "beyond yourself," “you’re really only very small” and “we’re all one,” appeared as just something else to ‘get high’ to.  Beatle authors who have bought into this opinion view this song as “dated,” “directionless” and ‘hasn’t worn well’ through the years.

What these writers, and possible many Beatles fans, fail to realize is that this genre of music is genuine, traditional, and sacred all at the same time.  Ravi Shankar, whose popularity increased dramatically from this time forward, was aghast to see dope smoking attendants at his performances in the states.  And we also need to understand that, while the lyrics spoke to the “tune in, turn on, drop out” generation in a particular anti-establishment way, this was purely unintentional.  “It’s nothing to do with pills,” George insisted at the time.  He sincerely wanted us to learn about his new-found spiritual truths.  “We are spirits that are encased in bodies,” George stated in an interview as late as 1997, still daring to try to get these spiritual beliefs through to his fans.  “People forget that and think they’re just this body, but we’re actually spirits in bodies.”

The Beatles were always forthcoming in admitting when a particular song was influenced by drugs in some way.  It appears obvious that this wasn’t one of them!

Inside Abbey Road with the red light on and tape machines running, March 15th, 1967 was the first recording session to focus attention on the recently written “Within You Without You,” although, as usual, George hadn’t decided on the song’s title as of this day, the tape box identifying the track as “Untitled.”  Engineer Geoff Emerick, in his book “Here, There And Everywhere,” relates the experience of getting acquainted with the song:  “After the debacle of ‘Only A Northern Song,’ nobody was really expecting too much of George Harrison, and, quite frankly, when he came in at around this time and previewed ‘Within You Without You’ for us, nobody was overwhelmed.  Personally, I thought it was just tedious.  Of course, just hearing him run it down on acoustic guitar gave very little idea of the beautiful song that it was to turn into once all the overdubs were completed, but at the time it caused a lot of eye-rolling among the other Beatles and George Martin.”

The session, scheduled as usual to begin at 7 pm, took place in EMI Studio Two and was attended by some special guests.  “He brought in friends from the Indian Music Association to play some special instruments,” George Martin explains in his book “All You Need Is Ears.”  Mark Lewisohn’s book “The Beatles Recording Sessions” describes these musicians as “from the Asian Music Circle in Fitzalan Road, Finchley, north London.”  “There are some Indian musicians who worked on ‘Sgt. Pepper’ who still haven’t been paid simply because George doesn’t know their names,” George Martin stated in an interview shortly after the release of the album.

Since George Harrison was “a detached, reluctant participant” during the recording of the album, as Geoff Emerick described him, “George Martin must have known that he felt that way, which would explain why he was prepared to put so much time and effort into recording the song.  My theory was that, while Harrison may well have felt trapped by the group’s fame and notoriety, he didn’t want to let the side down, either.  That’s why there was such a sense of relief among everyone when the track turned out so well.”

Geoff Emerick continues: “Studio Two had a hardwood floor, so in order to dampen the sound, I normally put down carpeting underneath Ringo’s drums and in the area where Beatles vocals were recorded.  But this time Richard and I got out a bunch of throw rugs and spread them all over the floor for the musicians to sit on, all in an effort to make them more comfortable and make the studio a bit more homey.  Mind you, the Abbey Road rugs were completely moth-eaten and dilapidated…but it was the thought that counted.”

“All four Beatles were there when the basic track was recorded, along with famed illustrator Peter Blake, who was there to talk about the ‘Sgt. Pepper’ album cover.  He mostly huddled with Paul and John while George was busy instructing the musicians as to the parts he wanted them to play.  Ringo, as usual, was lost in a game of chess off in a corner with Neil (Aspinall).”

Regarding the atmosphere in the studio during the above-mentioned rehearsals for “Within You Without You,” Peter Blake recalls: “George was there with some Indian musicians, and they had a carpet on the floor, and there was incense burning.  George was very sweet – he’s always been very kind and sweet – and he got up and welcomed us in and offered us tea.  We just sat and watched for a couple of hours.  It was a fascinating, historical time.”  Emerick concurs: “It was very calm and peaceful in the studio that evening.  Harrison was surrounded by his new friends, the Indian Musicians, and he was gracious and welcoming when Peter Blake arrived; for perhaps the first time during the ‘Pepper’ session, I could see that George was completely relaxed.”

As to Paul and John’s activities during these rehearsals, Emerick continues: “Paul was somewhat interested in the goings-on and in how the various instruments were played – eventually he even bought a sitar himself – but John seemed quite bored, wandering around the studio aimlessly, not knowing what to contribute.”  “George has done a great Indian one,” Paul stated in an interview in 1967.  “We came along one night, and he had about 400 Indian fellas playing there, and it was a great swinging evening, as they say.”

Once the arrangement was worked out, and all the instrumentalists were warmed up, it was time to start the tapes rolling.  “Eventually the recording commenced,” Emerick relates.  “It was decided to first lay down a drone, with three of four musicians playing one note continuously; even Neil Aspinall was recruited to assist Harrison in playing tamboura.  As the other instruments began to be layered on top of the drone, the structure of the song started to make a little more sense.  I quite liked the sound of the tabla, and, as I had done on George’s ‘Revolver’ track ‘Love You To,’ I once again decided to close-mic them and add signal processing to make things a bit more exciting sonically.”  In the book “The Beatles Recording Sessions,” Emerick states: “Everyone was amazed when they first heard a tabla recorded that closely, with the texture and the lovely low resonances.”  The other Indian instruments recorded on this day were swordmandel, which is a multi-stringed board zither, and dilruba, described by Emerick as “a bowed instrument similar to a sitar, but smaller.”

In using the above-mentioned Ravi Shankar composition as inspiration, the recording was done in three sections:  the first comprising the first two verses and the refrain, the second being the elaborate 5/4 instrumental section of the song, and the third being the return to the original tempo and comprising the final verse and refrain.  These were made “in three edit-sections which he then pieced together,” according to the book “Revolution In The Head.”  The book “The Beatles Recording Sessions” indicates the song “lasting 6:25” at this point, this meaning that since the finished product was 5:03, editing had to be done during the mixing stage.

“Because the song was unusually long,” Emerick continues, “there were quite a few glances between John and Paul when the rhythm track was being recorded, and I could tell that they were a bit dubious.  ‘Yes, it’s all very nice,’ I could imagine they were thinking, ‘and it’s all very well played, but it isn’t Beatles, is it?’…I guess they went along with it for the sake of band unity.”

“We all knew George liked Indian music,” stated George Martin in the film “The Making Of Sgt. Pepper.”  “There was a kind of toleration if you like, but it was a welcome one because we actually liked the sounds.  The joss sticks were even OK – they covered the smell of pot.”

The instruments recorded on this day filled up tracks one, two and four of the four-track tape.  By 1:30 am the following morning, the session was complete, the unnamed Indian musicians went home, and the rugs were rolled up for the night.

A week later, on March 22nd, 1967, work continued on “Within You Without You” in EMI Studio Two, this session also earmarked to begin at 7 pm.  “A refreshed, rejuvenated George Harrison came back to the studio and oversaw the overdubbing of a couple of additional dilruba parts,” says Emerick about this day’s work.

“I was introduced to the dilruba,” George Martin recalls, “an Indian violin, in playing which a lot of sliding techniques are used.”  These dilrubas were played by another unnamed musician, undoubtedly overdubbing himself (or herself), the result being the sliding melody lines heard throughout the song.  The tape speed was increased to 52 1/2 cycles per second so that it would sound slowed down when played back at the proper speed.

“The other three Beatles were present at the session,” Emerick remembers, “but boredom set in quickly, so arrangements were made to have them listen to other works in progress in another control room.  Deep in concentration, George barely even noticed that the others had departed; he may have even welcomed them leaving him to work on his own.”  This listening session is described in the book “The Beatles Recording Sessions” in this way:  “In the control room of Studio One, between 11 pm and 12:30 am, tape operator Graham Kirkby oversaw a playback of the LP songs completed to date for any Beatle interested in listening.”

The dilrubas recorded on this day went onto track three of the four-track tape and, since the tape was now full, a reduction mix was made which turned ‘take one’ into ‘take two.’  After this had been accomplished, a demo mono mix was made in order for an acetate recording to be available to hear what’s been done so far on the song.  By 2:15 am the following morning, the session was complete.

One final recording session was needed to bring “Within You Without You” to completion, this extensive session happening on April 3rd, 1967 in EMI Studio One beginning at 7 pm.  Studio One was chosen because of it being larger and more suitable for orchestral recordings, this being the major ingredient being recorded on this day.  This session is also noteworthy because, apart from the “Inner Groove” that was quickly recorded for the run-out groove of the British album, this was the final recording session for the entire “Sgt. Pepper” album.  George Harrison may have been the only Beatle present on this day “with Paul somewhere over the Atlantic, winging his way to America” as Geoff Emerick put it, but it was a landmark day nonetheless.  “As was becoming a habit,” Emerick continues, “it was a marathon session, running until dawn the next day, but the results were nothing short of magical.”

However, much preparatory work was needed from George Martin before this session.  “What was difficult,” explains Martin, “was writing a score for the cellos and violins that the English players would be able to play like the Indians.  The dilruba player, for example, was doing all kinds of swoops and so I actually had to score that for strings and instruct the players to follow.”  Concerning the “sliding techniques” of the previously recorded Indian instruments, Martin explains: “This meant that in scoring for that track I had to make the string players play very much like Indian musicians, bending the notes, and with slurs between one note and the next.”  The book “Revolution In The Head” explains: “A less than enthusiastic Martin did his best to catch the idiom, carefully marking in the microtonal slides his London Symphony Orchestra players were required to imitate.”

Geoff Emerick explains the events of the day:  “George Martin was conducting the same top-flight orchestral players that worked on most of the rest of ‘Pepper,’ but despite their expertise, the musicians took a long time to get it right; I clearly remember the look of deep concentration on their faces as they struggled to master the complex score.  It was painstaking, and it certainly was a challenge to the musicians, many of whom seemed to be getting a bit frustrated as the session wore on.”

“The problem was that we were trying to create a blend of East meets West – conventional orchestral instruments playing over nonconventional Indian instruments.  There were no real bar lines in the Eastern music, just a lot of sustained tones, most of which were playing in between the twelve notes used in Western music.  That was a really hard session for George Martin – by the end of the night, he was absolutely knackered.  Thankfully he had the help of George Harrison, who acted as a bridge between the Indian tonalities and rhythms, which he understood quite well, and the Western sensibilities of George Martin and the classical musicians.  I was never more impressed with both Georges than I was on that very special, almost spiritual night.”

While the recording of seasoned string players working off of a detailed score usually gets it nearly perfect from their first try (see “She’s Leaving Home” as a prime example), many attempts needed to be made this time around.  The book “The Beatles Recording Sessions” states: “Each take of the strings overdub went directly onto track three of the four-track tape, automatically wiping the previous attempt, and this procedure went on until all were satisfied that it could not be improved any further.”  The session musicians were then dismissed for the evening at approximately 11 pm; leader Erich Gruenberg received eleven pounds while the remainder of the players received the Musicians’ Union session rate of nine pounds.

Geoff Emerick now describes the events of the rest of the session.  “After the string overdubs were completed and the musicians had departed, we moved into Studio Two, where George Harrison began tuning his sitar, sitting cross-legged on a throw rug we had put down for him.  He only had to overdub three of four licks in the instrumental section, but some of the drop-ins were tricky, and it took hours to do.  None of us ever really appreciated how difficult the sitar was to play.  Despite the fact that George was quite accomplished, it did always seem to take a lot of time to get his parts recorded whenever he picked the instrument up.”

As was his want, George chose to fill in the empty spaces between the melody lines played by the dilruba in this section of the song.  (See “I’m Looking Through You” and, “She Said She Said” for other examples of George ‘filling in the gaps’ of the melody lines.)  Upon listening, there is actually eight sitar fills George added to the instrumental section on this day as well as other vamping and mimicking of the dilruba melody line.  Interestingly, it appears that they attempted to double-track these fills, the first one being double-tracked while the others remain single tracked, undoubtedly realizing the difficulty they were having in getting this done and how much time they were taking.

With the sitar work complete, they quickly went to the next task at hand.  “Finally, with the lights down low and candles and incense burning,” Emerick continues, “George tackled the lead vocal, and he did a great job.  Mind you; he does sound quite sleepy on it…hardly surprising since he’d been up all night working on the track!  Fortunately, that lethargic quality seemed to perfectly complement the mood of the song.”  It wasn’t only his lack of sleep that created the vocal feel needed for the song.  The same finesse that the string musicians used had to also be perfected by George.  As George Martin explains, he had to sing “the same tune as the dilruba in exactly the same way; the same kind of swoops that the dilruba does.”  He worked at perfecting this art, recording each attempt directly onto track four of the tape, also wiping away any previous attempt in the process.

Although it remains to be found on the finished product, “The Beatles Recording Sessions” indicates that George also recorded “a dash of acoustic guitar…just here and there” before the evening was complete, all of George’s overdubs being preserved on track four of the master tape.  With all of this accomplished, the production staff of Martin, Emerick and 2nd engineer Richard Lush took the time to try their hand at creating a mono mix, making three attempts at mixing ‘part one’ of the song and two tries at ‘part two and three’ with the intention of editing them together later.  “The sun was rising as we staggered out of the studio the next morning,” remembers Geoff Emerick, “but I felt completely satisfied, proud of our accomplishment.”

Later that day, April 4th, 1967, the same team of Martin, Emerick, and Lush convened back into the control room of EMI Studio Two at 7 pm to create both the mono and stereo mixes of “Within You Without You” that appeared on the released versions of the album.  They made six more attempts at ‘part one’ of the song (remix 6 through 11) and only one try at ‘parts two and three’ (remix 12) and then edited them together (remix 10 and 12) to get the final mono mix.

However, per George Harrison’s request, they added a small bit of laughter at the end of the song as it faded out.  “The laugh at the very end of the track was George Harrison,” George Martin explains.  “He just thought it would be a good idea to put on it...I think he just wanted to relieve the tedium a bit.  George was slightly embarrassed and defensive about his work. I was always conscious of that."  The production staff superimposed a bit of recorded laughter as they were editing the two sections of the mono mix together.  According to “The Beatles Recording Sessions,” this laughter came “courtesy of the Abbey Road sound effects collection, ‘Volume 6: Applause and Laughter.’”  However, George Martin’s book “Summer Of Love” explains this snippet as The Beatles laughing after an unknown take during the “Sgt. Pepper” sessions.  In either case, the laughter comes in quite abruptly and loudly in the final seconds of the mono mix.

The stereo mix was then tackled, three mixes of ‘part one’ (remixes 1 through 3) and two mixes of ‘parts two and three’ (remixes 4 and 5), mixes 3 and 5 were joined together to form the finished stereo mix.  During the editing of these two mixes, they once again superimposed some laughter, taking a similar but noticeably different section of laughter than what they used for the mono mix.  The initial tamboura drone, the tabla and the introductory swordwandel is heard in the left channel of the stereo mix, while the dilrubas are strictly in the right channel.  The vocals, sitar and second swordmandel appearance are centered in the mix while the acoustic guitar is apparently buried somewhere deep in the mix.  The ending laughter is a little more subtle and is only heard in the right channel of the stereo mix.

While George Martin described “Within You Without You” in 1979 as “a rather dreary song,” he changed his opinion as the years passed.  "I actually think 'Within You Without You' would have benefitted a bit by being shorter, but it was a very interesting song," Martin later said.  "I find it more interesting now than I did then."  This new opinion is also obvious by his choice to include a new mix of the recording on the 1996 compilation “Anthology 2.”  He was undoubtedly proud of the hard work he put into the string score and the performance he and George Harrison got out of the violinists and cellists.  “From then on,” Geoff Emerick explains, “many of George Martin’s orchestrations began exhibiting that same kind of Indian feel, with string sections doing slight pitch-bending.  It actually put a stamp on his arrangements and gave them a unique sound.”  The unique and vibrant mix of the song on “Anthology 2” has all of the elements of the released version, minus George’s lead vocals and the ending laughter.

Even more thrilling to hear was the new mix created by George Martin and his son Giles Martin for the Cirque du Soliel production and subsequent album “Love.”  They worked hard to combine the rhythmic elements of “Tomorrow Never Knows” with George’s vocals of “Within You Without You” to create what many view as the crowning jewel of the album.  This mix, created sometime between 2004 and 2006, had to be constructed to fit the sometimes-changing time signatures of the original, this being done by strategic editing and blending of elements of both songs.  The second verse takes away the rhythms of “Tomorrow Never Knows” to reveal more of the tablas and dilrubas of “Within You Without You,” while the backward vocal lines of “Rain” are even thrown in at the close of the track.  Very inventive indeed!

Be sure to join me tomorrow for a thorough account in creating ‘When I’M Sixty-Four’ and ‘Lovely Rita.’

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THE INCREDIBLE RECORDING PROCESS OF FIXING A HOLE AND SHE'S LEAVING HOME.

Track 5 – Fixing A Hole: While not making too many people’s ‘Favorite Beatles’ Songs’ list, and also not known for getting much radio airplay, it nonetheless stands the test of time as a strong group performance. It stands among an album filled with songs that have all the ‘bells and whistles’ included, such as Indian instruments, audience applause and laughter, a calliope, clarinets, raving orchestra swells and animal sound effects. “Fixing A Hole” has none of those things. What it does have, however, is a straightforward pop/rock arrangement using conventional instrumentation, the only eccentric touch being the inclusion of a harpsichord. The result is nothing less than imaginative and articulate for its time.

On February 9th, 1967, about two weeks after the song was finished being written (according to Mal Evans’ January 27th diary entry), the group entered the studio to work on the song. However, it was not at their usual EMI Studios that the rhythm track for “Fixing A Hole” was recorded. “I’m afraid the boys didn’t plan very much,” recalled producer George Martin, “and when they wanted to come into a studio, they never said to me, ‘keep the next two weeks free, because we’re sure we’re going to be needing a studio.’ They would ring me up at 10 in the morning and say, ‘We want to record tonight at 7 o’clock, OK?’ And I had to find a damned studio.”

The “damned studio” that he found was Regent Sound Studio in London where many of the early Rolling Stones hits were recorded, as well as other popular artists. “Regent Sound was a pretty awful little studio, very cramped and boxy,” relates George Martin. Engineer Geoff Emerick, in his book “Here, There And Everywhere,” recalls his frustration of not being able to attend this session: “Ridiculously, even though we’d recorded almost every note on the album up to that point, Richard (Lush) and I couldn’t go there because we were EMI employees. George Martin, on the other hand, could attend, because he was working as an independent contractor.”  This procedure changed in later years, allowing recording staff to complete a project no matter what studio was used on a given day. But as it was on this day, Adrian Ibbetson was used as a replacement for Geoff Emerick. The hours The Beatles were in Regent Sound on this day is not known but, if recent habits dictate, the session probably began around 7 pm and lasted until early morning the next day.

There is one other person known to have been present on this day. Paul relates: “The funny thing about that was the night when we were going to record it, at Regent Sound Studios at Tottenham Court Road, I brought a guy who was Jesus. A guy arrived at my front gate, and I said, ‘Yes? Hello’ because I always used to answer it to everyone. If they were boring, I would say, ‘Sorry, no,’ and they generally went away. This guy said, ‘I’m Jesus Christ.’ I said, ‘Oop,’ slightly shocked. I said, ‘Well, you’d better come in then.’ I thought, Well, it probably isn’t. But if he is, I’m not going to be the one to turn him away. So I gave him a cup of tea, and we just chatted, and I asked, ‘Why do you think you are Jesus?’ There were a lot of casualties about then. We used to get a lot of people who were maybe insecure or going through emotional breakdowns or whatever.”

“So I said, ‘I’ve got to go to a session, but if you promise to be very quiet and just sit in a corner, you can come.’ So he did, he came to the session, and he did sit very quietly, and I never saw him after that. I introduced him to the guys. They said, ‘Who’s this?’ I said, ‘He’s Jesus Christ.’ We had a bit of a giggle over that…But that was it. Last we ever saw of Jesus!”

With Jesus Christ in the corner, The Beatles began their studio time on this day with extensive rehearsals led by Paul, at least six unofficial takes being recorded before they had the arrangement ironed out. “Paul knew exactly where he was going with 'Fixing A Hole,'" wrote George Martin in the book “Summer Of Love.”  He continues: “As a result, it was one of the fastest tracks we recorded, in an album of 13 songs that took some five months to complete…It's a very simply constructed song, built around a harpsichord and a bass guitar. Even before we got into the studio Paul had decided to use a harpsichord as the mainstay of his rhythm; even so, the bass line is more important than the harpsichord line.”

Once everyone’s parts were learned, the group taped three official ‘takes’ of the rhythm track of the song. Unusually, they reverted to the recording technique of the early Beatles sessions by recording all the instruments, and lead vocals live, even the lead guitar work. Common practice for the past year had them overdubbing the lead vocals, bass and lead guitar afterward in order to ‘fine tune’ these performances. Possibly because of the cramped and unfamiliar setting of Regent Sound Studios, they reverted to basics for “Fixing A Hole.”

Even though Geoff Emerick couldn’t be there, he was impressed by the performance nonetheless. “We listened to the tapes a few days later, and while they were a bit disappointing sonically, I was impressed with the vibe: all four Beatles played together on the backing track, just like in the old days, and George Harrison played a good guitar solo, too.”

The question, however, is the identity of the players of the instruments. George is on lead guitar and, of course, Ringo is on drums, but there is a discrepancy about the other instruments. Beatles road manager Neil Aspinall, writing in the magazine “The Beatles Monthly,” claims to have witnessed Paul playing the distinctive harpsichord part. And, while engineer Richard Lush wasn’t present on this day, he is quoted in Andy Babiuk’s book “Beatles Gear” as saying: “I do remember that Lennon played the bass on that track. He used a Fender bass on it. If you play the album, you can pick it out because it’s very simple, and a ploppy sort of sound. It didn’t sound as rich as Paul’s Rickenbacker bass.”

While this seems to settle the issue, there is much more to consider. We have to remember that, since Richard Lush wasn’t allowed to be present by EMI on that day, his opinion is based on listening to the recordings of that day when they reconvened to add overdubs to it nearly two weeks later (February 21st). The bass was recorded live on the rhythm track utilizing an engineer using standard procedures, the Rickenbacker bass sound on the rest of the “Sgt. Pepper” album being overdubbed afterward for optimal quality. As Geoff Emerick related, the recording was “disappointing sonically.”

Someone who was there, however, was producer George Martin. In the book “Summer Of Love” he states: “Paul had to play bass guitar on it because nobody could (or can) play that instrument quite like him. That meant someone else was going to have to play keyboards. This was unusual because Paul always liked to play his own keyboards on his own compositions. The part of honorary stand-in keyboard player to the greatest group in the world was offered to me.”  Neil Aspinall’s account of witnessing Paul on harpsichord could very well have been early rehearsals of the song or in instructing George Martin on how he wanted the keyboard part to be played.

This would, therefore, leave John Lennon out of the picture. Upon listening to the released recording, however, it appears the maracas heard throughout the song were also part of the rhythm track since it is panned specifically to the left channel of the stereo mix along with the rhythm track recorded on this day. This appears to be the best explanation of the instrumentalists on “Fixing A Hole”: Paul on bass and lead vocals, George Harrison on lead guitar, Ringo on drums, John on maracas and George Martin on harpsichord.

Of the official three ‘takes’ of the song recorded on this day, the first two were complete, and the third broke down before the song was complete but was viewed as desirable by the group nonetheless. In any event, as related in Mark Lewisohn’s book “The Beatles Recording Sessions”: “The first two (takes) were both very good so onto the tape box was written, rather ambiguously, ‘master’ for take one and ‘final master’ for take two.”  Although undecided which ‘take’ was going to be used for overdubs, they apparently knew they accomplished what they set out to do on this day.

February 21st, 1967, was the second and last day needed to complete “Fixing A Hole.”  They were back in EMI Studio Two this time around with engineers Geoff Emerick and Richard Lush back on the job, the session scheduled to begin at 7 pm. The first thought was to salvage the partial ‘take three’ that was recorded two weeks prior even though it broke down before the song was completed. There must have been something they liked on this ‘take’ even though it wasn’t complete. Therefore, the group recorded another ‘take’ of the song (incorrectly labeling it ‘take one’) with the intention of mixing it together with the incomplete ‘take three.’

Apparently, this idea didn’t work out as planned and they dropped it. Instead, a reduction mix was made of ‘take two’ (the one originally labeled ‘final master’) in order to free up some empty tracks for overdubbing. George’s lead guitar work was isolated to a separate track, however, to single it out in the stereo mix. Paul’s bass was combined with the rest of the instruments, leaving a performance flub in the third verse which therefore couldn’t be corrected later. To confuse things even more, they labeled this reduction mix ‘take three,’ not to be confused with the incomplete ‘take three’ recorded at Regent Sound. Still with me?

This being done, they recorded overdubs, which comprised Paul double-tracking his lead vocals in strategic spots, George double-tracking his lead guitar work, and John and George performing backing vocals. The mono mix was tackled on this day as well with The Beatles present. Five attempts at the mono mix were made (for some reason labeled remixes 2 through 6), an edit of remix 3 and 6 being used for the final product. Ringo’s drums are quite prominent throughout the song while George’s lead guitar work is somewhat subdued in the mix. In the fade out, Paul is heard singing a high pitched but faintly audible “hey” twice, the second during the lead vocal overdub.

The stereo mix wasn’t created until April 7th, 1967, in the control room of EMI Studio Two by the same Martin, Emerick and Lush team. The rhythm track is predominantly in the left channel while both lead vocal parts from Paul are centered in the mix. Both tracks of George’s lead guitar are panned to the right channel as are the background vocals of John and George. The drums are a little more subdued than on the mono mix, but the lead guitar passages are more prominent. This stereo mix fades a little sooner so as not to hear the “hey” exclamations as heard on the mono mix.

Track 6 – She’s Leaving Home: Of the three Beatles songs usually thought of as orchestrated, “She’s Leaving Home” is usually considered the least successful. While “Eleanor Rigby” won Paul a Grammy Award for “Best Contemporary Vocal Performance, Male or Female” in 1966, and “Yesterday” secured the number one spot on the US Billboard pop charts for four weeks and went on to become the most covered song in history according to the Guinness Book Of World Records (with over 2,500 recorded versions), “She’s Leaving Home” remained an album track and received little attention by the masses in comparison.

This is not to say this extremely moving song - arguably the most moving song in the entire Beatles catalog - didn’t get noticed. Before the album was released, Paul flew to Los Angeles to premiere some of the new tracks to Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, Paul playing “She’s Leaving Home” on the piano for Brian and his wife. “We both just cried,” Brian explains. “It was beautiful.”

Also, on June 12th, 1967, just ten days after “Sgt. Pepper” was released, Harry Nilsson was nearly finished recording his first RCA album “Pandemonium Shadow Show” when he found himself impelled to record his own version of “She’s Leaving Home.”  “With his savvy musical sense, he knew a gem when he heard one,” related Derek Taylor in the CD liner notes to Nilsson’s album.

While the song may be habitually skipped over by listeners throughout the later years, the overall complexity and versatility of the “Sgt. Pepper” experience cannot be fully enjoyed without appreciating its’ dramatic and poignant flair. Author Chris Ingham puts it perfectly when he describes the instrumentation as “one of the lushest Beatle orchestral sounds on one of the most mature Beatles songs.”

Before recording began, Paul thought carefully about how the song should be presented on the album. “Paul was getting very keen on the possibilities of orchestral settings,” states Barry Miles in the book “Many Years From Now,” “and felt that ‘She’s Leaving Home’ would be best suited for this type of arrangement.”  Therefore, on March 10th, 1967 or thereabouts, Paul contacted George Martin about his idea.

In his book “All You Need Is Ears,” George Martin describes his take on this discussion with Paul: “During the making of ‘Pepper’ he was also to give me one of the biggest hurts of my life…At that time I was still having to record all my other artists. One day Paul rang me to say: ‘I’ve got a song I want you to work with me on. Can you come round tomorrow afternoon? I want to get it done quickly. We’ll book an orchestra, and you can score it.’ ‘I can’t tomorrow, Paul. I’m recording Cilla (Black) at two-thirty.’ ‘Come on. You can come round at two o’clock.’ ‘No, I can’t, I’ve got a session on.’ ‘All right, then,’ he said, and that ended the conversation.”

“What he did then, as I discovered later, was to get Neil Aspinall, the road manager, to ring round and find someone else to do the score for him, simply because I couldn’t do it at that short notice. In the end, he found Mike Leander, who could. The following day Paul presented me with it and said, ‘Here we are. I’ve got a score. We can record it now.’”

“I recorded it, with a few alterations to make it work better, but I was hurt. I thought: Paul, you could have waited, for I really couldn’t have done it that afternoon, unless I had just devoted everything to The Beatles and never dealt with any other artist. Paul obviously didn’t think it was important that I should do everything. To me it was. I wasn’t getting much out of it from a financial point of view, but at least I was getting satisfaction. The score itself was good enough, and still, holds up today, but it was the only score that was ever done by anyone else during all my time with The Beatles. However, it had happened, and there was nothing to be done about it.”

Mike Leander was a freelance producer and arranger who Paul met while attending the recording session at Decca Studios for Marianne Faithfull’s version of Paul’s song “Yesterday.”  Apparently, he remembered meeting him at this session on got his number by dispatching Neil Aspinall to find it for him.

Paul explains his side of the story in “Many Years From Now”: “I rang George Martin and said, ‘I’m really on to this song, George. I want to record it next week.’ I’m really hot to record it, I’ve got one of those ‘I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go!’ feelings and when you get them, you don’t want anything to stop you, you feel like if you lose this impetus, you’ll lose something valuable. So I rang him, and I said, ‘I need you to arrange it.’ He said, ‘I’m sorry, Paul, I’ve got a Cilla session.’ And I thought, F**king hell!  After all this time working together, he ought to put himself out. It was probably unreasonable to expect him to.”

“Anyway, I said, ‘Well, fine, thanks, George,’ but I was so hot to trot that I called Mike Leander, another arranger. I got him to come over to Cavendish Avenue, and I showed him what I wanted, strings, and he said, ‘Leave it with me.’ It is one of the first times I actually let anyone arrange something and then reviewed it later, which I don’t like as a practice. It’s much easier if I just stay with them. Anyway, he took it away, did it, and George Martin was very hurt, apparently. Extremely hurt, but of course, I was hurt that he didn’t have time for me, but he had time for Cilla (Black).”

“It was the song that got away,” George Martin stated later. “It was the song I wanted to do…It was just one of those silly things. He was so damned impatient, and I was up to my eyes with other work, and I just couldn’t cope. But Paul realizes now, though he was surprised that I was upset.”

At any rate, with all hurt feelings aside, the session for “She’s Leaving Home” was booked for March 17th, 1967, in EMI Studio Two. It appears that Paul was the only Beatle in attendance on this day, the intention of this session being the recording of the strings only. The instrumentalists booked for this session were Erich Gruenberg (leader), Derek Jacobs, Trevor Williams and Jose Luis Garcia (violins), John Underwood and Stephen Shingles (violas), Dennis Vigay and Alan Dalziel (cellos), Gordon Pearce (double-bass) and Sheila Bromberg (harp). Sheila was the first woman to appear on a Beatles recording (unless you count Pattie Boyd and Marianne Faithfull’s scant contributions to “Yellow Submarine”)

The session documents indicate it to have begun at 7 pm, but harpist Sheila Bromberg, in a 2011 BBC segment, indicates otherwise. “There were people called fixers. This fixer called me up and said, am I free from 9 o’clock at night until midnight?..and I thought, ‘Do I really want a session from 9 to midnight?’ But it was Alec, and he gave me a lot of work, so I didn’t want to turn him down…So I was sitting here (in EMI Studio Two) at half-passed eight tuning the harp.”

George Martin prepared the final sheet music to be presented to the ten musicians present on this day and gave it to them to rehearse before 9 pm arrived. “I had to change the score a little bit, but not very much,” George Martin recalls, adding, “Mike Leander did a good job.”  Sheila continues: “Suddenly a piece of music was plunked on my music stand, and I gave it a brief look…(Alec) didn’t tell me at the time it was for The Beatles. You never knew who you were going to play with…And then this voice said, ‘Well, whatcha got on the duss?,” meaning ‘What’s written on the music?’ I recognized the Liverpool accent. I turned around and, of course, it was Paul McCartney.”

Six takes of the song were recorded on this day and, being that these were professional session musicians, their performances were nearly flawless right from the start. However, someone, in particular, was fussy about what he wanted. “First of all I played exactly what was written,” Sheila relates. “Then I stopped and (Paul) said, ‘No, I don’t want that. I want something, ehhhh…’”  After she tried out other ideas, Paul would just repeat, “No, I don’t want that. I want something, ehhh…”  “I think he had an idea in his head of what he wanted it to sound like, but he couldn’t describe it, he couldn’t express it, and he was waiting for somebody to bring it out of the air. During the session, after each time we played it, Paul McCartney, we would hear from the controls, ‘No, I don’t want that. I want something, ehhh…’ So we’d play it again.”

“Came midnight, and the string section were really fed up. And eventually, the leader of the orchestra stood up, Erich Gruenberg, tucked his violin under his arm, and said, ‘Now it is midnight, we have to go home because we are working in the morning.’ So a voice (Paul) from the control box said, ‘Well, I suppose that’s that then.’ And we all went home.”  With not much difference between the performance of the takes, both ‘take one’ and ‘take six’ were marked as ‘best’ and the session was complete for the day by 12:45 am.

Three days later, on March 20th, 1967, the next session for “She’s Leaving Home” was booked for 7 pm at EMI Studio Two with at least two Beatles in attendance, Paul, and John. The first task at hand was to free up space for overdubs of the vocals since all four tracks on the four-track tape will filled with the strings from three days ago. This could easily be accomplished by making a tape reduction onto another four-track tape to leave open two tracks for the overdubs. However, they still couldn’t decide whether ‘take one’ or ‘take six’ was really ‘best’ (there being hardly a difference anyway), so they did reduction mixes for both;  ‘take one’ received three reduction mixes (takes 7 through 9) and ‘take six’ received one (take 10). Thereafter, the final decision was made: the third reduction mix of ‘take one,’ now considered ‘take 9,’ was the winner. So, as it came to be, the very first performance from the ten-piece string section was the one that was used, Paul making them stick around until midnight for no reason whatsoever.

The next job was to overlay the vocals. Engineer Geoff Emerick, in his book “Here, There And Everywhere,” relates the eyewitness details. “There were still two available tracks on the multitrack tape, but Paul felt strongly that he wanted certain lines double-tracked, and he also wanted the strings to remain in stereo. The only solution was to have them sing their vocals at the same time, recording each pass on a single track.”

“The lights in the studio were turned off to set the mood; the sole source of illumination was a table lamp next to the wall. The two Beatles, lifelong friends, and collaborators, sat on high stools, facing each other, studying each other’s lips intently for phrasing. Watching them, I remember thinking that John’s and Paul’s voices were so different yet so perfectly complemented each other’s, just like their personalities and approach to music-making. It wasn’t an easy vocal to nail down, either – at one point there was a long discussion about getting the right amount of emotion into the lyric. Paul was quite the perfectionist by this time, and he was really pissing John off by having him sing the same line over and over again. Up in the control room, I had to do a bit of tweaking to get the correct perspective and contrast between the two vocals.”

This being completed, and after some interviews and recorded speeches were taped by John and Paul, the mono mix was created to complete the day’s activity. This was done in the control room of EMI Studio Two by George Martin, Geoff Emerick, and 2nd engineer Ken Scott, undoubtedly with Paul and John still present. They made six attempts at this mono mix, the sixth being deemed the best. Paul still wanted something to be done with the opening harp segment of the song, so different experiments were pursued. The first mix had them treating it with ADT (Artificial Double Tracking) to give it a richer sound, but they ended up scrapping this idea. The sixth mix had them adding a doubling effect to the harp, which is what they ended up keeping.

“That’s what he was after,” Sheila Bromberg exclaimed when she heard the final product. However, Paul is a little sketchy on this detail. “I don’t like the echo on the harp, but that must be George (Martin) rather than Mike Leander, or, to give him his due, it might have been one of us saying, ‘Stick some echo on that harp.’ You just can’t tell.”  My vote is that Paul forgot about his insistence and never did get the sound he wanted.

At this stage a decision was made to make two edits to the song, deleting a small section from the end of both the first and second chorus (just after the words “for so many years” and just before the following verse begins in both instances). With these edits accomplished and a slight bit of reverb added, the mono mix was complete, and the session was over, it already being 3:30 am the next morning.

The stereo mix wasn’t made until April 17th, 1967, in the control room of EMI Studio Two by Martin, Emerick and 2nd engineer Richard Lush. The violins and harp are panned to the right channel while the violas, cellos, and double-bass are panned to the left, all vocals being centered in the mix. While current opinion has it that more emphasis was still given to the mono mixes, Paul did get his wish to have stereo strings in this song, he apparently thinking of the consumers who preferred to hear Beatles music in stereo.

A curious difference between the mono and stereo mixes is the speed, the stereo mix slowing the tempo down slightly, making Paul’s vocals sound a little laborious in the process. It has been suggested by some that this was unintentional and that the original tape speed was altered as many other “Sgt. Pepper” songs were and then, forgetting the speed it was recorded at, made the stereo mix at the standard speed. In any event, a small amount of reverb was added, the opening harp segment was doubled, and the two edits were made as they were on the mono mix.

A live recording of “She’s Leaving Home” by Paul, and his band was made in Mexico City in early November of 2002, this version gracing the international album “Back In The World.”

Be sure to join me tomorrow for a thorough account in creating ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite,’ and ‘Within You Without You.’ 

Please feel free to leave any comments or corrections and share these articles plus the 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 details.
 

THE INCREDIBLE RECORDING PROCESS OF LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS AND GETTING BETTER.

Track 3 – Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds: “This one’s one of the best songs ever written.”    This 1974 quote from Elton John typifies the allure and mystique that “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” had on the public at large when it was released and for many years thereafter. It deservedly earned its’ place on the greatest hits compilation “The Beatles 1967/1970” and received heavy radio airplay on pop and rock radio stations throughout the world.

However, as time has passed, “Lucy” is a song that has sadly lost some of that allure. Radio stations tend to skip it except on very rare occasions; even Elton’s chart-topping rendition. Listeners pass it off as a ‘period piece, ’ and writers dismiss it as “poorly thought out, succeeding more like a glamorous production than as an integrated song,” as prestigious author Ian MacDonald states in his book “Revolution In The Head.”    Another quote that possibly didn’t help the song’s popularity was in Lennon’s 1980 Playboy interview. “There was also the image of the female who would someday come save me – ‘a girl with kaleidoscope eyes,’ who would come out of the sky. It turned out to be Yoko, though I hadn’t met Yoko yet. So maybe it should be ‘Yoko In The Sky With Diamonds.’”

The sorrowful death of Lucy Vodden (O’Donnell), the unintentional inspiration for the song, in 2009 from Lupus then hit the media. The story of Julian Lennon’s recent re-connection with her spurred an emotional response from readers, this resulting in Julian releasing a tribute single after her passing titled “Lucy” which gave 50% of the proceeds to fund Lupus research. This increased interest undoubtedly gave the original Beatles song more credibility, resulting in it coming in at #19 in the 2010 released “The Beatles 100 Greatest Songs” special edition of Rolling Stone magazine. It is hoped that, once again, the collective creative genius of “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” has deservedly captured the hearts of the public at large as, in the very least, a historical piece of music that played a large part in sparking the creativity of musicians and songwriters throughout time.

Inside the EMI Studio Two, February 28th, 1967, without the red light on and no tape machines rolling was actually used entirely for rehearsals, documentation shows no known takes being put to tape at all. According to George Martin in the book “Summer Of Love,” this day could well be considered as part of the songwriting process, John composing much of the song “on the hoof.” 

Eight hours of rehearsals, from 7 pm to 3 am the next morning, is practically unheard of today…and even then if you weren’t The Beatles, that is. With “studio time being hardly a cheap commodity,” as explained by Mark Lewisohn in “The Beatles Recording Sessions,” “in the 60’s, with EMI recording The Beatles and owning the studios at Abbey Road, the expense of studio time was merely an internal paper transaction and was not deducted from the Beatles’ royalty payments. No budget restraints were put on the group, nor onto George Martin, no longer an EMI employee.” As George Martin explained: “I can only presume that EMI realized it was onto a good thing.” 

Having the bugs worked out, the group filed back into EMI Studio Two the next day (or, should I say, later that same day), March 1st, 1967, for proper recording of the rhythm track of “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.”    The session began once again at 7 pm, the first order of business being recording a piano overdub for the previously mixed “A Day In The Life,” this overdub never being used.

The rhythm track for “Lucy” consisted of Paul playing a Lowery organ, John on acoustic guitar, Ringo on drums, George on maracas and George Martin on piano – Paul and Ringo’s playing being the only elements specifically noticeable in the finished product. In “The Beatles Monthly Book” of June 1967, Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall wrote that the song “starts with McCartney playing Hammond organ using a special organ stop which gives a bell-like overchord effect which makes it sound like a celeste.”    In the book “Beatles Gear,” however, author Andy Babiuk debunks this statement. “Photographic evidence reveals that McCartney, in fact, used a Lowery DSO Heritage Deluxe organ,” Babiuk asserts. “It was the Lowery DSO’s preset voices of harpsichord, vibraharp, guitar and ‘music box’ that provided the magical tones required.” 

John did sing a lead vocal on the verses during these rhythm tracks, although they were merely perfunctory and performed solely for the purpose of guiding the musicians. ‘Take six’ of this rhythm track, with John’s guide vocal, is heard on “Anthology 2” as combined with other elements recorded a little later.

Analyzing John’s vocal performance on this day shows the evolution of delivery and feel his vocals went through as the song took shape in the studio. “Over that very, very simple and beautiful (keyboard) phrase, John sang just one note,”

George Martin explains in the film “The Making Of Sgt. Pepper.”  “He developed it, I mean, he had a way of finding out what he wanted to sing, even as we were recording.”  Mark Lewisohn adds: “  During the early part of the session, he was singing the words ‘Cellophane flowers of yellow and green’ in such a way that each was enunciated slowly, separately and precisely. Paul can be heard to suggest he sing them quicker, in one flowing sentence, to which John replied ‘OK’ and did just that.” 

Engineer Geoff Emerick, in his book “Here, There And Everywhere,” also comments on this change of vocal delivery: “By this point, the four Beatles were starting to get a little fed up with being stuck in the studio. After all, they’d been there for nearly five months, and it wasn’t the dead of winter anymore…the weather was starting to brighten, so they were probably starting to get itchy feet.” 

"By now, it was evident that John’s personality was changing,” Emerick continues.

“Instead of being opinionated about everything, he was becoming complacent; in fact, he seemed quite content to have someone else do his thinking for him, even when we were working on one of his own songs. By the spring of 1967, he was becoming increasingly disengaged…No doubt Paul was aware of the situation, and he was seizing the opportunity to step in and expand his role within the band. That manifested itself down in the studio as they worked on this song, with John’s lead vocal getting less aggressive and more dreamy with each successive take. That might have been a reflection of what he was smoking behind the screens, but Paul was clearly steering him in that direction, too.” 

The true lead vocals to the song weren’t recorded on this day, but one other element did surface before the day was done. ‘Take seven’ saw George Harrison put down his maracas and instead play a droning tamboura part, this being a large Indian instrument that adds the other-worldly Eastern flavor to the song. “I particularly liked the sounds on it where I managed to superimpose some Indian instruments onto Western music,” Harrison related. “Under normal circumstances that wouldn’t work on a Western song like ‘Lucy,’ which has chord changes and modulations whereas tambouras and sitars stay in the same key forever. I liked the way the drone of the tamboura could be fitted in there.” 

This take being complete and considered the best, the EMI staff took all four filled tracks of the tape and created a reduction mix (‘take eight’) onto one track of another tape, slightly slowing down the recording to 49 cycles per second instead of the normal 50 cycles. This made the recording all set for overdubs on another day. At 2:15 am the following morning, the group and staff filed out to get some rest and ready themselves for the session later that evening.

Once again starting at 7 pm, everyone filed back into EMI Studio Two that evening (March 2nd, 1967) to perform overdubs for the song. Track one of the new master tape contained the rhythm track from the previous day, leaving three open tracks on the four-track tape to fill with overdubs. The first thing tackled was a lead vocal track by John with Paul joining in on unison and sometimes harmony vocals during the choruses. This was taped at 45 cycles per second to make their voices have a slightly higher tone than usual when played back normally. Also, tape echo was added sporadically to create the intended spacey feel for the song.

Onto track three, Martin overdubbed John’s double-tracked lead vocals which only appeared in strategic spots, such as when “girl with kaleidoscope eyes” was heard. Paul simultaneously added more backing vocals during the choruses, this overdub recorded at 48 1/2 cycles per second.

According to the “Beatles Recording Sessions” book, the two remaining elements of the song were overdubbed onto track four of the tape, this being Paul’s artistic bass work and George’s distorted lead guitar. However, since both of these instruments panned to different locations in the stereo mix, they must have been isolated onto different tracks. “There was another thing,” George explains. “During vocals in Indian music they have an instrument called a sarangi, which sounds like the human voice, and the vocalist and sarangi player are more or less in unison with its performance. For ‘Lucy’ I thought of trying that idea, but because I’m not a sarangi player I played it on the guitar. In the middle-eight of the song (‘cellophane flowers…’) you can hear the guitar playing along with John’s voice. I was trying to copy Indian classical music.” 

Geoff Emerick adds more detail to the guitar overdub performed on this day: “  We had decided to route George Harrison’s guitar through a Leslie speaker during the choruses, and because that reminded John of the ‘Dalai Lama’ vocal effect we had used on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows,’ Mal (Evans) was duly dispatched to see if he could find a rope so John could try out his theory and be swung around a microphone. From the wink Mal gave me when he returned some hours later – empty-handed – I suspect that he had spent the evening in the pub instead. He knew how absurd – and potentially dangerous – the request was, and he probably guessed that John would have forgotten all about it by the time he got back, which, of course, is exactly what happened.” 

This final overdub completed the song, although the group was anxious to create a usable mono mix of the song that evening. Eleven attempts at a mono mix were made, mix 11 sounded best, but they apparently weren’t happy with this after some further thought, and none of these mixes saw the light of day. At 3:30 am the following morning, they went home only to return about sixteen hours later.

While spending nearly a total of twenty-four hours of studio time, divided up between three consecutive days, on one song may sound like a lot, it was actually one of the quickest “Sgt. Pepper” recordings. Compared to “A Day In The Life” or “Penny Lane,” for instance, “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” was a breeze!

A new crack at creating the mono mix of the song was done that evening, March 3rd, 1967, in the control room of EMI Studio Two with the band present. After recording the brass and lead guitar overdubs for the "Sgt. Pepper” theme song, this starting at 7 pm (as usual) and taking up most of the session this day, the group concentrated on getting the perfect mono mix for the recently recorded “Lucy.”   

Four new mono mixes developed made by George Martin, Geoff Emerick, and 2nd engineer Richard Lush. Presumably, the fourth one deemed as best. Extensive use of ADT had reigned, done with deliberate tape speed manipulation to create the psychedelic effect heard throughout the song, sometimes referred to as "flanging.”  By 2:15 am, the mono mix was complete and they all left for the evening.

The stereo mix was created on April 7th, 1967 in the control room of EMI Studio Two by the same team of George Martin, Geoff Emerick, and Richard Lush. “Just the three of us without a Beatle in sight,” explains Richard Lush about the stereo mixes for the entire “Sgt. Pepper” album.

Five attempts at creating a stereo mix were made on this day, presumably the fifth being the keeper. The rhythm track is panned exclusively into the left channel while the bass guitar and all of the vocals are centered in the mix. All of George’s lead guitar overdub work is panned to the right channel only. This time, however, the ADT was done more sparingly to give a little less psychedelic feel than the mono mix had, which is probably due to The Beatles not being present for this stereo mix.

Interestingly, an additional mono mix was made on November 1st, 1967 in Room 53 of the EMI complex by the same production staff. This special mix was made for inclusion in the “Yellow Submarine” movie then being prepared. Unique features of this mix include lessened ADT and the omission of John’s lead vocals in the first part of the first verse, which was replaced by an actor’s recitation “Picture yourself just a nuclear fission with library cards under mystical skies…ha, ha, ha…Somebody quotes you, you read from a source book, a concept with microscope eyes…ha, ha, ha.”    Luckily for all concerned, this strange mix did not make it into the movie and was never released.

1974 was the next time “Lucy” was taken to a recording studio by a Beatle. John Lennon (under the pseudonym Dr. Winston O'Boogie) joined Elton John at the Caribou Ranch recording studio in Nederland, Colorado to play rhythm guitar and sing backing vocals on Elton’s cover version of the song. The results were a highly successful single released during the height of Elton’s career. A live recording of the song was also done on November 28th, 1974 as John joined the Elton John Band on stage at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

In 1995, George Martin and Geoff Emerick returned to EMI (now Abbey Road Studios) to create a unique compilation mix of “Lucy” for inclusion on the “Anthology 2” album as mentioned above. “Take six” was used as the bedrock of this mix which featured John’s guide vocals and George Harrison on maracas, the obvious flaw of this take being Ringo’s drum count-in for the final chorus being noticeably too fast. Onto this take engineers added, George’s tamboura playing from “take seven” and the harmony vocals from “take eight,” although Paul’s bass playing is not added which would have completed the sonic picture. Nonetheless, it gives an interesting view of the song in progress.

Sometime in 1998, the original session tapes of “Lucy” were raided once again to produce an updated stereo mix for the “Yellow Submarine Songtrack” album. This mix was put together at Abbey Road Studios by the team of Peter Cobbin, Paul Hicks, Mirek Stiles and Allan Rouse. The elements are somewhat similar to the original 1967 stereo mix except for some interesting surprises. The first master tape used for the rhythm track must have been ‘synced up’ with the second master tape because the drums are centered in the mix while Paul’s Lowery organ part is panned exclusively to the left channel – something not possible using just the second master tape since they were both condensed down to the first track at that point. Another difference is a slight amount of reverb that has been added to the organ part, this being heard in the right channel only. Otherwise, the clarity and vibrancy of this mix sound incredible.

Since George Martin was such a fan of the song, “Lucy” was a shoe-in to be re-worked for the 2006 release “Love,” created especially for the Cirque du Soleil show of the same name. Sometime between 2004 and 2006, George and son Giles Martin created a unique blend of the original recording with elements of “Tomorrow Never Knows,” the “Sgt. Pepper” theme song, and “Baby, You’re A Rich Man.”

Track 4 – Getting Better: Despite its’ touches of negativity in the verses, where he recollects the specifics of a not-so-pleasant past, positivity rules in “Getting Better,” something genuinely needed to lift the spirits of the listener within the framework of the “Sgt. Pepper” album.  Positioned between the hallucinogenic “Lucy” and the heady “Fixing A Hole,” the infectious optimism of this song takes us where both “Good Day Sunshine” and “Got To Get You Into My Life” from the previous album point us toward uplift.  Where both of these “Revolver” tracks amount to a Paul solo effort with some minimal input from the others, “Getting Better” comes off as a true group effort from beginning to end.

In the context of an album listening experience, “Getting Better” does much in steering us away from the supposed ‘concept album’ effect that you grasp from the opening two songs.  However, the ‘feel good’ nature of this song, as well as the intricate arrangement and communal effort, make it more than OK that this is just another Beatles album after all.

Inside the EMI Studio Two, March 9th, 1967, with the red light on and the tape machines rolling, was the first day they brought the recently written “Getting Better ditty. The evening session had shown its arrival time slot for 7 pm. It may have been scheduled that way, but their habit as of this time was quite different.  “I remember the session was booked to begin at 7 pm,” remembers engineer Malcolm Addey, the resident Cliff Richard engineer who filled in for Geoff Emerick on this day, “but there was barely a Beatle in sight much before midnight, and we were sitting around waiting.  They eventually straggled in one by one.  Ringo came in around 11 and ordered fish and chips.  The others arrived later, they all hung around and finally started work at about one in the morning.  The ego trip of the big-time artists had started to set in…I know their method of working upset Geoff from time to time.”

In his book “Here, There And Everywhere,” Geoff Emerick explains: “Malcolm Addey – he of the cigar and never-ending chatter – filled in for me that evening…Ken Townsend was recruited to substitute for Richard (Lush).  Ken was really a maintenance engineer, but I suppose George (Martin) just wanted a familiar face around, someone whom the group had at least met before.  I suspected that the four Beatles were annoyed that I wasn’t there – there was no way they wanted a stranger engineering their sessions.”  Graham Kirkby was also recruited that evening as a 2nd engineer, so the usual three-man EMI staff became four on this occasion.

This was the first Beatles session that biographer Hunter Davies was present at, so he reveals in his book how the group learned and arranged the song from the ground up.  “Paul played the new song on the piano, la-la-ing the accompaniment or banging in tune to his words, to give the others an idea of what it sounded like.  Ringo and George said they liked it; so did George Martin…They discussed what the general sound would be like and what sort of instruments to use.  They also chatted about other things.  When they got bored, they went off and played on their own on any instruments lying around.  There was an electronic piano in the corner of the studio, leftover from someone else’s recording session.  Someone doodled on it, and the group decided to use it.”  This turned out to be a Hohner Pianet C electric piano.

Davies continues: “Ringo sat at his drums and played what he thought would be a good drum backing, with Paul singing the song into his ear.  Because of the noise, Paul had to shout in Ringo’s ear as he explained something.  After about two hours of trying out little bits and pieces, they had the elements of a backing…The first stage in the layer-cake system they now use in recording songs was to get the backing recorded on one track…George Martin and two studio technicians, who’d been sitting around just waiting, went up into their soundproof glass-front control room, where they continued to sit around and wait for The Beatles to get themselves organized.”

“Neil and Mal (Evans) got the instruments and microphones arranged in one corner of the studio and the four or them, at last, started to sing and play “It’s Getting Better.”  Ringo looked a bit lost, sitting slightly apart on his own, surrounded by his drums.  The other three had their heads together over one microphone.  They played the song over about ten times.  All that was being recorded, up in the soundproof box, were the instruments, not the voices.  From time to time Paul said, ‘Once more, let’s try it this way,’ or ‘Let’s have less bass,’ or ‘more drums.’ By midnight they had recorded the backing.”

The instrumentation used on this rhythm track apparently consisted of the standard Beatle configuration of times past, namely John and George on guitar, Paul on bass and Ringo on drums.  George Martin was also included on this track, “playing piano, though not via a keyboard but by actually striking the strings,” as Mark Lewisohn explains in his book “The Beatles Recording Sessions.”  Since Hunter Davies made mention of the Hohner Pianet in his recollections of this day, it was undoubtedly recorded on this day as well, as we do hear it predominantly on the finished recording.  No overdubs are said to have been performed on this day, so the Pianet may have been played by George Martin (as suggested by Ian MacDonald in “Revolution In The Head”) during the rhythm track while the piano “striking” may have indeed been overdubbed. Also heard in the finished recording is an actual ‘played’ piano during the second verse, which may also have been performed by Martin sometime on this day, since it’s not mentioned at all in the later recording sessions.  At any rate, George Martin apparently was a very busy keyboardist on “Getting Better.”

All four tracks of the four-track tape were filled with the completed rhythm track after the seventh take of the song was deemed suitable for future overdubs.  The EMI staff then performed a reduction mix, that is, combining all four tracks onto one track of another tape, leaving three empty tracks for further recording elements.  They performed this mix five times until they were satisfied, ‘take 12’ being deemed best.  By 3:30 am the next morning, the first “Getting Better” session was finally over.

After a much needed two days off, engineers Geoff Emerick and Richard Lush were back on the job the next day (that is to say, later that day) for the second session of the song on March 10th in EMI Studio Two.  Emerick relates the details of this days’ work:  “’Glad to have you back, Geoff,’ George Harrison said as soon as he walked in the door.  Malcolm (Addey) had clearly gotten on his nerves.  When we played back the tapes of the previous evening’s work in the control room, Ringo chimed in.  ‘The drums sound a bit naff, don’t you think?’ George Harrison didn’t even wait for an answer.  ‘Little wonder, considering that Malcolm didn’t shut up long enough to get a decent drum sound.’”

“I had to agree with Ringo’s opinion,” Emerick continues, “but I was surprised that he hadn’t said anything to Addey the night before because he usually wasn’t shy about expressing his opinion if he heard something he didn’t like.  Perhaps he just couldn’t get a word in edgewise!  Malcolm had obviously utilized his own setup for recording the drums…I thought the snare sound was especially lacking, and it took a lot of work during the mixing stage to get the track to fit in sonically with the rest of the album.”

“That night,” explains Emerick, “George Harrison was overdubbing his tamboura, which may have been another reason why he was in a good mood and was being unusually friendly toward me.”  This tamboura drone heard exclusively in the third verse, works perfectly to add an evil-sounding backdrop to the lyrics about being “cruel to my woman” and beating her.  This was recorded exclusively onto ‘track four’ of the new tape while Ringo added syncopated open hi-hat accents in the verses, this being recorded onto ‘track two.’ Also overdubbed on this day (track unknown) was “George Martin adding an interesting new texture,” stated Emerick, “by playing selected notes on a Virginal, a miniature harpsichord which he owned and brought in specially for the session.”  Even more keyboard work for George Martin!

Emerick then relates how George Harrison, George Martin, Ringo and John “headed out the door; it had been a tiring session, and it was well past midnight.  But it was a Friday, with a whole weekend ahead to recover, so Paul decided to stay behind with Richard and me, and we dutifully pulled his amp out into the middle of the room for another long marathon of laying down the bass part.  I decided to surreptitiously add just a touch of reverb to the bass that night, using the bathroom as an acoustic echo chamber.  It was an effect that Paul normally didn’t like, but I was looking for a little extra roundness, so I decided to try it.  When he heard the playback, Paul immediately realized what I had done and screwed his face up, but he went along with it for just that one song.”  This bass overdub replaced the bass work Paul performed on the rhythm track the previous day, which undoubtedly was mixed down purposely on the reduction mix the previous day, and was positioned onto ‘track three’ of the new tape.  At 4 am Saturday morning, this second “Getting Better” session was finally over.

After concentrating on other “Sgt. Pepper” songs for the next week-and-a-half, The Beatles returned to “Getting Better” on March 21st, 1967.  Before the recording session began that day, they needed to work out the vocal arrangement.  “John and George assembled at Paul’s house,” Hunter Davies explains.  “Ringo wasn’t there.  They were just going to do the singing track for ‘It’s Getting Better, ’ and he wouldn’t be needed.  Ivan Vaughan, the school friend of John and Paul, was also at Paul’s house.  At seven thirty they all moved round to EMI where George Martin, like a very understanding housemaster, was ready and waiting for them.”

Davies continues his play-by-play of this recording session, which was also in EMI Studio Two.  “A technician played the backing for ‘It’s Getting Better’…It was played over and over again.  George Harrison and Ivan went off to chat in a corner, but Paul and John listened carefully.  Paul instructed the technician which levers to press, telling him what he wanted, how it should be done, which bits he liked best.  George Martin looked on, giving advice where necessary.  John stared into space.”

Mark Lewisohn’s account states:  “At one point in the evening, after repeated listening to the…rhythm track recording of the song, Paul decided that Ringo needed to re-record his drums.  He was duly telephoned at home and summoned to the studio.  (John picked up the telephone: ‘Ringo on toast, please,’ according to Hunter Davies.)  But after Paul and Geoff Emerick had played with a few knobs and switches on the console Paul pronounced the original recording fine, after all, so Ringo was telephoned again and canceled. ‘We never heard how he felt,’ says Davies, ‘but he must have been pretty choked, having got himself ready for work and the long drive in from Surrey only to be told he wasn’t needed.’”

Davies continues: “The studio was made ready to record the soundtrack, the voices.  As it was being set up by Neil (Aspinall), Mal (Evans) brought in tea and orange juice on a tray.  Paul let his tea go cold while he played with an oscillating box he had found in a corner…They were ready at last.  The three of them held their heads round one microphone and sang…In the studio itself, all that could be heard were the unaccompanied, unelectrified voices of The Beatles singing, without any backing.  It all sounded flat and off key.”  In the book “The Beatles Recording Sessions,” Davies described their voices as “grainy, hoarse and awfully disembodied.  I remember thinking, ‘Why am I such a big fan of theirs, why do I think they’re good singers?  They’re completely out of tune!”

During this time, while Ivan Vaughan was “writing a letter to his mother” and Neil Aspinall was “filling in his diary” that he said “he should have started…about five years ago,” a visitor appeared in the control room to ask George Martin a favor.  This visitor was The Beatles previous engineer Norman Smith.  Hunter Davies relates:   “A man in a purple shirt called Norman arrived; he used to be one of their recording engineers and now had a group of his own, ‘The Pink Floyd.’  Very politely he asked George Martin if his boys could possibly pop in to see The Beatles at work.  George smiled unhelpfully.  Norman said perhaps he should ask John personally, as a favor.  George Martin said no, that wouldn’t work.  If by chance he and his boys popped in about eleven o’clock, he might just be able to see what he could do.”

Geoff Emerick explains in detail an event that occurred shortly thereafter that has gone down in history.  (He presents this event inferring it as happening during the vocal overdubs for “Lovely Rita,” although Davies’ eyewitness account as well as many other evidence points to happening on this day.  His overdubbing and mixing work on “Lovely Rita” performed later on this day may have led to Geoff’s confusion on what day this transpired.)

“That same evening, I was witness to a bizarre scenario that seemed quite funny at the time but could have ended tragically…biographer Hunter Davies was there, sitting unobtrusively in the back with Neil and Mal, quietly observing.  (Sidenote:   Hunter Davies was not present at the “Lovely Rita” background vocal sessions.)  John was dressed outlandishly as usual, in a festive striped blazer, but I thought he seemed unusually quiet when he first arrived.  Soon afterward, he, Paul, and George Harrison were gathered around a microphone singing backing vocals when Lennon suddenly announced that he wasn’t feeling well.  George Martin got on the talkback.  ‘What’s the matter, John?  Is it something you ate?’”

“The others sniggered, but John remained perfectly solemn.  ‘No, it’s not that,’ he replied.  ‘I’m just having trouble focusing.’  Up in the control room, Richard and I exchanged glances.  ‘Uh-huh,’ we thought.  ‘That would be the drugs kicking in.’  But George Martin didn’t seem to have an inkling of what was going on.  ‘Do you want to be driven home?’ he asked.  ‘No,’ Lennon said in a tiny, faraway voice.  ‘Well then, perhaps you’d like to get a little fresh air?’ George suggested helpfully.  ‘Okay,’ came the meek reply.”

Hunter Davies’ account relates an attempt to step outside on the main floor.  “Someone went to open the back door of the studio.  There was the sound of loud banging and cheering on the other side.  The door began to move slightly inward under the strain of a gang of fans who’d somehow managed to get inside the building.”  Another idea was needed.

Emerick continues: “It seemed to take John along time to get up the stairs; he was moving as if he were in slow motion.  When he finally walked through the doorway into the control room, I noticed that he had a strange, glazed look on his face.  Gazing vacantly around the room, Lennon completely ignored the three of us.  He appeared to be searching for something but didn’t seem to know what it was.  Suddenly he threw his head back and began staring intently at the ceiling, awestruck.  With some degree of difficulty, he finally got a few not especially profound words out:  ‘Wow, look at that.’  Our necks cranked upward, but all we saw was…a ceiling.”

“’Come on, John, I know a way up the back stairs,’ George Martin said soothingly, leading the befuddled Beatle out of the room…George Martin returned to the control room, alone…’Where’s John?’ Paul asked…George Martin turned on the talkback mic.  ‘I left him up on the roof, looking at the stars.’ ‘Ah, you mean like Vince Hill?’ Paul joked.  Vince Hill was a schmaltzy singer who was currently topping the charts with a sappy version of the song ‘Edelweiss’ (from ‘The Sound Of Music’), which Paul and George Harrison immediately began singing boisterously.”

“A second or two later, it dawned on them: John was tripping on LSD, and George Martin has left him up on the roof alone!  As if they were actors in an old-fashioned silent movie, the two Beatles executed a perfectly timed double take and then bolted up the stairs together, full speed, in a frantic dash to retrieve their compatriot.  They knew all too well that the rooftop had only a narrow parapet and that, in his lysergically altered state, John could easily step over the edge and plummet thirty feet to the pavement below.”

“Mal (Evans) and Neil followed closely behind, and a few tense minutes later, everyone reappeared in the control room…thankfully with a bewildered Lennon in tow, still in one piece.  Nobody castigated George Martin for his poor decision, born, to be fair, out of naiveté, but arrangements were quickly made for John to be driven home and the session ended soon afterward.”

John himself explained the account in an interview in 1970.  “I thought I was taking some uppers and I was not in the state of handling it.  I took it, and I suddenly got so scared on the microphone.  I said, ‘What is it? I feel ill.’  I thought I felt ill and I thought I was going cracked.  I said I must go and get some air.  They all took me upstairs on the roof, and George Martin was looking at me funny, and then it dawned on me that I must have taken some acid.  I said, ‘Well, I can’t go on.  You’ll have to do it, and I’ll just stay and watch.’  I got very nervous just watching them all, and I kept saying, ‘Is this all right?’  They had all been very kind, and they said, ‘Yes, it’s all right.’  I said, ‘Are you sure it’s all right?’  They carried on making the record.”

George Martin remembers: “I was so innocent that I actually took John up to the roof when he was having an LSD trip, not knowing what it was. If I’d known it was LSD, the roof would have been the last place I would have taken him…Of course, I couldn’t take him out the front because there were 500 screaming kids who’d have torn him apart.  So, the only place I could take him to get fresh air was the roof.  It was a wonderful starry night, and John went to the edge, which was a parapet about eighteen inches high, and looked up at the stars and said, ‘Aren’t they fantastic?’  Of course, to him, I suppose they would have been especially fantastic.  At the time, they just looked like stars to me.”

As the session was winding down, the semi-scheduled appearance of Norman Smith and “Pink Floyd” transpired, who happened to be recording their first album “Piper At The Gates Of Dawn” in another EMI Studio that evening.  “Sadly, he and his protégés were given a very cool reception by Paul and George Harrison,” Geoff Emerick explains.  “Uninvited visitors were simply not made welcome, even if they included a former workmate.  After a few minutes of awkward chat (described by Davies as “half-hearted hellos”), Norman headed out the door.  It was the last time he popped in on any Beatles session that I was present at.  Clearly, as far as they were concerned, that was a chapter that was over.”

What John 'stayed and watched' after the LSD event concerned recording the piano solo for "Lovely Rita.”  At that point, at around midnight, the session was over as far as The Beatles were concerned.  “Paul…went home with (John) and turned on as well, to keep him company,” states George Martin in his book “All You Need Is Ears,” continuing:  “Paul’s thoughtfulness in going home with John was typical of one of the best sides of his character.”  Meanwhile, after the mono mix of “Lovely Rita” was made, the session concluded at 2:45 am the next morning, the doors of EMI Studios finally closing for the day.

Two days later, on March 23rd, 1967, the final overdub session for “Getting Better” occurred.  The session was scheduled to begin at 7 pm in EMI Studio Two, this time with not only Geoff Emerick and Richard Lush absent but even George Martin had a prior commitment.  Peter Vince stood in, acting as both producer and engineer while Ken Scott sat in as 2nd engineer.  Given the unusual circumstances with John during the previous attempt at vocals, this session saw them totally re-record the vocals and then double-track them, adding handclaps along the way.  (I guess Hunter Davies’ assessment of them sounding “completely out of tune” was valid after all.)

Peter made a further tape reduction to clear up space for more overdubs, Ringo’s conga drums being one of them which first come in on the third verse of the song.  It appears that a further guitar overdub was performed as well, this being the staccato ‘chopping’ guitar that is panned to the right channel in the stereo mix.  Its player is not known, although, given Paul’s specific interest in the arrangement of this piece, it’s probably him.  Three mono mixes of the song were made, no doubt with the input of the group, the third being deemed ‘best.’ The session ended at 3:45 am the next morning.

The stereo mix of the song was created on April 17th, 1967 in the control room of EMI Studio Two by the usual team of George Martin, Geoff Emerick, and Richard Lush.  Only one attempt at this stereo mix was needed to get it right.  The original rhythm track, the tamboura, and the open hi-hat hits are panned to the left channel while all the vocals are centered in the mix.  The piano, conga drums and the ‘chopping’ guitar are all panned to the right channel.

Sometime between April 1st and May 18th of 2002, Paul and his band had a live recording of the song done which was released in America on the album “Back In The U.S.” and internationally on the album “Back In The World.”   

Be sure to join me tomorrow for a thorough account in creating ‘Fixing A Hole,’ and ‘She’s Leaving Home.’

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