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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.’ 

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