Sound Pictures

by Kenneth Womack

  The score afforded the producer with the opportunity to push the previously traditional boundaries of his work as a composer. As Martin later wrote: “Yellow Submarine saw some pretty strange experiments, too. In one sequence, in the ‘Sea of Monsters,’ the yellow submarine is wandering around and all kinds of weird little things are crawling along the sea floor, some with three legs. One monster is enormous, without arms but with two long legs with wellington boots on, and in place of a nose there is a kind of long trumpet. This is a sucking-up monster—when it sees the other little monsters, it uses its trumpet to suck them up. Eventually it sucks up the yellow submarine, and finally gets hold of the corner of the [movie] screen and sucks that up too, until it all goes white. I felt, naturally, that scene required special ‘sucking-up’ music—the question was how to do it with an orchestra!” Eventually, Martin came up with a solution that had been a go-to maneuver for the Beatles since their days recording Revolver: backward music. As George later observed, “Music played backwards sounds very odd anyway, and a trombone or cymbal played backwards sounds just like a sucking-in noise. So I scored about 45 seconds for the orchestra to play, in such a way that the music would fit the picture when we played it backwards. The engineer working at CTS at that time was a great character named Jack Clegg, and when I explained the idea to him he said, ‘Lovely! Great idea! I’ll get the film turned round, and you record the music to the backward film. Then, when we turn the film round the right way, your music will be backwards.’ It sounded like something from a Goon script.”19

  As it happened, almost all of the music that Martin composed was used by Dunning in the final cut. As the months wound down, Martin conducted the London Symphony Orchestra during the production of the film’s incidental music, which was recorded at Olympic Sound Studios that spring with Keith Grant and George Chkiantz serving as Martin’s engineering team. Time was clearly of the essence, given the movie’s anticipated July 1968 premiere, along with a UK general release in late summer and an American release later that fall. And while he had been working at a breakneck pace, George had proven yet again that he could come through in a pinch. For their part, Dunning and Brodax were astounded by the results. During Yellow Submarine’s “Sea of Monsters” sequence, for example, George included a sly reference to J. S. Bach’s Air on the G String. In other instances, George quoted works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Igor Stravinsky and even the Beatles themselves. “Sea of Time” featured an Indian-themed reference to “Within You, Without You,” while “Yellow Submarine in Pepperland” included a deft reprise of the title track.

  In early March, George took a break from his work on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack to pose with Geoff and Ringo for photographs of the Beatles’ production team receiving their Grammy statuettes for Sgt. Pepper. The awards had been announced, with Martin, Emerick, and the Beatles in absentia, back on February 29 at a dinner ceremony in Los Angeles hosted by comedian Stan Freberg. During EMI’s makeshift ceremony in Studio 3 on March 6, Ringo hadn’t made the trip out to India yet, and he can be seen presenting the awards to George and Geoff, then good-naturedly pretending to speak into the funnel-shaped horn of the miniature phonograph.

  Within a matter of days, all four Beatles would be ensconced at the maharishi’s ashram in Rishikesh, the holy city that rests on the banks of the Ganges. Despite its remote location, the maharishi’s six-acre compound was replete with creature comforts, including a swimming pool, a laundry, a post office, and a lecture hall from which the holy man would deliver his teachings to his assembled guests. Not surprisingly, each of the Beatles responded to their experience in the ashram in radically different ways. Complaining about the spicy cuisine, Ringo left after only ten days, having exhausted his secret supply of Heinz Baked Beans. For Paul, life in Rishikesh offered a sublime opportunity to cleanse his mind and replenish his writerly muse. When he and Jane Asher left after six weeks in the compound, he graciously thanked their host, telling the holy man that “you will never fathom what these days have meant to us. To have the unbroken peace and quiet and all your loving attention—only a Beatle could know the value of this.” For Harrison, the privilege of pondering the maharishi’s lectures and practicing Transcendental Meditation in the ashram had been one of life’s great blessings. For Lennon, the Rishikesh sojourn had also started out as an ebullient journey, only to collapse in a moment of crisis when he declared that he and Harrison were leaving the compound immediately. Rumors had begun circulating in the encampment that the holy man had made sexual advances toward women in the encampment, and for John the hypocrisy was simply too much to bear. When questioned by one of the maharishi’s followers about his decision to break camp, Lennon angrily replied, “If you want to know why, ask your fuckin’ precious guru.” Quite suddenly, eight weeks of serenity had evaporated into thin air by mid-April, and the Harrisons and the Lennons began making their way back to London.20

  For George and the Beatles, May 1968 would prove to be a pivotal month in more ways than one. For their part, the bandmates returned from India with dozens of new compositions in their arsenal. In many ways, their sojourn in Rishikesh—its unhappy finale notwithstanding—had proven to be arguably their most productive and concentrated creative moment in years, possibly ever. During the last week of May, the Beatles gathered at Kinfauns, Harrison’s recording studio at his home in suburban Esher. At Kinfauns, they created twenty-three demos in preparation for recording the songs that would comprise their next long-player. With such a bounty of material, there was already talk among the bandmates that the new LP would be a double album. In contrast with their painstaking efforts in the studio, the Esher tapes witness the Beatles working in unison and exalting in the pure joy of their music. With its splendid acoustic introduction, the demo for “Revolution” offers a perfect case in point. The band had rarely, if ever, sounded more uninhibited and free. With its enthusiastic handclaps, ad-libs, and lighthearted harmonies, it makes for one of the Beatles’ most convivial recordings. Yet for all of their geniality, the Esher tapes were calculated rough drafts—coherent blueprints for the upcoming project. Simply put, the group had seldom exhibited such a self-conscious and highly organized approach to their art. For Martin, it was a creative boon that he was determined to exploit.21

  But first there was Apple. The tax dodge that the Beatles had concocted a year earlier had transmogrified into a full-fledged enterprise. Reflecting a pun devised by Paul, Apple Music was rechristened as Apple Corps in an explicit effort by the Beatles to wrest hold of their business affairs and control their own destiny after months of uncertainty in the wake of Brian’s death. “We’re just going to do—everything!” John announced to Pete Shotton. “We’ll have electronics, we’ll have clothes, we’ll have publishing, we’ll have music. We’re going to be talent spotters and have new talent.” But the corporation had gone awry almost from the very start. Back in December 1967, they had opened the Apple Boutique at 94 Baker Street. To mark the occasion, the Fool created a brilliantly arrayed psychedelic mural that enveloped the building—that is, until legal entanglements from the City of Westminster led to its removal after only a few weeks. By midsummer, the bandmates, not very surprisingly, had lost interest in operating the boutique, famously giving away its wares to an eager public after first ransacking its racks and aisles for themselves. On May 11, John and Paul traveled to the United States in an effort to promote Apple’s musical interests on an international stage. On May 14, they held a press conference at New York City’s Americana Hotel, where Paul announced that “we really want to help people, but without doing it like a charity or seeming like ordinary patrons of the arts. We’re in the happy position of not really needing any more money. So for the first time, the bosses aren’t in it for profit. If you come and see me and say, ‘I’ve had such and such a dream,’ I’ll say, ‘Here’s so much money. Go away and do it.’ We’ve already bought all our dreams. So now we want to share that possibility with others.” Paul’s idealism was one thing. But
after the Magical Mystery Tour debacle, John’s was inexplicable. Apparently, Lennon simply couldn’t see the irony that establishing Apple Corps was not so different from the bandmates’ experience with directing the Magical Mystery Tour film, another venture that fell well outside their expertise. During that same visit, McCartney rekindled his romance with Linda Eastman, who made arrangements to join him back in the United Kingdom later that year.22

  The risks associated with establishing the Beatles’ own media corporation were not lost on George, who understood implicitly that their creative energies were best realized making music in the recording studio. To George’s mind, Apple looked like a “complete fiasco” in the making. “From the start,” he later wrote, “I took a jaundiced view of the whole proceedings because I could see the awful way it was going, and that it was doomed from the outset.” With Brian out of the picture, the Beatles were left to their own devices, George reasoned, and that meant that Apple “was being run by four idealists, with nobody really in control.” With the bandmates’ lack of expertise in relation to their new business venture, George could clearly see the writing on the wall, especially given his many years in the record industry. But at the same time, he admitted to finding the concept of Apple Corps to be an appealing concept. “The tragedy was that it was an extremely praiseworthy idea,” he wrote. “They wanted to put to a good use all the monies which were coming in. The motivation was, roughly: With these resources we can do anything. We can employ people to build things for us, develop new arts and new sciences, encourage scientific people to develop new inventions, encourage new writers. . . . And so on. It was a marvelous Utopian idea. If it had been handled properly it would have been a great boon to the music business.”23

  As Apple Corps evolved, the bandmates and their inner circle began establishing divisions, including a planned electronics unit to be helmed by Alexis Mardas, a Greek émigré. Since the Summer of Love, Lennon had been under the spell of Mardas, a self-styled inventor whom the Beatle rechristened as “Magic Alex” because of his penchant for imagining new forms of electronic gadgetry. For his part, George didn’t care if the Beatles allowed the eccentric inventor to gambol about as part of their growing entourage, but things had come to a head in recent months as Magic Alex, with John’s apparent blessing, had begun to assert himself in George’s domain—the recording studio. The Beatles’ producer had come to see Apple Corps as attracting a veritable “army of hangers-on,” and “the one I recall most vividly, because he impinged on my work and my musical relationship with the boys, was Magic Alex.” In George’s mind, Magic Alex “was so preposterous that it would have been funny had he not caused so much embarrassment and difficulty with me in the recording studio.” By this point, George had experienced firsthand the would-be inventor’s shenanigans on several occasions. As George later wrote, Magic Alex

  was one of a group of sycophants who were forever making mischief, telling the boys they weren’t getting the best treatment, telling them they deserved better than the rotten old equipment that everyone else was using. I didn’t need that. I knew better than anyone that we lacked certain facilities which were available in independent American studios. I was still working on four-track machines when I knew that eight-track was already common in America, and that 16-track was just around the corner. It annoyed me as much as it did the boys. But I could do without Magic Alex turning up one day and announcing in a supercilious voice: “Well, of course, I’m designing a 72-track machine.”

  To George’s mind, this was an outrageous thing to say, a truly ludicrous suggestion to make to the Beatles, of all people, who could be gullible when it came to technical matters.24

  On occasion, George would go so far as to admit that Magic Alex could be “clever,” even a “good electronic technician.” But in their naïveté, the Beatles would pander to his most far-fetched ideas. Years later, George would remember the day that Magic Alex presented John with “a little machine about half the size of a cassette, powered by a microcell battery. When it was switched on, it made a series of random bleeps.” As George looked on, John became mesmerized by the useless gadget. Seeing that John had taken the inventor’s bait, Magic Alex launched into his sales pitch: “That’s just to give an idea of the sort of thing we can do,” he told John. “Now, I’ve had an idea for a new invention. It’s a paint that, when I spray it on the wall, and connect it up to two anodes, will make the whole wall glow. You won’t need lights.” All Magic Alex required, of course, was a little start-up money, which the Beatles freely supplied. After a while, George found himself laughing at the mere mention of the inventor’s silly name. But to George’s mind, Magic Alex’s “prize idea” was a scam involving a sonic force field that would mitigate the need for sound screens in the studio—namely, the screens that separated Ringo and his drum kit from the rest of the bandmates in order to prevent sound bleed. Flush with Magic Alex’s latest brainchild, George could only hold his tongue and listen as the bandmates reveled in the inventor’s vision: “Alex has got a brilliant idea! He’s come up with something really great: a sonic screen! He’s going to place these ultra-high-frequency beams round Ringo, and when they’re switched on he won’t be able to hear anything because the beams will form a wall of silence.” For his part, George could only listen in horror as the Beatles regaled him with yet another one of Magic Alex’s harebrained ideas. “Words, I fully admit, failed me,” he wrote. But George also remained silent because he had come to realize that the bandmates’ infatuation with Magic Alex—and George’s contrasting disgust with the inventor—was beginning to cause a “minor schism” to develop in his own relationship with the Beatles. And George was not about to let that happen.25

  On Thursday, May 30, George and the Beatles finally reconvened in Studio 2 to work on their next long-player, the much-anticipated and as-of-yet untitled follow-up album to Sgt. Pepper. They clearly planned to attack the new LP with a vengeance, having prebooked Abbey Road studio time, every weekday from 2:30 PM to midnight, through late July. And while the bandmates were armed to the teeth with new compositions, pretested and demoed at Kinfauns only a few days earlier, they weren’t alone. They were joined by Yoko Ono, only this time things were decidedly different from the Japanese artist’s visit to Abbey Road during “The Fool on the Hill” sessions back in September. On May 19—with Cynthia away on holiday in Greece—John had invited Yoko to his Weybridge estate, where they stayed up all night improvising recordings on his Brenell reel-to-reel tape recorders as Yoko shrieked a series of wordless, discordant vocals into the growing cacophony. At dawn, they consummated their new relationship. A few days later, Cynthia returned from her Grecian holiday just in time to discover Yoko wearing her bathrobe and sitting cross-legged on the floor of her Kenwood kitchen with John. In short order, Cynthia’s marriage to John had fallen into shambles as the Beatle pondered a new life with Yoko beyond Cynthia and his five-year-old son, Julian.

  And now, Yoko had insinuated herself into the lives of George and the Beatles as well. The professional sanctum of the studio, which had long been the bandmates’ sanctuary from the ever-encroaching outside world, had suddenly been upended by Yoko’s presence. With the exceptions of Sheila Bromberg’s harp work on “She’s Leaving Home” and the Mike Sammes Singers’ turn on “I Am the Walrus,” George and the Beatles’ collaboration had largely been a masculine one. They had each hailed, in their own ways, from Old World mores in which men and women followed highly gendered norms—George from working-class North London and the Beatles, who shared traditional northern upbringings. By drawing Yoko into their workaday world, John had turned their universe on its head.

  It was Emerick who felt the winds of change first. When John arrived at the studio that day, he deposited Yoko in the control booth before shuttling into the studio. As Geoff later wrote, “For the next couple of hours Yoko just sat quietly with us in the control room. It had to have been even more uncomfortable for her than it was for any of us. She had been put in an em
barrassing situation, plunked right by the window so that George Martin and I had to crane our heads around her to see the others out in the studio and communicate with them. As a result, she kept thinking we were staring at her. She’d give us a polite, shy smile whenever she’d see us looking in her direction, but she never actually said anything.”26

  But Yoko wasn’t the only new face in the control room that day. George had invited a guest of his own named Chris Thomas, the producer’s twenty-one-year-old protégé from AIR, who was learning the ropes of record production. Thomas had first caught Martin’s eye after he wrote a letter to the Beatles’ producer seeking work. In 1967, George had hired him as a production assistant at AIR, and he had recently cut his teeth attending sessions at Abbey Road with Ron Richards and the Hollies.

  As the May 30 session got underway, John debuted a new song that would come to be known as “Revolution 1,” a standout composition from the Esher demos. With Martin and a whole array of people up in the booth, the Beatles perfected a rhythm track in eighteen takes, including Lennon’s lead vocal, McCartney’s piano, Harrison’s acoustic guitar, and Starr’s drums. As the longest performance of “Revolution 1,” the eighteenth and best take clocked in at more than ten minutes. Emerick can be heard announcing “take 18” when the song rolls into being, with the bandmates eventually concluding “Revolution 1” with an extensive jam before Lennon shouts, “Okay, I’ve had enough!” During the song’s final, chaotic six minutes, John and Yoko, who had succeeded in making her way down to the studio proper, dropped a series of non sequiturs into the sonic bedlam on May 31. In addition to John’s moaning and other nonverbal ministrations, Yoko can be heard deadpanning “if you become naked.” While such random effects would be reserved for later deployment on the new album, George and the Beatles were forced to contend, in the short run, with the take’s gargantuan length, especially as they were already considering “Revolution 1” as a candidate for the next single. As for Yoko, once she had cleared a path to her boyfriend working down in the studio, she would almost never leave his side.