Sound Pictures

by Kenneth Womack

  With July rapidly approaching, Lennon and McCartney worked feverishly at Cavendish Avenue to amass new material. Martin had block-booked the majority of Abbey Road’s studio time during the 2:30 to 10:00 PM time slot from July 1 through August 29. To corral two months’ worth of studio time was a considerable feat at the time, although George had no problem throwing his weight around when it came to the Fab Four. “One of the things about being the Beatle producer in those days: it didn’t give me a great deal of money, but it did give me a great deal of clout,” he later remarked. “I was able to say, ‘Well, look, we want to do this.’ And everybody would say, ‘Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Three bags full, sir!’ Or almost.” Meanwhile, for John and Paul, the medley was high among their priorities. As McCartney later remarked, “I wanted to do something bigger, a kind of operatic moment.” For his part, John was especially eager to begin working on the project: “If I could only get the time to myself, I think I could probably write about 30 songs a day,” he observed in an interview with Disc magazine. “As it is, I probably average about 12 a night. Paul, too: he’s mad on it. As soon as I leave here, I’m going ’round to Paul’s place and we’ll sit down and start work. The way we’re writing at the moment,” he added, “it’s straightforward and there’s nothing weird. The songs are like ‘Get Back,’ and a lot of that we did in one take.” Unfortunately, John’s great rush of excitement would be decidedly quelled on July 1, less than twenty-four hours before work on the album was formally set to begin. Some six hundred miles to the north of EMI Studios, John had been tooling around the narrow roads of Scotland with Yoko by his side and their children—John’s six-year-old son, Julian, and Yoko’s five-year-old daughter, Kyoko—in the rear of their Austin Maxi. The newly married couple had been visiting Lennon’s relatives in the far north when the Beatle lost control of the car and drove off of a steep embankment near Golspie. Yoko, who was two months pregnant, crushed several vertebrae and received a concussion in the accident, while all four suffered cuts and bruises. As it was, the couple spent five days in the hospital. In truth, they were lucky to have escaped with their lives. Given his injuries, which required seventeen stitches in his face, John would be forced to miss several of the Beatles’ upcoming sessions.19

  On Wednesday, July 2, Martin and the bandmates, sans Lennon, got down to business in Studio 2. Working alone that afternoon, Paul recorded three takes of “Her Majesty,” which was under consideration for the medley. After Harrison and Starr arrived at the studio later that day, they tried their hand at “Golden Slumbers,” with lyrics based on a sixteenth-century poem by British playwright Thomas Dekker, and “Carry That Weight.” Martin supervised fifteen takes of the songs, which were recorded as a single track with McCartney on piano and guide vocal, Starr on drums, and Harrison playing bass. For the rest of the week, the bandmates carried out overdubs for “Golden Slumbers” and “Carry That Weight.” For the latter, Harrison and McCartney superimposed electric guitar parts, followed by lead vocals from McCartney and a stirring vocal passage performed in unison by Harrison, McCartney, and Starr for the middle eight. The songs’ connective tissue consisted of a drum figure by Ringo, who was still gushing over the sound of his Ludwig Hollywoods. Recording the album “was tom-tom madness,” he later remarked. “I had gotten this new kit made of wood, and calfskins, and the toms had so much depth. I went nuts on the toms. Talk about changes in my drum style—the kit made me change because I changed my kit.” In addition to Ringo’s impassioned drumming, the album’s sound would benefit from the studio’s eight-track recording technology—now the standard technology at Abbey Road—and particularly in terms of its solid-state electronics, as opposed to the vacuum tube–driven equipment that had served the band throughout their career. Hence, the latest Beatles tracks revealed a perceptibly different sound, a “mellower” flavor and tonality, according to Emerick, who was set to resume his role as the band’s balance engineer and Martin’s right-hand man on a full-time basis in late July.20

  The following Monday, with Phil McDonald and John Kurlander serving as his engineers, Martin supervised the recording of “Here Comes the Sun,” the splendid new song that Harrison had composed that spring while strolling in Eric Clapton’s garden. Recorded in thirteen takes, with the last one being selected as the best, the instrumentation for “Here Comes the Sun” consisted of Harrison’s acoustic guitar and guide vocal, McCartney’s bass, and Starr’s drums. From Martin’s perspective, “Here Comes the Sun” marked a turning point for Harrison. “I think there was a great deal of invention,” said Martin. “I mean, George’s ‘Here Comes the Sun’ was the first time he’d really come through with a brilliant composition, and musical ideas, you know, the multiple odd rhythms that came through. They really became commercial for the first time on that one.” On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 9, the three Beatles once again became four, with Lennon and Ono, still bruised and clearly the worse for wear, having made their return from Scotland. As McDonald later recalled, “We were all waiting for them to arrive, Paul, George [Harrison], and Ringo downstairs and us upstairs. They didn’t know what state he [Lennon] would be in. There was a definite ‘vibe’: they were almost afraid of Lennon before he arrived, because they didn’t know what he would be like. I got the feeling that the three of them were a little bit scared of him. When he did come in it was a relief, and they got together fairly well. John was a powerful figure, especially with Yoko—a double strength.”21

  For George and the bandmates, it must have been quite a sight, with Yoko wearing a tiara in order to hide the scar on her forehead that she had received from the car wreck. Given her high-risk pregnancy, Yoko was under her physician’s orders for constant bed rest, so John had a double bed shipped into EMI Studios from Harrods and a microphone positioned within easy reach so as to allow her to be in continuous communication with him. For his part, Martin’s partner Ron Richards was flabbergasted by the sight of seeing Yoko lounging in “the bed,” as it came to be known. “I popped into one of the later sessions in Number 3,” he later recalled, “and there was Yoko in this blooming double-bed. I couldn’t believe it! John was sitting at an organ, playing, and I went up to him and said, ‘What the bloody hell is all this?’ and he was very touchy about it, so I kept quiet and walked out.”22

  Up first during Lennon’s first session back was McCartney’s “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” which the Beatles had last taken up during their scattershot rehearsals at Twickenham Studios. With Martin up in the booth, the bandmates recorded more than a dozen takes of the song. The next evening, they superimposed a number of overdubs, including McCartney’s piano and Martin’s Hammond organ. The highlight that day was a blacksmith’s anvil, which Martin had rented from a theatrical agency especially for Starr to periodically strike with a hammer during the song’s chorus.

  By this point, John had begun to find “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” particularly loathsome. Years later, he admitted, “I hate it. ’Cuz all I remember is the track—he made us do it a hundred million times. He did everything he could to make it a hit single and it never was and it never could’ve been.” By week’s end, they had put aside “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” in order to return to “Something,” for which Harrison superimposed a new lead vocal, and “You Never Give Me Your Money,” which received a new bass guitar line from McCartney.23

  By this juncture in the production of their new album, the Beatles’ manic energy to complete the LP led to them working simultaneously in all three EMI studios, from which they communicated using walkie-talkies in order to coordinate the project’s overall production. For his part, George was delighted with the vibe in the studio, which “was really good,” although the group’s intense new work style meant that he “had to be dashing from one place to another.”24

  By the following week, things were moving briskly, with additional superimpositions for “You Never Give Me Your Money,” including new vocals, along with a wind chime overdub to mask the song’s closing section. Martin and
the bandmates continued to add yet more layers, courtesy of the greater sonic real estate provided by eight-track technology, to Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something.” For the former, the Beatles superimposed handclaps and a harmonium part. As work moved forward on the new long-player, McCartney developed a routine in which he would come in each day to try his hand at singing the raucous lead vocal for “Oh! Darling.” As Alan Parsons later recalled, “My main memory of the Abbey Road sessions is of Paul coming into studio three at two o’clock or 2:30 each afternoon, on his own, to do the vocal,” adding that “he only tried it once per day, I suppose he wanted to capture a certain rawness which could only be done once before the voice changed.” Indeed, for several days running, McCartney gave it a shot, usually ending his most recent bout with the vocal by saying, “No, that’s not it. I’ll try it again tomorrow!” During this same period, the bandmates added harmony vocals, McCartney’s piano, and various sound effects to Starr’s “Octopus’s Garden.” Many of the effects were created by McCartney and Harrison, who made gargling sounds while McDonald modulated them with limiters and compressors.25

  During the Monday, July 21, session, as the world marveled at the previous day’s moon landing, Emerick made his full-time return to the Beatles’ fold, with McDonald and Kurlander assisting. Taking a break from his work at Apple Studios, Emerick had returned as “the first freelance engineer that had walked into the building.” That day, Martin supervised a basic rhythm track for “Come Together,” Lennon’s first new composition since “The Ballad of John and Yoko” in mid-April, a period spanning more than three months. Rehearsed with the tape running, the mid-tempo, bluesy “Come Together” was captured in six takes, with Lennon’s lead vocals, Harrison’s electric guitar, McCartney’s bass, and Starr’s drums, on which the drummer performed his distinctive tom-tom shuffle. That same week, George and the bandmates made further progress on the medley—namely, a new track that went under the title of “Ending,” the working title for “The End.” Recorded in seven takes, the rhythm track for the song was beginning to take on the proportions of an old-time rock ’n’ roll revue, a perfect vehicle for showcasing the band members’ musicianship and bringing the medley to a close. With the benefit of eight-track recording, Emerick was able to devote particular attention to Starr’s drum solo, which the engineer captured in all its percussive power through the careful placement of a dozen microphones around the drummer’s kit.26

  On Thursday, July 24, Martin produced McCartney’s solo demo for “Come and Get It,” a song that was slated for a later recording by Badfinger, a Welsh band formerly known as the Iveys, which had recently been signed by Apple Records. Meanwhile, Lennon presented two new compositions, “Sun King” and “Mean Mr. Mustard,” for consideration for the medley. With Harrison and Lennon on their electric guitars, McCartney’s bass, and Ringo’s drums, the session was ripe for an instrumental jam, which is exactly what happened during one of the takes, when Lennon segued into “Ain’t She Sweet,” the song that they had recorded with Tony “the Teacher” Sheridan way back in June 1961, followed by Gene Vincent’s “Who Slapped John?” and “Be-Bop-a-Lula.” The bandmates rounded out the week with a whopping thirty-nine takes of Lennon’s “Polythene Pam” and McCartney’s “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” which were recorded for the medley—like “Golden Slumbers” and “Carry That Weight”—as a single song. As “Polythene Pam” and “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” developed, a number of unusual overdubs were attempted, including Lennon’s comical studio chatter with Mal Evans (“Oh, look out!”) and Starr’s cracking whip to punctuate the verses on the latter.

  Martin and the bandmates brought the hyperbusy month of July to a close with an extended session on Wednesday, July 30, devoted to compiling a rough draft of the medley. At this point, a number of songs were under consideration, including “Golden Slumbers”/“Carry That Weight,” “Her Majesty,” “Polythene Pam”/“She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” and “Sun King,” with “You Never Give Me Your Money” and “The End” having already been slated to open and close the suite. Although the songs were largely unfinished at this juncture, Martin and the group wanted to hear how the whole shebang sounded and develop a rough mix. Eventually, a working order began to emerge that unfolded with “You Never Give Me Your Money,” “Sun King,” “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Her Majesty,” “Polythene Pam”/“She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” “Golden Slumbers”/“Carry That Weight,” and “The End.” Clocking in at fifteen minutes and thirty seconds, the medley seemed fairly cohesive, more or less, with a few notable exceptions. According to Dave Harries, this first problematic section of the medley involved the cross-fade between “You Never Give Me Your Money” into “Sun King,” which had been accomplished by merging the songs via an organ note, which stuck out like a sore thumb to the bandmates and their production team. And then there was “Her Majesty,” which seemed out of place when Martin and the Beatles previewed the mix. As John Kurlander later recalled, “We did all the remixes and crossfades to overlap the songs,” and Paul said, “I don’t like ‘Her Majesty,’ throw it away.” Kurlander dutifully excised the song, accidentally including the last note, which he neglected to edit out, given that it was only a rough mix, after all.27

  The very next day, “Her Majesty” experienced a bizarre recommendation when Malcolm Davies prepared a playback lacquer of the medley at Apple Studios, with Mal Evans returning the lacquer to EMI later that same day. Although the young tape operator wanted to adhere to Paul’s wishes, he also knew that “I’d been told never to throw anything away, so after he [Paul] left I picked it up off the floor, put about 20 seconds of red leader tape before it, and stuck it onto the end of the edit tape.” By the time that Kurlander returned to Abbey Road for his next shift, he was surprised to discover that “Her Majesty” was back in the mix, albeit with a very different placement than when he had gone home the previous evening. When Martin and McCartney heard the lacquer, they clearly liked hearing “Her Majesty” at the end of the medley. “The Beatles always picked up on accidental things,” said Kurlander. “It came as a nice little surprise there at the end.” On July 31, McCartney decided that “You Never Give Me Your Money” wasn’t quite there yet—especially the song’s third verse, with its tempo change in contrast with the plaintive early stanzas. To enhance the passage and establish momentum, McCartney planned to superimpose a boogie-woogie piano, only he couldn’t play the complex section up to tempo. At this juncture, Martin recorded McCartney performing the solo at half speed using the producer’s windup piano technique. In so doing, the section was transformed into a full-tilt piano boogie when played back at full speed.28

  On Friday, August 1, Lennon presented yet another new composition, titled “Because,” which he had been inspired to write after hearing Ono play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on the piano. He completed his new song after reversing the song’s chord structure and adorning it with suitably introspective lyrics. During the Friday evening session, Martin and the Beatles captured the song in twenty-three takes, with Lennon providing a guide vocal and electric guitar, McCartney playing bass, and Martin working a Baldwin spinet electric harpsichord. For the purposes of recording the basic rhythm track, Starr played a gentle beat on his hi-hat, which was projected into the other musicians’ headphones to provide a tempo. “Because I’m not renowned as the greatest time-keeper when I’m playing,” Martin later recalled, “Ringo was our drum machine.” On August 4, the Beatles and their producer returned to “Because,” effecting the same kind of three-part harmony that they had perfected with “This Boy” in 1963 and later, in 1965, with “Yes It Is” and Rubber Soul’s “Nowhere Man.” In many ways, “Because” may stand as the bandmates’ most exquisite multipart vocal effort, with a vital assist from eight-track technology, which allowed Martin to spread out the vocals with great separation and hence finer vocal resolution. Designating two tracks for the harmonies, “we put down one set of
voices with John, Paul, and George singing in harmony and we then designed two more sets of trios to go on top,” Martin remembered. “So we finished up with nine voices, nine sounds, that’s all but it worked. It was very simple.”29