On August 8 the sessions resumed. John added “white noise” from the Moog synthesizer. John was enamored of the “white noise,” which was the scary and haunting synthetic sound used at the end of the song. Ringo added an additional snare drum part. Surprisingly, these final additions are not on the tape dated April 18, but on a recording dated February 22 at Trident Studios. Is this a labeling error? We do not know. On August 11, John, Paul, and George met in Studio Two, rerecorded the tremendous backing vocals, and sang She’s so heavy onto the master of April 18. The choruses are impressive and the result striking. The song was completed, although John hesitated between the versions of April 18 and February 23. In both he had inserted She’s so Heavy. Since the time of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” John had acquired some production expertise. More than six months later on August 20, he made his final decision: he asked for a remix of both versions and then had the two edited together. The master is the Abbey Road version for the first 4:37 and then the original Trident tape for the rest of the song. The junction is at exactly 4:37, just after She’s so heavy. John was becoming obsessed with the “white noise” and constantly implored Geoff Emerick to make it “Louder! louder!! … I want the track to build and build and build, … and then I want the white noise to completely take over and blot out the music together.”3 According to Emerick, Paul sat in a corner with his head down; he couldn’t understand John’s delirium. Emerick recalled, “I could see a dejected Paul, sitting slumped over, head down, staring at the floor. He didn’t say a word, but his body language made it clear that he was very unhappy, not only with the song itself, but with the idea that the music … was being obliterated with noise.”4 Then, suddenly, twenty seconds before the track broke down, John said, “There! Cut the tape there.” Surprised, Emerick “glanced over at George Martin who simply shrugged his shoulders” and executed the order. To everyone’s surprise, the abrupt ending is incredibly effective, “a Lennon concept that really worked,”5 Emerick said. It was certainly a very effective way to end the second side of the album. However, John wanted to reverse the two sides of the album, so that his song would end the Abbey Road album. “I Want You” is the last song on which the four Beatles were together inside the recording studio. After August 20, they never worked together again.
Technical Details
To strengthen the sound in the coda, the Moog synthesizer, snare drum, and guitars were treated with ADT, which gives the feeling of a “wall of sound.” During the quiet moments, it is possible to hear quite clearly the various sounds created by the transfers to and from the tape recorders of the day. Recording on an eight-track tape recorder was very limited, and required reductions to save tracks for recording new sounds. This limited technology did not prevent the Beatles from recording most of their work, including Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, on a four-track tape recorder, even if they had to continuously synchronize the tape recorders.
Here Comes The Sun
George Harrison / 3:06
1969
MUSICIANS
George: vocal, guitar, Moog synthesizer, harmonium, hand claps
Paul: bass, backing vocal, hand claps
Ringo: drums
Orchestra: 4 violas, 4 cellos, 1 double bass, 2 piccolos, 2 flutes, 2 alto flutes, 2 clarinets
RECORDED
Abbey Road: July 7–8, 1969 (Studio Two) / July 16, 1969 (Studio Three) / August 6, 1969 (Studio Three) / August 11, 1969 (Studio Two) / August 15, 1969 (Studios One and Two) / August 19, 1969 (Studio Two)
NUMBER OF TAKES: 15
MIXING:
Abbey Road: July 8, 1969 (Studio Two) / August 4, 1969 (Studio Two)
TECHNICAL TEAM
Producer: George Martin
Sound Engineers: Phil McDonald, Geoff Emerick
Assistant Engineers: Alan Parsons, John Kurlander
Genesis
The year 1969 was difficult for the Beatles. Legal and business disagreements, the breakdown of the Get Back project, and an omnipresent Yoko Ono were all serious threats to the overwhelmed, tired group. Each member was seeking more independence. George, in particular, was overwhelmed with accountants, attorneys, lawyers, bankers …
On a beautiful spring morning, George Harrison wrote “Here Comes the Sun” while visiting Eric Clapton at his house in Huntwood Edge, Surrey. “We were sitting at the top of a big field at the bottom of the garden. We had our guitars and we were just strumming away when he started singing ‘de da de de, it’s been a long cold lonely winter,’ and bit by bit he fleshed it out, until it was time for lunch.”1
In October 1969, George said to David Wigg, “The story behind that was, like Paul sung ‘You Never Give Me Your Money.’ I think, because whatever you’re involved with rubs off and influences you. ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ is, I think, during all these business things that we had to go through to sort out the past, so it came out in Paul’s song. ‘Here Comes the Sun’ was the same period. We had meetings and meetings and with all this, you know, banks, bankers and lawyers and all sorts of things. And contracts and shares. And it was really awful, ’cuz it’s not the sort of thing we enjoy. And one day I didn’t come in to the office. I just sort of, it was like sagging off school. And I went to a friend’s house in the country. And it was just sunny and it was all just the release of that tension that had been building up on me. And it was just a really nice sunny day. And I picked up the guitar, which was the first time I’d played the guitar for a couple of weeks because I’d been so busy. And the first thing that came out was that song. It just came. And I finished it later when I was on holiday in Sardinia.”2 He finished the song soon after June 1 while on vacation in Sardinia with Terry Doran, the press officer of the group, and his wife Pattie. Klaus Voormann joined them soon after. He recalled that one day at the pool he heard George repeat the same sentence several times, accompanied by his guitar, “‘Here comes the sun, Here comes the sun.’ I thought it sounded rather well.”3
“Here Comes the Sun” was another of George’s masterpieces. Both words and music are luminous, radiant. Like “Something,” it proved that Harrison could write songs on the same level as John and Paul.
FOR BEATLES FANATICS
At 2:23 George sang something like, It seels like years, which could be a contraction of It seems like years and It feels like years. Probably just a slight hesitation, an unfortunate slip.
Production
July 7 was Ringo’s twenty-ninth birthday and the first recording session for “Here Comes the Sun.” John was still recovering from his car accident in Scotland. The three Beatles started recording the rhythm track—Paul on bass, Ringo on drums, and George on acoustic guitar and singing the guide vocal. The interpretation was dazzling. Ringo had no trouble mastering the unusual rhythm of the song, which switches between 11/8, 4/4, and 7/8 on the bridge. His ability to master any rhythm, often underestimated, allowed him to perform this task without difficulty. It was proof that he could keep to any tempo before there was an electronic metronome. Take 13 was the best basic track. George perfected his part on the Gibson J-200 for the last hour of the session. The following day he overdubbed his lead vocal, erasing his previous vocal, and overdubbing the superb backing vocals, Sun, Sun, Sun, that he shared and double-tracked with Paul. Paul also added the electric guitar parts, run through a Leslie speaker, while Ringo reinforced his snare. Take 13 was given a reduction using a second eight-track tape recorder. On track 16, George added the harmonium, hand claps that required a lot of practice to perfect, and overdubbed other backing vocals with Paul. On August 6 and 11, George added more guitar to the song. Then, on August 15, they had a nine-hour marathon session to record George Martin’s orchestral arrangement. Surprisingly, even though the Beatles sold the most records in the history of rock, EMI still demanded rigorous adherence to the recording budget. Then, on the same day, George Martin recorded the orchestral parts of “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” “The End,” “Something,” and “Here Comes the Sun.
”
George’s harmonium virtually disappeared in favor of strings. On August 19, he added a Moog synthesizer overdub onto take 15, his final touch to the song, in Room 43. The Moog masked the sound of woodwind and percussion instruments. The stereo mix, slightly varispeeded, was made the same day. The Gibson J-200 was reinforced with ADT, except in the introduction. Paul made a few sound loops especially for the song, but they were not selected for the final version.
Journey into Space
American astronomer Carl Sagan developed the “Voyager Golden Record,” which was included aboard both Voyager spacecraft in 1977. The record was a collection of sounds and images characterizing the diversity of life and culture on Earth and intended to be heard by extraterrestrial life or a future population finding the records. “Here Comes the Sun” was selected as part of that collection, but, unfortunately, EMI refused to release the copyright. Instead “Voya ger Golden Record” spread the good vibes of rock ’n’ roll with “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry.
Because
Lennon-McCartney / 2:46
1969
SONGWRITER
John
MUSICIANS
John: vocal, guitar
Paul: vocal, bass
George: vocal, Moog synthesizer
Ringo: guide rhythm
George Martin: harpsichord
RECORDED
Abbey Road: August 1 and 4, 1969 (Studio Two) / August 5, 1969 (Studios Two and Three, and Room 43)
NUMBER OF TAKES: 23
MIXING:
Abbey Road: August 12, 1969 (Studio Two)
TECHNICAL TEAM
Producer: George Martin
Sound Engineer: Geoff Emerick, Phil McDonald
Assistant Engineer: John Kurlander
Genesis
Yoko, who as a child was trained as a classical pianist, played Beethoven’s “Moonlight Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Opus 27, No. 2” for John. John, lying on the couch listening, asked her to play the chords backwards. Later he said he was inspired by them to write “Because.” Although it contains some similarities to Beethoven, even reversed, the relationship is not obvious. It seems instead that he combined the general feeling of the piece with memories of their recent visit to the Netherlands. Indeed, on the Wedding Album, the couple’s solo album released on November 7, 1969, Yoko sang a song, apparently titled “Stay in Bed” with an arpeggio chord accompaniment performed by John that is very close to “Because.” This recording is part of the experimental piece “Amsterdam” (at about 22:10), the second song on the record taped between March 25 and 31, 1969, during John and Yoko’s bed-in in the presidential suite, room 902, at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel. This hotel was immortalized in the song “The Ballad of John and Yoko”: drove from Paris to the Amsterdam Hilton …”
According to Paul, Yoko had a strong influence on John’s words: wind, sky, and earth are recurring themes in the work of the young woman. It was straight out of her book Grapefruit (1964). John, himself, found the words clear, speaking for themselves, “no bullshit, no imagery, no obscure references.”1 George thought “Because” was the best song on the record simply because he loved the three-part backing vocals. In October 1969, he said to David Wigg, “We’ve never done something like that for years, I think, since a B-side. [sings] If you wear red tonight, and what I said tonight [lyrics from ‘Yes It Is’ —ed.]. So I like that. I like lots of them. I like ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ and ‘Golden Slumbers’ and things.”2 Paul also shared this opinion. He thought it one of the best songs on the Abbey Road album.
FOR BEATLES FANATICS
Paul ultimately bought the electric harpsichord used in “Because” from EMI. It is the same harpsichord that was reused for “Free As a Bird,” John’s posthumous song completed by Paul, George, and Ringo for The Beatles Anthology in 1995. Apparently, it was only used for these two Beatles songs, twenty-six years apart!
Production
On August 1, when George Martin listened to John’s beautiful song “Because,” he immediately saw that his experience would once again be useful, just as it had been in the past. Harmonizing vocal lines was still one of his great strengths. The first recording session consisted of John playing arpeggiated chords on his electric guitar and, as George Martin suggested, doubled-tracking the arpeggios on the Baldwin solid-body electric harpsichord recently acquired earlier that year by EMI (a kind of electric spinet harpsichord played by Martin himself). Ringo tapped out a steady tempo on a hi-hat cymbal for reference only. It was only for the musicians’ headphones—it was not recorded on tape. George and Paul were in the control room. Paul was acting as producer; dissatisfied, he kept asking the three musicians to do take after take. Totally exhausted after twenty-three takes, the trio went to the control room to listen to the result. They soon found an excellent take (take 16) recorded an hour earlier. Geoff: “John didn’t say anything, but he shot an embarrassed Paul a dirty look.”3 Paul then recorded his bass, and Martin asked them, with the exception of Ringo, to rehearse the three-part backing vocal track that he had just written. Each diligently learned his part, then recorded the first take after three hours of intense work. On August 4, they decided to double and triple this first vocal track to enrich the backing vocals. John, Paul, and George recorded two additional takes of this magnificent three-part harmony. The lights were dimmed for atmosphere, the Beatles were sitting in a semicircle, and, despite their fatigue, no one gave up. It took more than five hours to record good takes. On August 5, George Harrison brought a final touch to the song in Room 43 by recording two synthesizer overdubs. The Moog synthesizer was a recent invention, and he was one of the first to use it in the UK. He bought the instrument on November 15, 1968, during his stay in California. He used it for Electronic Sounds, his CD released by Zapple, the experimental Apple label, on May 9. Emerick tried something new as well to keep the purity of the sound: “I had decided to use no signal processor whatsoever, no compressor or limiters.”4 Fully satisfied with the effect, he decided to mix the entire track without them on August 12. The final stereo mix was made the same date.
You Never Give Me Your Money
Lennon-McCartney / 4:03
1969
SONGWRITER
Paul
MUSICIANS
Paul: piano, vocal, bass, chimes, guitar
John: guitar, backing vocal
George: guitar, bass, backing vocal
Ringo: drums, tambourine
RECORDED
Olympic Sound Studio: May 6, 1969 (Studio One)
Abbey Road: July 1 and 11, 1969 (Studio Two) / July 15, 1969 (Studio Three) / July 30, 1969 (Studios Two and Three) / July 31, 1969 (Studio Two) / August 5, 1969 (Studio Three)
NUMBER OF TAKES: 42
MIXING
Abbey Road: July 15, 1969 (Studio Three) / July 30, 1969 (Studios Two and Three) / August 13–14 and 21, 1969 (Studio Two)
TECHNICAL TEAM
Producer: George Martin
Sound Engineers: Glyn Johns, Phil McDonald, Geoff Emerick
Assistant Engineers: Steve Vaughan, Chris Blair, John Kurlander, Alan Parsons
Genesis
The opening of the famous Abbey Road medley, “You Never Give Me Your Money” resulted from a mix of five or six different song fragments. The idea was probably born at the time of the first recording session at Olympic Sound Studios in early May. George Martin suggested that Paul think “symphonically.” This was an excellent idea, and immediately Paul and John started to put together pieces of unfinished songs. Paul said, “I think it was my idea to put all the spare bits together, but I’m a bit wary of claiming these things. I’m happy for it to be everyone’s idea.”1 Ringo recalled that John and Paul recorded various pieces together as a medley: “A lot of work went into it, but they weren’t writing together.”2 John said, “I’ve got stuff that I wrote around Sgt. Pepper … It was a good way of getting rid of bits of songs.”3
Everything took shape under the leadership
of Paul and George Martin, with George and Ringo helping with vocals and instrumental parts. John: “We’ve got twelve bars here—fill it in. And we’d fill it in on the spot.”4 However, Martin recalled that in the end John did not like the medley. He did not think it rocked enough. The medley was very difficult to record. Afterward, George said, “We did actually perform more like musicians again.”5
“You Never Give Me Your Money,” written in New York in October 1968, was about the Beatles’ administrative and management difficulties, difficulties that were particularly hard on Paul. The phrase But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go referred to aimless walks he took with his wife Linda in the countryside near London. He admitted, “This was me lambasting Allen Klein’s attitude to us: no money, just funny paper, all promises and it never works out.”6
Paul’s Bells
Chimes used for Paul’s bell sounds were previously used on “Penny Lane” for the sound of the fire truck. Today, these Premier Orchestral Chimes are in Paul’s home recording studio.
Production
On May 6, 1969, the Beatles began work on “You Never Give Me Your Money” at Olympic Sound Studios in London, where they had recorded several times before. The basic rhythm track included Paul at the piano and guide vocal, John on distorted guitar, George on his Fender six-string bass and on a second guitar fed through a Leslie speaker, and Ringo on drums. After thirty-six takes, take 30 was judged the best. At this point, the song ended abruptly and the transition to “Sun King” was not clearly defined.
The Beatles resumed work on July 1, at Abbey Road. In fact, Paul was the only Beatle in the studio when he overdubbed a lead vocal. John was absent because of a car accident with his family in Scotland. This recording session marked the beginning of the sessions for the album. Ten days later, Paul added a bass line, then on July 15, all the Beatles got back together, and vocals, tambourine, and chimes were recorded. They tried backing vocals on the out of college section, but soon quit. For the session on July 30, the Beatles were in the control room to verify the sequence in “The Long One / Huge Melody,” as the medley was called then. The songs all fit together perfectly, except for two small problems: Paul decided to eliminate “Her Majesty” permanently, and he was not happy with the transition from “You Never Give Me Your Money” to “Sun King,” which was only a single long organ note at the time. The following day, other bass lines and honky-tonk piano were recorded for the out of college section (1:10 to 1:31). The piano part was played an octave lower on a Steinway B Grand Piano and recorded with the playback slowed down to half normal speed, which created the characteristic honky-tonk piano sound as heard in “Rocky Raccoon.” It is likely Paul played the piano track, not George Martin. Paul was confident enough and he played the piano in the introduction to the song.
All the Songs Page 44
