In those pre-Internet, pre–mass communication days, the insiders among the industry who had foretold the band’s demise might have been surprised by the goings on at 3 Abbey Road on the evening of Thursday, November 24, the day that George and the Beatles quietly reconvened after a five-month absence. The idea, at first, was that they would be recording tracks for an as-of-yet untitled new long-player. According to Harrison, the bandmates had privately chosen the session date several weeks earlier but strategically had shared it with no one outside of their inner circle. But now it was time to get back to work. While they were no doubt cognizant of “Good Vibrations” and the Beach Boys’ apotheosis as their heir apparent, Martin and the bandmates were never lacking the confidence to plow forward. And they were competitive to a fault, seeing “Good Vibrations” as a direct challenge. The greatest single of its day, huh? The Beatles would have a thing or two to say about that.
9
A Wistful Little Tune
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YEARS LATER, MARTIN WOULD CAST the November 24, 1966, session as a turning point for his work with the Beatles, as a moment in which they took full advantage of the considerable goodwill that they had earned from EMI and transformed the studio into the magical workshop of which George had long dreamed. As Martin later observed, “The time had come for experiment. The Beatles knew it, and I knew it. By November 1966, we had had an enormous string of hits, and we had the confidence, even arrogance, to know that we could try anything we wanted. The sales we had achieved would have justified our recording rubbish, if we had wanted to. But then, we wouldn’t have got away with foisting rubbish on the public for long.” With their latest single and album having been issued in August, George felt that the time was nigh. “It was several months since we had been in the studio, and time for us to think about a new album. ‘New’ was certainly how it was to turn out,” said George. In retrospect, he later recalled, “I suppose the indications were already there. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows,’ from Revolver, had been strong hints for those with ears to hear what was to come. They were forerunners of a complete change of style.” And of course, there was the looming matter of the Beach Boys’ evolving arms race with the Beatles. It was, in George’s words, “a curious transatlantic slugging match, a rivalry conducted by means of songwriting and recording genius.” As he later recalled, “The Beatles thought Pet Sounds, its vocal harmonies in particular, was a fantastic album. I thought it was great, too. ‘Could we do as well as that?’ they asked me, in the run-up to their own new long-player. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘We can do better.’”1
But George and the Beatles’ stylistic paradigm shift didn’t simply commence with one session. As with their work since their earliest days together, it began with a single composition—in this instance, the dreamlike tune that John had begun composing back in Almería. Now going by the title of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” the fragment had grown from John’s crude structure back in Spain into a series of progressively more structured demo recordings. The November 24 session began at seven that evening with the Beatles, Martin, Geoff Emerick, and Phil McDonald huddled around the Studio 2 console. Years later, Emerick recalled the sight of the Beatles, having changed utterly, as they sauntered into the control room. “It had been five months since I’d last seen the group, but it might as well have been five years. For one thing, they all looked so different. Garbed in colorful clothes and sporting trendy mustaches—George Harrison even had a beard—they were utterly hip, the epitome of swinging London.” But it was John who really caught Geoff’s eye: “John was the one who had changed the most: having shed the excess weight he’d put on during the Revolver sessions, he was trim, almost gaunt, and he was wearing granny glasses instead of the thick horn-rimmed National Health spectacles I was used to seeing. He also had very short, distinctly non-Beatlish hair.”2
But before Martin could go about the business of “routining” any new compositions that the bandmates had ready that evening, Lennon interrupted the proceedings. It was not only clear that John had something to say but that the Beatles had had a number of private conversations about the band’s future—and if there was going to be one, what kind of band they wanted to be. In Geoff’s memory, John seemed “agitated” as he took the floor. Even after all these years, when push came to shove, it was John who took the lead. “Look,” he said to the Beatles’ producer, “it’s really quite simple. We’re fed up with making soft music for soft people, and we’re fed up with playing for them, too. But it’s given us a fresh start, don’t you see?” As George looked on, Geoff could tell that he was surprised by John’s unexpected torrent of passion. “We can’t hear ourselves onstage anymore for all the screaming,” Paul added, “so what’s the point? We did try performing some songs off the last album, but there are so many complicated overdubs we can’t do them justice. Now we can record anything we want, and it won’t matter. And what we want is to raise the bar a notch, to make our best album ever.” Now George was beginning to understand. “What we’re saying is, if we don’t have to tour, then we can record music that we won’t ever have to play live, and that means we can create something that’s never been heard before: a new kind of record with new kinds of sounds.”3
From George’s perspective, the November 24 session was already a veritable dream come true. He had long feared that touring would, quite literally, be the death of the band, realizing how vulnerable they were on a tiny stage amid a sea of people. He knew that they suffered from “hotel fatigue” on the road, that their celebrity had become nothing more than a “prison of fame.” And the notion that they wanted to continue pushing the boundaries, fearless about the consequences and willing to go wherever their music might take them—well, that was music to George’s ears. “When I first started in the music business the ultimate aim for everybody was to try and re-create, on record, a live performance as accurately as possible,” Martin later recalled. “But then, we realized that we could do something other than that. In other words, the film doesn’t just re-create the stage play. So, without being too pompous, we decided to go into another kind of art form, where we are devising something that couldn’t be done any other way. We were putting something down on tape that could only be done on tape.” With Lennon’s words still ringing in his ears, Martin was ready and willing to take this newfangled and refreshingly arrogant Beatles out for a spin.4
And with that, the producer delivered his usual call to action with the Beatles in the studio: “Right, then, let’s get to work. What have you got for me?” As Emerick later recalled, McCartney seemed to be on the verge of piping up, when Lennon shouted, “I’ve got a good one, for a starter!” As Emerick and McDonald readied themselves up in the control booth, the others took their place below in Studio 2. Martin took his customary perch on a tall stool in front of Lennon, who began singing “Strawberry Fields Forever” for the very first time at Abbey Road. “John was standing in front of me, his acoustic guitar at the ready,” George later wrote. “This was his usual way of showing me a new song—another of my extremely privileged private performances. ‘It goes something like this, George,’ he said, with a nonchalance that concealed his ingrained diffidence about his voice. Then he began strumming gently. That wonderfully distinctive voice had a slight tremor, a unique nasal quality that gave his song poignancy, almost a feeling of luminescence.” Martin was thunderstruck. “It was a very gentle song when I first heard it,” he later recalled. “It was spellbinding. His lyrics painted a hazy, impressionistic world. I was in love with what I heard. All I had to do was record it.” If only it would be so simple. Any notion of producing the song with John singing solo along with his guitar, à la Paul’s “Yesterday,” was out the window almost immediately. For his part, McCartney was just as smitten as Martin, breathlessly telling his songwriting partner, “That is absolutely brilliant.” As Emerick later recalled, Lennon was keen to share his demo recording, although his efforts fell on deaf ears: “‘I’ve brought a demo t
ape of the song with me, too,’ John said, offering to play it, but everyone agreed there was no need—they wanted to get straight into recording. The energy in the room was staggering: it was almost as if the band’s creative energies had been bottled up for too long.”5
Drawing its name from an aging Salvation Army home near Lennon’s boyhood haunts back in Liverpool, “Strawberry Fields Forever” began shaping up very quickly, with Martin and the bandmates already devising an arrangement for the song as Emerick and McDonald waited in the control room upstairs. As was their practice, they began compiling a basic rhythm track, which featured Paul playing the Mellotron Mark II with the flute stop deployed. Mal Evans had helpfully brought the keyboard instrument to Abbey Road from John’s Weybridge estate. The Mellotron had already figured prominently in the composition of two Lennon-McCartney songs, “In My Life” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.”
The Beatles rounded out the basic track for “Strawberry Fields Forever” with Harrison and Lennon on their guitars. With Lennon playing rhythm guitar on his Gibson Jumbo, Harrison provided lead guitar accents on his Sonic Blue Fender Stratocaster. Meanwhile, Starr got into the act of experimenting with new sounds by arranging tea towels over the drum heads on his snare and tom-toms. With the towels in place, his drumming took on a distinctive muffled tonality. After recording the first take of the basic track with this arrangement, Martin captured Lennon’s first pass at the lead vocals, which was later treated with ADT, along with Harrison and McCartney providing harmonies. For John’s vocal, George instructed Geoff to roll the tape fast at fifty-three cycles per second in order to create the illusion of a faster tempo on replay. By the time the session ended at 2:30 AM, Martin and the bandmates had created an exquisite first attempt at the song. Indeed, George felt they already captured the best possible recording in a single, magical take. “That first take is brilliant, especially John’s vocal: clear, pure, and riveting,” Martin later wrote. “As he sang it that night, the song became hypnotic, gentle and wistful, but very strong too, his sparse vocal standing in sharp contrast to the full sound of George’s electric guitar, Paul’s imaginative Mellotron, and Ringo’s magnificent drums.”6
But Lennon felt differently, believing that more work had to be done, that “Strawberry Fields Forever” wasn’t quite there yet. Even years later, George struggled to understand how the bandmates’ very first recording of “Strawberry Fields Forever” had succeeded so powerfully in capturing his own imagination yet at the same time failing to seize John’s in even remotely the same way. As George later wrote, the mystery at the heart of any work of art exists at an elemental level for each of us: “I am not sure how much cold-blooded analysis has to do with one’s passion for a work of art. It is a bit like falling in love. Do we really care if there is the odd wrinkle here or there? The power to move people, to tears or laughter, to violence or sympathy, is the strongest attribute that any art can have. In this respect, music is the prime mover: its call on the emotions is the most direct of all the arts.”7
Martin recognized that “Strawberry Fields Forever” was not merely situating the Beatles on the precipice of new soundscapes but on whole new vistas of composition. “It was the beginning of the imaginative, some say psychedelic, way of writing,” he later remarked. “I prefer to think of it as being complete tone poem imagery, and it’s more like a modern Debussy.” By invoking Claude Debussy—the “heavenly” composer who had left a powerful imprint on fifteen-year-old George’s schoolboy mind—the producer had granted “Strawberry Fields Forever” the highest possible compliment that he could muster. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine finer praise coming from George.8
But as it turned out, additional work on the exciting new song would have to wait until the following week. The next day, Friday, November 25, the Beatles had been booked to record their annual Christmas message. With George in tow, the bandmates traveled across town to Dick James’s office on New Oxford Street. Working in the music publisher’s basement studio, they hammed things up, recording a series of skits. As Ringo later recalled, they concocted their 1966 Christmas narrative on the spot: “We worked it out between us. Paul did most of the work on it. He thought up the Pantomime title and the two song things.” Prepared for later distribution to members of the UK Beatles fan club, the disc would be adorned with cover art by McCartney and titled as Pantomime: Everywhere It’s Christmas. With Martin and Epstein in the control room, the Beatles performed a series of skits, including “Podgy the Bear and Jasper” and “Felpin Mansions.” With McCartney on piano accompaniment and Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall providing additional voices, the group sings such hastily improvised compositions as “Everywhere It’s Christmas,” “Orowainya,” and “Please Don’t Bring Your Banjo Back.” On December 2, Pantomime: Everywhere It’s Christmas was mixed for released in EMI Studios’ Room 53, with Tony Barrow sitting in for Martin and Emerick serving as balance engineer. The recording was distributed to UK fans on December 16.9
With their annual holiday chore out of the way for another year, George and the bandmates returned to Studio 2 on Monday, November 28, for another overnight session. Realizing that they were badly in need of a new Beatles release, EMI was happy to grant the Beatles all the time and space the band felt they needed. As Ringo observed at the time, “We’re big with EMI at the moment. They don’t argue if we take the time we want.” For his part, George was all too familiar with the breakneck pace of their past projects. If they really were abandoning the road—if he no longer had to book sessions in the nooks and crannies that Brian Epstein allotted him between concert dates and public appearances—then he intended to take full advantage of the bandmates’ availability. When George and the Beatles got to work that evening, they remade “Strawberry Fields Forever” with a slightly different arrangement, notable for a telling shift into the lower key of A major. The shift in key signature would prove to have significant implications for the ultimate direction of the song. With Paul again working the Mellotron with the flute stop toggled, take two saw the Beatles beginning to establish a proper rhythm track. With the same instrumentation in play—save for the addition of maracas—take two collapsed under the weight of several guitar misfires on Harrison’s part. Take three stalled after John complained that Paul’s Mellotron introduction was too loud. For the moment at least, take four was selected as the best. Including Harrison’s guitar work, the basic rhythm track featured a newly recorded slowed-down vocal from Lennon and McCartney’s overdubbed bass part. As Martin later recalled, “Typically, John asked me for a speed change on his vocal recording. I thought his voice was one of the all-time greats, but he was always asking me to distort or bend it in some way, to ‘improve’ it as he thought. So when we overdubbed his vocal, we pumped up the tape frequency to 53 hertz instead of the normal 50 hertz. On playback at normal speed, the adjustment lowered his voice by a semitone, making it sound warmer and huskier.” At the session’s conclusion, Martin and Emerick prepared three mono mixes for the purpose of creating acetates so that the Beatles could reflect on their progress at home. But by this point, George and the bandmates knew that “Strawberry Fields Forever” was not quite there. And to John’s mind, it wasn’t even close.10
On Tuesday, November 29, Martin and the group worked an afternoon session in Studio 2 that sprawled until eight that evening during which the band remade the rhythm track yet again. By this point, they were satisfied with the arrangement and the instrumentation; they simply hadn’t captured the best performance yet. “I thought our baby was perfect,” George later recalled, but “over that weekend, however, fertile imaginations went to work, and by the time we arrived for that session on Monday, it was obvious that John and Paul had come up with plenty of ideas on how to improve ‘Strawberry Fields Forever.’” In the same vein as the producer’s suggestion in earlier years that they begin songs like “She Loves You” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” with the chorus, Lennon and McCartney had reconfigured the beginning of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” �
�It was a good move,” Martin later wrote, “because the lyric now immediately grabbed you by the throat. The song made you share an intriguing journey.” After several hours of rehearsal, take six seemed to be the answer, including a lengthy coda, to which Lennon appended an ADT-treated vocal and McCartney adorned a bass line on his Rickenbacker. After enacting vocal and Mellotron overdubs, Martin and Emerick created three mono mixes—again, for acetate purposes. But as things began to wind down that evening, Geoff could tell that John was still far from happy with their results, that the song still wasn’t quite where he wanted it to be. As he later wrote, “John seemed to be having a lot of trouble making up his mind about how he wanted the song recorded.”11
As it happened, Lennon would have nearly ten days to mull things over and reconsider the direction of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” When Martin and the group reconvened for what turned out to be an overnight session on Tuesday, December 6, they tackled yet another new composition—although in this case, it was a song that McCartney had begun back in 1958. With his father, Jim, having turned sixty-four on July 2, 1966, Paul may have revisited the composition titled “When I’m Sixty-Four” in his honor. The tune had occasionally featured in the Beatles’ prefame days playing lunchtime concerts in Liverpool’s Cavern Club—and often when they suffered from amplifier breakdowns or other equipment failures. As George later wrote, “The song had been lurking around in Paul’s mind for a long, long time, ever since I first knew him.” He was especially fond of the lyrics: “When I heard ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ for the first time, I chuckled at the cleverness of the lyrics,” Martin wrote. “It was an affectionate satire regarding old age from a young man’s point of view.”12
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