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by Kenneth Womack


  But as it happened, work on “Penny Lane” hadn’t concluded just yet. A week later, during a Wednesday, January 25, session in the Studio 1 control room, George soured on the trumpet flourish at the conclusion of the song. Feeling that it was superfluous, he instructed Emerick to delete Mason’s coda from the January 17 mono remix. The problem, of course, was that the January 17 version had already been shipped to California. With Emerick and McDonald in tow, Martin carried out three more mono mixes, with the final version, remix fourteen, being selected to replace the previous one. Unfortunately, by this juncture Capitol had already pressed several promotional discs, which had been distributed to American radio stations forthwith. In so doing, Capitol had inadvertently created some of the most sought-after discs among Beatles collectors to the present day.

  Released in the United Kingdom on February 17, “Strawberry Fields Forever” backed with “Penny Lane” proved to be an iconic, paradigm-shifting moment for Martin and the Beatles—just as George had predicted it would be. NME’s Derek Johnson described “Strawberry Fields Forever” as “certainly the most unusual and way-out single the Beatles have yet produced—both in lyrical content and scoring. Quite honestly, I don’t really know what to make of it.” Johnson lauded the song’s “complex backing,” “weird effects,” and “constantly changing tempos, including a startling glissando that sounds as if the disc’s slowing down.” Johnson concludes by praising “Strawberry Fields Forever” as being “completely fascinating, a record that becomes more spellbinding with every play.” While he makes a special point of describing “Penny Lane” as “by far the more commercial sounding of the two sides,” Johnson gushes appropriately about McCartney’s contribution, extolling the song for its “jaunty jogging rhythm, a catchy tune, some of the familiar Beatle falsettos, and a colorful lyric.” Meanwhile, Time magazine heralded the double A-sided single’s release in the United States as “the latest sample of the Beatles’ astonishing inventiveness.” Time’s reviewer described “Strawberry Fields Forever” as being “full of dissonances and eerie space-age sounds, achieved in part by playing tapes backward and at various speeds. This is nothing new to electronic composers, but employing such methods in a pop song is electrifying.” For Time’s reviewer, the verdict of the “Strawberry Fields Forever” backed with “Penny Lane” single was ineluctably clear: “From the first mewings of ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ the Beatles have developed into the single most creative force in pop music. Wherever they go, the pack follows. And where they have gone in recent months, not even their most ardent supporters would ever have dreamed of. They have bridged the heretofore impassable gap between rock and classical, mixing elements of Bach, Oriental, and electronic music with vintage twang to achieve the most compellingly original sounds ever heard in pop music.”12

  For George and the Beatles, “Strawberry Fields Forever” backed with “Penny Lane” proved to be a blockbuster in almost every sense of the word. Almost. After its mid-February release, the single racked up sales of more than 2.5 million copies and dominated the airwaves in the United Kingdom and the United States alike. And the critics loved it, too. In the Village Voice, Robert Christgau described “Strawberry Fields Forever” backed with “Penny Lane” as “maybe the finest two-sided record in history.” But the single’s staggering critical and commercial success didn’t translate into a number-one British hit for George and the bandmates. “It broke the roll,” George later wrote. For the first time since “Please Please Me” backed with “Ask Me Why” topped the charts in early 1963, the Beatles had been denied the top spot on the UK singles charts. After twelve straight number-one singles, unlucky number thirteen had come up short. The culprit behind George and the Beatles’ inability to capture the top spot was twofold: first, “Strawberry Fields Forever” backed with “Penny Lane” had been victimized by its own double A-sided status. In the United Kingdom, sales figures were computed separately for each song as if they were, in fact, two different singles. In a sense, each side canceled out the other. And then there was the matter of balladeer Engelbert Humperdinck, who had come out of nowhere to deny the Beatles their thirteenth straight UK chart-topper.13

  Released in early 1967, Humperdinck’s “Release Me (and Let Me Love Again)” backed with “10 Guitars” had languished for several weeks before the crooner made a fortuitous appearance on Val Parnell’s Sunday Night at the London Palladium, the very same ATV program that launched British Beatlemania in October 1963. Humperdinck had been a last-minute guest on the popular live television variety show after singer Dickie Valentine had fallen ill. The boost that Humperdinck enjoyed after his television appearance made all the difference. On March 2, “Release Me (and Let Me Love Again)” captured the top spot on the UK charts, marooning the Beatles’ latest single at number two, even though “Strawberry Fields Forever” backed with “Penny Lane” had outsold Humperdinck’s record by a nearly two-to-one margin. While the Beatles’ single failed to top the official UK charts, Melody Maker credited “Strawberry Fields Forever” backed with “Penny Lane” with a combined number-one showing for three straight weeks. In the United States, “Penny Lane” captured the number-one spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 for a week before being supplanted by the Turtles’ “Happy Together.”

  While the Beatles seemed largely indifferent to their most recent showing on the UK charts, Martin was severely disappointed. For their part, Lennon and McCartney responded to the strange fate of their new single with a sense of mild amusement, although Harrison later admitted that it was “a bit of a shock being number two, but then again, there were always so many different charts that you could be number two in one chart and number one in another.” Humperdinck was elated, of course, at his surprisingly strong showing in the face of the Beatles’ latest 45 rpm juggernaut: “I don’t feel bad about it at all and, indeed, I feel proud that I kept the Beatles from being number one,” he later remarked. “To be in front of them in the charts was totally amazing.” As they returned to work on their new long-player—now without the benefit of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” as potential album tracks—John and Paul shared their nonchalance with the music press:

  John: The charts? I read them all. There’s room for everything. I don’t mind Humperbert Engeldinck. They’re the cats. It’s their scene.

  Paul: It’s fine if you’re kept from being number one by a record like “Release Me” because you’re not trying to do the same kind of thing. That’s a completely different scene altogether.

  John: When [singles] first come out, we follow how much the initial sales were. Not for the money reason, just to see how it’s doing compared to the last one; just because we made it. We need that satisfaction, not the glory of number one.

  Lennon and McCartney’s shared detachment was a sharp contrast to Martin, who blamed himself for not recognizing the problematic nature of pairing two powerhouse songs like “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane.” Martin was stunned by the single’s performance, second-guessing himself for foisting “Strawberry Fields Forever” backed with “Penny Lane” upon Brian Epstein and the bandmates as an unbeatable combination. “It was a smashing single,” Martin later remarked, “but it was also a dreadful mistake.” Not mincing words, he later characterized his decision to pair the songs as “the biggest mistake of my professional life. Releasing either song coupled with ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ would have been by far the better decision, but at the same time I couldn’t see it.” Still, Martin knew full well the nature of their accomplishment and its portents for the Beatles’ creative future. In later years, he proudly took to describing “Strawberry Fields Forever” backed with “Penny Lane”—in spite of the single’s second-place showing—as “the best record we ever made.”14

  George may have been disappointed, but Brian was surprisingly untroubled by the result. The sales receipts spoke for themselves, and besides, the Beatles’ manager saw the single as a way for the Beatles (and himself) to worm their way back i
nto the good graces of their northern brethren, a great many of whom now saw the Beatles’ collective move to London as a regional betrayal. As he wrote in a letter to Derek Taylor in February 1967, the Beatles’ manager couldn’t help wondering aloud, “Do you think it’ll help our image in Liverpool?” Brian’s indifference may also have been fueled by his ongoing business flirtation with Australian financier Robert Stigwood, whose Robert Stigwood Organization had merged with Epstein’s NEMS in the new year. With talent like the Beatles and Cilla Black on his roster, Epstein’s stable was now augmented by the likes of Cream and the Bee Gees. Known in pop-music circles as “Eppy” and “Stig,” Epstein and Stigwood were shaping up, at least publicly, to be a managerial juggernaut. In truth, Brian had brought the Australian on board for a complex of reasons—namely, that the rigors of music management were clearly taking a toll on the thirty-two-year-old Liverpudlian. Privately, Brian feared that the merger was a necessity, given that his contract with the Beatles was set to expire in September 1967. He was fearful that they would reduce his stake from 25 percent to 10—if they even opted to retain him at all in their post-touring years.15

  George’s own disappointment—entirely in himself, as opposed to the Beatles or Epstein—paled in comparison to Brian Wilson, who was absolutely crestfallen at the sound of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” The same man whom George himself would later extol as the “one living genius of pop music” first experienced “Strawberry Fields Forever” like many other music lovers of his day: on his car radio. Thunderstruck by the song’s groundbreaking production and ethereal sound, he reportedly pulled over, collapsed into tears, and said, “They got there first.” After the remarkable commercial and critical success of “Good Vibrations”—not to mention the spate of awards that Brian and the Beach Boys had earned at the tail end of 1966—Brian should rightly have been on top of the world. But as it turned out, he had become irretrievably lodged in the production of Smile, the planned and much-ballyhooed follow-up to Pet Sounds. By some accounts, Wilson felt that the Beatles’ landmark single would leave Smile sounding passé in the face of the Brits’ arresting newfangled sound. But it was worse than that. Wilson’s wavering psychological state made it difficult for him to work as regularly as he would have liked—and with the consistency of thought necessary to bring Smile to fruition. In his mind, Wilson conceived of Smile in much the same way that he had first imagined “Good Vibrations”: as a sea of fragmented vignettes gloriously merged into a seamless whole. To advance his work on what he once dubbed his “teenage symphony to God,” Wilson had formed a partnership with lyricist Van Dyke Parks in order to create order out of the would-be album’s mélange of competing styles and genres, ranging from psychedelia and barbershop to ragtime and avant-garde pop.16

  By the advent of the “Strawberry Fields Forever” backed with “Penny Lane” single’s release, Brian had made scant progress on Smile, having already missed a January 1967 deadline for the album’s completion. As the months wore on, Parks began to distance himself from the project, while the songwriter’s fellow Beach Boys were becoming more and more bewildered by his increasingly erratic behavior. As the Beach Boys’ Mike Love later remarked, the dream that Brian had wanted to fulfill—“validation from the mainstream media and the alternative press, recognition that he was in the cultural vanguard”—seemed to be just beyond his reach. His only goal had been to “finish Smile and bask in the glory.” And when that didn’t happen, he began to slide into oblivion.17

  Meanwhile, back in London George and the Beatles didn’t have any time to bask in their own glory. They had a long-player of their own to make, and with their latest single selling like hotcakes in record shops, they only had one song, “When I’m Sixty-Four,” waiting in the wings. Before things got underway, though, there was the small matter of producing promotional films for “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane.” The band’s new single was, by any measure, an unusual happening in the annals of popular music. In the United Kingdom, “Strawberry Fields Forever” backed with “Penny Lane” had been accompanied by a full-color picture sleeve, marking the first instance in which the Beatles had been marketed in such a conspicuous fashion. For fans who hadn’t seen them since the Jesus Christ tour, the mustached Beatles in their Carnaby wear might very well have registered a shock. Directed by Swedish filmmaker Peter Goldman, the promotional videos were equally colorful, if not more so, with psychedelic images of the bandmates variously riding on horseback and frolicking around a dead oak tree. Principal photography for the videos began on January 30 at Angel Lane, Stratford, before shifting to bucolic Knole Park near Sevenoaks, Kent. On the second day of the four-day shoot—which was scheduled to be completed in early February—John strolled into an antiques shop, where he happened upon a nineteenth-century broadside. An advertisement for a circus near Rochdale, Lancashire, in February 1843, the broadside would come to serve as an inspirational found object for Lennon.

  As it happened, yet another pair of found objects in John’s imaginary universe had already exerted a profound effect upon the direction of George and the Beatles’ creative lives. And they made their presence known in Studio 2 on Thursday, January 19, which proved to be a turning point in the production of the new long-player. Both found objects originated from newspaper headlines, including a December 19, 1966, issue of the Daily Sketch, which published a photo of Tara Browne’s grisly car crash, along with a January 17, 1967, article in the Daily Mail on THE HOLES IN OUR ROADS. As Lennon later recalled, it “was a story about 4,000 potholes in Blackburn, Lancashire, that needed to be filled.” John’s most recent composition, less than two days old at this point, was borne out of these seemingly incongruous events. Going under the working title of “In the Life Of . . . ,” the song was debuted during another one of the bandmates’ patented overnight affairs. Years later, Martin recalled hearing the first strains of the composition that would come to be known as “A Day in the Life.” He was spellbound as John began singing and softly strumming his acoustic guitar: “Even in this early take, he has a voice which sends shivers down the spine.” Sitting up in the control booth with Martin, Geoff Emerick was equally rapt, recalling that this new song “was in a similar vein to ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’—light and dreamy—but it was somehow even more compelling. I was in awe; I distinctly remember thinking, ‘Christ, John’s topped himself!’” Like George, Geoff was gripped by John’s first pass at the vocal. “Once he started singing, we were all stunned into silence,” Emerick later wrote. “The raw emotion in his voice made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.”18

  With the tape running, George supervised the first take, in which the bandmates began to routine the song in an effort to suss out the instrumentation. For take one, the Beatles established a basic rhythm track with John’s acoustic guitar, Paul on piano, Ringo on bongos, and George on maracas. John counted off the song by muttering “sugar-plum fairy, sugar-plum fairy” to set the rhythm for his guitar cadence. As Martin later recalled, “The first stab at recording ‘A Day in the Life’ concentrated on the bare bones of the song, which so far had no middle section.” For his part, George thought that “John’s voice on the first run-through was marvelous.” But as usual, Lennon despised the sound of his own voice. Martin and Emerick attempted to address the Beatle’s concerns by overloading his vocals with “stupendous amounts of echo.” As George later wrote, “John always hated his voice, always wanted something done to it. In this case, he said he wanted to ‘sound like Elvis Presley on “Heartbreak Hotel.”’ So we put the image of the voice about 90 milliseconds behind the actual voice itself. As the voice goes past the record head, it obviously records. The playback head is situated after the record head, so you hear the voice later. In the old days, we used to do tape echo that way: take the voice off the playback head and feed as much as you wanted of it back into the record head.” The resulting effect exceeded Lennon’s expectations. “John was listening to this in his cans,” George wrote, “and hearing
so much distortion on his voice made him feel really happy.”19

  After debuting the first few verses, John admitted to George, “I don’t know where to go from here.” But John knew he wanted a middle eight, and Paul amiably offered up a solution: “Well, I’ve got this other song I’ve been working on.” To accommodate the buildup to the future McCartney section, Martin instructed Beatles roadie Mal Evans to count off twenty-four bars during the first take for a potential middle eight. As George later wrote, Mal’s “job was to count down the 24 bars in the middle of ‘A Day in the Life’ that were still blank. Why 24 bars? Why not?” As with John’s vocal, Mal’s counting was overladen with echo, increasing as he counted ever higher until the climax of the twenty-fourth bar, which Mal accentuated with the sound of an alarm clock. As Emerick later wrote, there “happened to be a windup alarm clock set on top of the piano—Lennon had brought it in as a gag one day, saying that it would come in handy for waking up Ringo when he was needed for an overdub.” For his part, Martin concentrated on McCartney’s piano part. “Paul was carrying the backing of the song on the piano. During that 24-bar gap, all you could hear was his piano banging away, with a lot of wrong notes, some of them deliberate, the dissonance increasing as his playing got more frenzied towards the end.” After take four of the song was selected as the best, John began overdubbing his vocals on the available tracks, with each one treated with heavy doses of tape echo. As Geoff later recalled, each new recording of John’s vocal was “more amazing than the one before. His vocal performance that night was an absolute tour de force, and it was all George Martin, Phil, and I could talk about long after the session ended.” For his part, Geoff was impressed by the manner in which John’s singing progressed in relation to the sound he was hearing through his headphones. “He used his own echo as a rhythmic feel,” said Emerick, “phrasing his voice around the echo in his cans.”20

 

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