For Martin—the same man who had welcomed the opportunity to try his hand at “Tomorrow Never Knows”—his reaction to “I Am the Walrus,” which was no less peculiar, was out of character. The room was permeated by “a round of nervous laughter” in the wake of George’s pronouncement, and John was clearly irritated by his producer’s response. As the Beatles began to make preparations for recording a basic rhythm track, George continued to fret about the song up in the booth. In Geoff’s observation, George “simply couldn’t get past the limited musical content and outrageous lyrics; he flat out didn’t like the song.” For the backing track for “I Am the Walrus,” the instrumentation featured Lennon on electric piano, Harrison on rhythm guitar, Starr on drums, and McCartney on bass. During the bandmates’ initial attempts at capturing the track, Lennon can be heard faintly singing a guide vocal. By the time that they reached take sixteen, Paul had switched from bass to tambourine in order to assist Ringo in maintaining the cadence. “Not to worry,” Paul said to the drummer. “I’ll keep you locked in.” And with that, the Beatles finally captured the song, with Martin still stewing up in the booth—no doubt distracted by the very same thoughts that plagued the group. “I distinctly remember the look of emptiness on all their faces,” Emerick later recalled. “It’s one of the saddest memories I have of my time with the Beatles.”9
The very next evening, Wednesday, September 6, George and the Beatles began to rebound rather precipitously. As always, once they had their hooks in a new track—or in the case of that night’s session, three relatively new tracks—their passion and verve inevitably took over. At such times—with the chips down and the Beatles seemingly out of commission—they had begun to develop a knack for pulling victory out of the jaws of defeat. The eight-hour session ensued with a tape reduction of “I Am the Walrus,” followed by McCartney overdubbing a bass guitar part on his Rickenbacker and Starr augmenting his snare drum. The highlight of the evening was Lennon’s superlative lead vocal, which he sang over and over again until he got it right. London DJ Kenny Everett visited the studio that night, later recalling an interaction between Martin and Lennon: “George Martin, their producer, was working with John on the vocal track and he said: ‘Look, you’ve been singing now for about seven hours, you’re beginning to sound hoarse, why don’t we do it tomorrow?’ John wanted to get it done that day and that’s why he sounds so raucous on that track.” To further enhance the Beatle’s lead vocal, Emerick filtered the signal from Lennon’s mic in order to afford his vocal with a raspy, intentionally nasty sneer. That same night, the bandmates kept the compositions coming, with McCartney debuting “The Fool on the Hill,” a ballad that he had begun back in March, and Harrison’s eerie “Blue Jay Way,” a composition that the quiet Beatle had penned during a California sojourn in August. While “The Fool on the Hill” featured McCartney playing a solo piano along with delivering a guide vocal, “Blue Jay Way” was considerably more evolved, with Harrison working Studio 2’s Hammond organ, along with Lennon playing a second organ, McCartney on bass, and Starr on drums.10
By this point, Martin was just beginning to find his sea legs with the Magical Mystery Tour project. During the Thursday evening session in Studio 2 on September 7, work on Harrison’s “Blue Jay Way” continued, with Martin and his production team, which included Peter Vince and Ken Scott sitting in for Emerick and Lush, treating Harrison’s lead vocal to a heavy dose of ADT and all manner of backward studio manipulations. But by Friday night, the bandmates were back to their post-Pepper tricks as they worked on incidental music for their upcoming television movie soundtrack. Originally titled “Aerial Tour Instrumental,” the song would later come to be known as “Flying.” In addition to being the first song attributed to the songwriting team of Harrison-Lennon-McCartney-Starkey, “Flying” would mark the Beatles’ first instrumental since the unreleased, Rubber Soul–era “12-Bar Original.” “Flying” consisted of Lennon’s organ, McCartney’s bass, and Starr’s drums on the backing trick, which Martin captured in six takes. A trio of backward organ tracks was then overdubbed, in addition to all four Beatles scat-singing along with the melody. The Beatles were clearly in an experimental mood, with John trying out a Mellotron part with the trumpet stop toggled and, at the song’s nadir, a saxophone part lifted directly from a jazz record. For George, sessions like this one were proving to be insufferable. As he later recalled, the Magical Mystery Tour project was “terribly badly organized, and it’s amazing that anything ever came out of it. They were into their random period—they said, ‘If Laurence Olivier walks in this room, we’ll record it and it’ll be great.’ All that sort of thing, the John Cage influence.” To George’s mind, it was, in a word, “chaotic”—perhaps the worst possible epithet that the venerable producer could bestow upon a Beatles session.11
For the next few weeks, the Beatles and their entourage traveled about the western English countryside in a not-so-subtle nod to Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, who conducted “Acid Tests” while trolling America’s highways in a multicolored school bus. In addition to exterior shots of their giant yellow coach zooming across the English byways, the bandmates conducted principal photography at the Royal Air Force’s West Malling base, a key military outpost that had once served as the United Kingdom’s aerial front line against the Luftwaffe. With its aircraft hangars and runways, the base afforded the Beatles, who had very little direction beyond Paul’s crude circular storyboard, with a variety of different settings to stage their Magical Mystery Tour. With a new baby at home, George relished his time away from the Beatles’ maelstrom. Besides, he had heard through the grapevine that “the [coach] tour itself was dreadful, apparently,” which left George feeling fortunate to have sat the bandmates’ latest venture out. In addition to scoring the orchestration for “I Am the Walrus,” he devoted his energies to his other clients—namely, Cilla Black, who, like George and the Beatles, was having great difficulty rebounding from the terrible news about Brian. As she later recalled, “When somebody close to you dies, memories float in and out of the mind at the most unexpected, inappropriate times. I could be singing a song on a live TV program and suddenly I would see Brian’s face as clear as day, and remember moments we had shared together—a laugh here, a giggle there.” Brian’s dream of making Cilla into a television star was beginning to come to fruition. BBC One was preparing to broadcast the Cilla variety show beginning in January 1968. The network had ordered nine prime-time, fifty-minute episodes. To capitalize on Cilla’s upcoming television premiere, George began routining songs with the singer for a new long-player. George astutely planned to synchronize Cilla’s new album with the series’ first season. And with any luck, he might turn her fading recording career around in time to make hay with her television debut.12
During this same period, George was invited to compose the signature jingle for the BBC’s new Radio One, which was set to make its debut on the British airwaves on September 30. The radio station’s controller, Robin Scott, had originally approached Northern Songs’ Dick James in an effort to entice McCartney to take the commission. After Paul demurred, Dick turned to his old friend George to “write a piece of impressive, almost heraldic, British music that had classical overtones but still had its feet firmly in the rock ’n’ roll repertoire, so it appealed to young people.” To Dick’s mind, George more than fit the bill. When he accepted the commission, Martin joked that if Scott “wants Paul McCartney and gets me, that’s a poor substitute.” In short order, the Beatles’ producer concocted “Theme One.” As George later recalled, “I wanted to use a cathedral organ to open it with, so, having done the main part of the recording, I did the introduction at the Central Hall, Westminster, where there is a large pipe organ, and cut that into the beginning of the record. That was quite an experience in itself, because I played the organ myself and found that the sound came out a good quarter of a second after I had placed my fingers on the keys. Playing in rhythm was really quite difficult, because it takes such a long time for
the sound to go through the pipes.” For the next few years, Martin’s tune served as the station’s flagship theme, introducing its programming first thing in the morning and closing it down every night. Anna Instone, the BBC’s classical music head, joked that George’s composition sounded like “William Walton on speed” in an irreverent reference to the British composer, known for his melancholic, old-fashioned works, who had earned a knighthood in 1951.13
But as it happened, George’s respite from the Beatles’ universe came to a sudden halt on Saturday, September 16, when the bandmates took a break from their moveable Magical Mystery Tour set and made their way back to London. That evening, they reconvened with George in Studio 3 for a nearly nine-hour session for the express purpose of making headway on the television movie’s impending soundtrack. But when the bandmates trundled into the studio that night, Emerick was nowhere to be found, having taken a long-overdue vacation in the Norfolk Broads, not far from Great Yarmouth on England’s easterly coast. For his part, Geoff was loath to miss any Beatles sessions, but EMI was adamant, as was George, who recognized how exhausted his chief engineer had become and encouraged him to take a much-deserved holiday. Taking his place in the control booth was Ken Scott, who had recently been promoted to balance engineer at EMI Studios. Before Geoff left for his vacation, Ken asked him “a lot of questions about what it was like working with the Beatles and he was quite nervous at first, but he quickly struck up a good rapport with the group—George Harrison, in particular—despite the bittersweet vibe that hung over us like a cloud.” Martin’s production team was rounded out by Jeff Jarratt, who served as tape operator in Lush’s place. That night, George and the Beatles remade “Your Mother Should Know,” with McCartney leading his bandmates through eleven takes of the song, which was now slated to close the film. By this juncture, the composition had taken on a military flavor, complete with snare drum accompaniment courtesy of Ringo. Meanwhile, George prepared a reel-to-reel tape copy of “I Am the Walrus” for Magical Mystery Tour producer Denis O’Dell to begin staging the Beatles’ mimed performance of the song in the movie. After his first night as balance engineer, Scott was struck by how mercurial the Beatles had become. “They half knew what they wanted and half didn’t know, not until they’d tried everything,” he later remarked. “The only specific thought they seemed to have in their mind was to be different, but how a song might reach that point was down to their own interpretation and by throwing in as many ideas as possible, some of which would work and some wouldn’t.”14
On Monday, September 25, the Beatles were once again back in London, having wrapped up principal photography for Magical Mystery Tour, which, at this point, consisted of some ten hours of improvised, oddly disconnected scenes. For the most part, the novice-filmmaking Beatles left the raw footage in the hands of editor Roy Benson, part of the editorial team behind Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night. During the day, the group—McCartney, mainly—worked with Benson at Norman’s Film Productions across town in Soho. With principal photography (mostly) behind them, the bandmates returned to Abbey Road to concentrate on the only thing at which they truly excelled. Martin already held his own misgivings about the project. He knew full well that the Beatles had been hot and cold, creatively speaking, since Sgt. Pepper, and he privately doubted that they could pull off a cohesive televisual narrative. But the music was slowly but surely beginning to come around, as they demonstrated during the eight-hour session that evening, which was devoted to “The Fool on the Hill.” As the Beatles toiled away at Paul’s composition, they were observed by Yoko Ono, who was visiting Studio 2 that evening as John’s guest. By this point, “The Fool on the Hill” was evolving into a first-rate ballad. With his production team, composed of Scott and Lush, Martin led the Beatles through three takes of the basic rhythm track. Using McCartney’s demo from September 6, Martin recorded Lennon and Harrison’s innovative harmonica accents. During a fourth take, McCartney added a recorder part, along with Starr’s percussion and McCartney’s lead vocal.
The very next evening, the bandmates worked without Martin, who was tending to AIR business. With Scott sitting in the producer’s chair, they remade “The Fool on the Hill,” creating numerous overdubs, including new piano, percussion, and lead vocals. Martin’s absence left Scott in a lurch. As Lush later recalled, “He was, understandably, a little flustered. He was so nervous that it was just unbelievable. He was saying, ‘What lights do I use?’ and ‘What do I do?’ I really felt for him that day. The Beatles always put a bit of pressure on their engineers; they expected you to be there doing your job, but there wasn’t a lot of thanks.” By the next evening, Scott was safely ensconced in the engineer’s seat, with Martin having returned to oversee the orchestral overdubs for “I Am the Walrus.” While he may have initially seemed lukewarm about John’s bizarre composition, George’s score was a masterwork of style and control. His orchestration accented Lennon’s lyrics, often establishing nuances of complementary color and irony that render the original song even more playful and disturbing. Scott later recalled being “scared to death” after being “thrown into the fire” of another session with Martin and the Beatles. But once he had settled down, Scott was able to observe Martin’s superb orchestration and arrangement practices, which the young sound man chalked up to “overwriting.” As Scott later recalled, “I learned something from those sessions that later became invaluable to me as a producer. I discovered that the best way to work with an orchestra is to have the arranger overwrite. The reason is that it’s always easier to get rid of material than to put something in during a session. That’s what George Martin used to do on his arrangements for Beatles songs.” Overwriting allowed Martin to work around the criticisms and concerns of his artist—in this case, Lennon, who would frequently interrupt the orchestral overdubs, offering interjections such as “I don’t like that bit. Keep this bit. Can you change that a little?” For the Wednesday afternoon session in Studio 1, George had assembled yet another parcel of top-drawer London session men for the occasion. The sixteen-member ensemble was composed of eight violins, led by the redoubtable Sidney Sax, late of “Yesterday” and “All You Need Is Love,” along with four cellos, a contrabass clarinet, and three horns. With thematic input from John, George’s score deftly emphasizes the song’s wacky march from one strange admixture of lyrical images to another. George’s orchestration of the strings is particularly adept, with chilling musical stabs from the violins and cellos accenting the score. The string glissandi were an inspired touch and clearly reminiscent of Martin’s recent work with Eastern musicians, particularly on “Within You, Without You.” When he finally heard the mix, Emerick was blown away by Martin’s creative approach to “I Am the Walrus.” “I was quite impressed with the complex score he wrote,” Geoff later wrote, “especially given George Martin’s initial distaste for the song.”15
For George, the recording sessions associated with “I Am the Walrus” were indicative of the steady shift that had been occurring in his professional relationship with the Beatles. As he later recalled, “By the time we got to a song like ‘Walrus,’ or any of John or Paul’s later songs, they would have very definite ideas on what they wanted to do, which they hadn’t to begin with. It was a gradual drift so that they became the teachers.” Which meant that George, in essence, had evolved into becoming their pupil. And with “I Am the Walrus,” a song with which he had initially been perplexed, he had found his way into the composition through his score. In so doing, he had learned to privilege their ideas over his own—a sea change from their early days together, when George’s head arrangements for the Beatles’ songs ruled the roost.16
On the same day that he debuted his score for “I Am the Walrus,” George supervised a separate overdubbing session in which he conducted a sixteen-person choir—with eight male and eight female voices tasked with singing a host of vocal absurdities by Lennon, including, most notably, “Oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumper!” For George, John’s ribald non s
equitur was an obvious reference to the Two Leslies, a prewar novelty act composed of Leslie Sarony and Leslie Holmes. Recorded back in 1935, the Two Leslies’ “Umpa, Umpa (Stick It Up Your Jumper)” enjoyed an unexpected burst in popularity during the 1950s, especially among snickering teenagers—a group that undoubtedly included Liverpool’s own John Lennon. As with his inventive score, George was taken with the idea of adding a bizarre choral layer to John’s extraordinary composition. “The idea of using voices was a good one,” George later remarked. “We got in the Mike Sammes Singers, very commercial people and so alien to John that it wasn’t true. But in the score I simply orchestrated the laughs and noises, the whooooooah kind of thing. John was delighted with it.” For his part, Paul saw “I Am the Walrus” as one of the finest collaborations between John and their producer. Together, they “did some very exciting things with the Mike Sammes Singers, the likes of which they’ve never done before or since, like getting them to chant, ‘Everybody’s got one, everybody’s got one,’ which they loved. It was a session to be remembered. Most of the time they got asked to do ‘Sing Something Simple’ and all the old songs, but John got them doing all sorts of swoops and phonetic noises.” For the Mike Sammes Singers, “I Am the Walrus” was just another day on the job for the hardworking vocal troupe. As Sammes himself later recalled, “The next day we did a Kathy Kirby session at Pye Studios, then The Benny Hill Show for ATV, and we had some men doing recordings for The Gang Show at Chappell!”17
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