With the orchestral and choral overdubs complete, George and his production team joined the Beatles over in Studio 2, where they conducted remixing sessions for “I Am the Walrus” before returning to “Flying,” which was overly long at nearly ten minutes, and “The Fool on the Hill,” for which Paul tried his hand at yet another lead vocal. While the next session on Thursday, September 28, was dominated by additional refinements to the bandmates’ current Magical Mystery Tour repertoire, the real story occurred during the following Friday evening session in Studio 2, the site of yet another innovative moment in George’s career with the Beatles. In addition to putting the finishing touches on “Your Mother Should Know,” Martin and his control booth team of Scott and Graham Kirkby began remixing “I Am the Walrus.” And that’s when Lennon had a eureka moment. It all started when McCartney shared some of the footage from the Magical Mystery Tour editing sessions. As Martin looked on, McCartney demonstrated how visual images frequently dovetailed, even when selected at random, with the soundtrack, creating unintentional yet eye-popping synergies. Later, as John listened to playbacks of “I Am the Walrus,” the Beatle felt a sudden pang of inspiration: “You know, I think it would be great if I could put some random radio noise on the end of it,” he said, “just twiddling the dial, tuning into various stations to see what we get and how it fits with the music.”18
Brian Epstein’s longtime assistant Alistair Taylor was visiting the studio that evening, and he later recalled the chain of events: “We were in Abbey Road and John suddenly disappeared and he came back and he said, ‘George, I’m looking for a radio.’ We all looked at him and said, ‘What do you mean, you’re looking for a radio?’ George Martin said, ‘I’m sure there’s got to be a radio somewhere in the building.’ So, John went off again and he found a radio on the floor above and he put it on short wave, because that was what John wanted. George Martin had to figure out how to get the radio from above down into the studio where they were recording.” The problem was solved after a radio tuner had been provided by EMI’s maintenance office for George and the bandmates’ experimentation. To make the contraption work, the cumbersome rack-mounted tuner had to be patched into the mixing console, which John found to be doubly frustrating. “Bloody EMI,” he exclaimed, “can’t even get a radio organized!” Eventually, the studio technicians succeeded in rewiring the console, and suddenly John found himself able to “twiddle” the radio dial, randomly selecting stations as he listened to playbacks of “I Am the Walrus.” As the song’s play-out section unspooled, John happened upon the BBC’s Third Programme, which was broadcasting a radio production of King Lear. Working the dial, John had landed upon the sycophantic scoundrel Oswald’s death scene in act 4, scene 6:
Oswald: Slave, thou hast slain me. Villain, take my purse.
If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body,
And give the letters which thou find’st about me
To Edmund, Earl of Gloucester; seek him out
Upon the British party. O, untimely Death!
Edgar: I know thee well: a serviceable villain;
As duteous to the vices of thy mistress
As badness would desire.
Gloucester: What, is he dead?
Edgar: Sit you down father, rest you.
George managed to capture the dialogue, which featured the voices of John Bryning (Oswald), Mark Dignam (Gloucester), and Philip Guard (Edgar), by feeding the live radio signal directly into the console as he and his team conducted the mono mixing session. In so doing, George was able to supervise a unique instance in Beatles recording history, one that can never be reproduced. As Emerick later explained it, “‘I Am the Walrus’ can never be remixed: the radio wasn’t recorded on the multitrack. Instead, it was flown into the two-track, live, as the mix was occurring.”19
By Monday, October 2, George and the Beatles were entering the home stretch of the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack, although editing the film itself was still several weeks away from fruition. That night, McCartney debuted a new tune in Studio 2, a catchy new composition that went under the working title of “Hello Hello.” As was his typical practice with the Beatles during this era, Martin was pushing for a new single’s release to capitalize on the upcoming holiday shopping season. With its infectious, commercial qualities at the fore, “Hello Hello,” later retitled as “Hello, Goodbye,” seemed like the ideal candidate for the single’s A-side. Indeed, Martin and McCartney were confident that “Hello, Goodbye” was a surefire hit, that it would keep “the roll” that they had reinvigorated with “All You Need Is Love” intact. But for his part, Lennon was taken with the idea of releasing “I Am the Walrus” as the A-side. In the wake of Sgt. Pepper and Our World, the bandmates were privy to a massive global audience, and they were penetrating almost every conceivable demographic, from children (“Yellow Submarine”) all the way through pensioners (“When I’m Sixty-Four”). Surely, John reasoned, they could challenge their audience to keep up with their penchant for experimentation and give “I Am the Walrus” a listen. But by the time that George and the bandmates concluded their work that evening, the case had been settled, with McCartney and his producer having pressed and won their case on the grounds of commercialism. “Hello, Goodbye” would be the Beatles’ next single all right.
Martin was joined in the control room that same evening by Emerick and Lush, marking Golden Ears’ first Beatles session since his enforced holiday at the hands of EMI Studios management. That night, the bandmates recorded the basic rhythm track for “Hello, Goodbye,” which was composed of McCartney’s piano, Lennon’s Hammond organ, Harrison’s maracas, and Starr’s drums. In addition to capturing the rhythm track in fourteen takes, the bandmates improvised a free-spirited coda. “The best bit was the end,” John later recalled, “which we ad-libbed in the studio, where I played the piano. Like one of my favorite bits on ‘Ticket to Ride,’ where we just threw something in at the end.” Later that week, George and the Beatles put the finishing touches on “Blue Jay Way,” with cello and tambourine overdubs. On Thursday, October 12, Martin was back at De Lane Lea, with Dave Siddle and Mike Weighell assisting, in order to carry out mono remixes for “It’s All Too Much.” By this juncture, the Beatles were at the mercy of two different projects: on the one hand, Al Brodax and his production team were hungry for new Fab Four material to synchronize with animated cels; on the other, the Beatles themselves were running headlong into a set of dual deadlines involving the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack release, slated for early December, as well as the late December broadcast of the television movie. Meanwhile, across town at Abbey Road, Lennon sat in as the producer of record, with Scott serving as his engineer and Lush as tape operator. That evening, Lennon supervised the recording of “Shirley’s Wild Accordion,” incidental music for the television movie. The bandmates conducted eight takes, which featured session player Shirley Evans—she of the “wild accordion”—along with Reg Wale, her accompanist, on percussion. Evans had been featured in Magical Mystery Tour, where she played the accordion during a sing-along in the fabled yellow coach. “Shirley’s Wild Accordion” also featured Ringo on drums and Paul playing the maracas and providing intermittent shouts of encouragement.
With Lennon and McCartney working “on heat”—and with several rapidly encroaching deadlines on their radar—they once again sought out Mike Leander, who, as with “She’s Leaving Home,” managed to bang out an arrangement in short order for “Shirley’s Wild Accordion.” While he had been incensed at Leander’s role in “She’s Leaving Home,” this time around Martin didn’t seem to care in the slightest. From what he could tell at this juncture, the Beatles seemed to be making some sort of elaborate home movie. For Martin’s part, he was simply trying to keep it all together—to ensure that the Beatles and their producer succeeded in hitting their marks. The most pressing issue at this point was to make certain that “Hello, Goodbye” was ready to ship off to the manufacturing plant. On Thursday, October 19, Martin and the bandmates work
ed a long session in Studio 1, recording guitar overdubs from Harrison and Lennon, as well as imbuing McCartney’s vocal with tape echo at key junctures. The next evening, Martin supervised orchestral overdubs from two groups of studio musicians in Studio 3 for “The Fool on the Hill” and “Hello, Goodbye,” respectively. For the former, George had engaged the services of three flautists—Christopher Taylor, Richard Taylor, and Jack Ellory—to accent the song’s chorus. Like the session men who played on “Hello, Goodbye” later that evening, the flautists worked from George’s hastily prepared score. For the latter overdub, George had booked two viola players—Ken Essex and Leo Birnbaum—to afford McCartney’s buoyant composition with a little classical zest. Birnbaum later narrated a scene that many Beatles session men had experienced over the years. As Birnbaum recalled, “Paul McCartney was doodling at the piano, and George Martin was sitting next to him, writing down what Paul was playing.” Essex remembered seeing all of the Beatles there. “One of them was sitting on the floor in what looked like a pajama suit, drawing with crayons on a piece of paper.”20
When George and the bandmates reconvened on October 25, in Studio 2, they put the finishing touches on “Hello, Goodbye,” with Paul overdubbing a bass part to bring the song to fruition. But apparently, the Beatle wasn’t done just yet. The following Thursday, Paul superimposed a new bass overdub, a masterful performance that included spirited bursts of sixteenth notes to accent the chorus. And with that, Martin and Emerick began carrying out mono remixing sessions for the A-side of the Beatles’ sixteenth UK single. Released on November 24, “Hello, Goodbye” backed with “I Am the Walrus” debuted at number three and topped the British charts the following week. If nothing else, George would enjoy the satisfaction of seeing “the roll” back in full swing. For his part, John might have felt vindicated by the reviews, with the Melody Maker’s Nick Jones describing “Hello, Goodbye” as “superficially . . . a very ‘ordinary’ Beatles record without cascading sitars, and the involved, weaving hallucinogenic sounds that we’ve grown to love so much.” Writing stateside, where “Hello, Goodbye” quickly ascended the US charts, the New York Times’ Richard Goldstein observed that McCartney’s composition “sounds like a B-side” that is “interesting, but subordinate.” Lennon had been irritated by Martin and McCartney’s relegation of “I Am the Walrus” to play second fiddle to “Hello, Goodbye”—and at least for the time being, he would look the other way.21
As it happened, there was very little spare time for George and the bandmates to get annoyed by much of anything. With the “Hello, Goodbye” backed with “I Am the Walrus” behind them, they still had two soundtracks to fill out, not to mention the film that McCartney was editing with Benson every day in Soho. On Wednesday, November 1, Martin and his production team of Emerick and Lush carried out mono remixing sessions of “All You Need Is Love” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” for Yellow Submarine, as well as a stereo remix of “The Fool on the Hill” for Magical Mystery Tour. On November 7, George carried out mono and stereo mixing sessions in the Studio 2 control room for “Blue Jay Way,” “Flying,” and “Magical Mystery Tour.” But the real challenge occurred when Martin and his production team were mixing “Blue Jay Way” for stereo. Harrison had requested that backward effects be added to the song. With the mono remixes having already been completed, Martin eventually solved the problem by virtue of an ingenious solution: by playing a recording of the song backward, he was able to pan the backward sounds into the stereo remix. That same evening, Martin received a visit from Capitol Records’ Voyle Gilmore, whom the Beatles’ producer had first met a decade earlier during a Frank Sinatra session. With EMI’s subsidiary hungry for new Beatles product, Gilmore left Abbey Road that evening with a full complement of tracks for a forthcoming Magical Mystery Tour LP for the American marketplace.
As November wore on, work continued apace as George and his team worked on behalf of the soundtrack for Yellow Submarine. On November 15, Emerick and Lush created mono tape copies for “All Together Now,” “It’s All Too Much,” and “Only a Northern Song” for Brodax and his production crew, leaving Martin and the Beatles one song shy of the four songs that they had promised for the upcoming animated feature film. That same day, they also created a new mono remix for “Hello, Goodbye,” with the violas helpfully eliminated for the purposes of a promotional video that the Beatles had filmed in the Saville Theatre a few days earlier on November 10. The film, which depicted the bandmates miming the song in their Sgt. Pepper costumery, would later be broadcast on The Ed Sullivan Show on November 26. But the real issue was the British marketplace, which was governed by the Musicians’ Union, which had banned miming in promotional films. George and the Beatles’ brain trust had reasoned that the “Hello, Goodbye” promotional video, with the violas having been silenced from the soundtrack, could be broadcast in the United Kingdom without violating the Musicians’ Union ban. But it was all for naught, as the Beatles themselves were clearly simulating their performance of “Hello, Goodbye,” thus undermining their efforts at subterfuge and rendering the video useless for broadcast in their homeland.
As George attempted to put the finishing touches on the Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine projects—even as he was in the midst of composing the film score for the latter—he returned to Cilla Black, who was determined to complete a new long-player for release in the new year. As that breakneck month proceeded, George convened a session for Cilla at Chappell Recording Studios to routine a new Lennon-McCartney number titled “Step Inside Love.” The song was written by Paul as the potential theme for Cilla’s upcoming television series after he had been approached by the singer and producer Michael Hurll, who later recalled that “all [McCartney] had given us was one verse and a chorus with him playing on guitar. We played it that way for the first couple of weeks and then decided that we needed a second verse. Paul came over to the BBC Theatre in Shepherd’s Bush and sat with me and Cilla and worked on a second verse. It started off with the line, ‘You look tired, love,’ because Cilla was tired after a lot of rehearsing and most of what he wrote related to what was going on that day.” During the November 21 session, George rehearsed the song with Cilla and Paul. As the session progressed, Paul played “Step Inside Love” on his acoustic guitar as Cilla practiced phrasing the lyrics. At one point, George supervised a demo recording, while noting that the composition would require a key change given Cilla’s higher vocal range. Eventually, George joined in on piano, with occasional interruptions by Paul, who coached the producer through the chord changes, while Cilla refined her vocal. Years later, Cilla recalled the November 21 session, writing that “although Paul and I didn’t talk about Brian that day, he was in my thoughts, and I know he’d have been over the moon that Paul came up with the idea for the song. Later on,” Cilla added, “the song was banned from the radio in South Africa—they thought it sounded like a prostitute inviting her client into her house, which was totally out of character for me!”22
On Tuesday, November 28, George and the Beatles convened in Studio 3 to record holiday greetings in the form of a Flexidisc for their fan club. As the fifth iteration of their annual seasonal message, the Beatles’ 1967 Christmas record, Christmas Time (Is Here Again), was arguably their finest holiday moment, as well as being one of the very few songs, along with Magical Mystery Tour’s “Flying,” to be credited to all four Beatles as composers. The six-minute Christmas record centered around a narrative in which various groups audition for a BBC radio show, with “Christmas Time (Is Here Again)” serving as the track’s periodic refrain. The four Beatles voice various characters, ranging from game-show contestants and musicians (the Ravellers) to actors in a fictive radio program titled Theatre Hour. For the recording, the bandmates were joined by the voices of Martin and actor Victor Spinetti, who had featured in three Beatles films—A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, and of late as a drill sergeant in Magical Mystery Tour. With “Auld Lang Syne” as his accompaniment, Lennon brings “Christmas Ti
me (Is Here Again)” to a close with a reading of his Joycean, nonsensical poem titled “When Christmas Time Is Over,” concluding with the line, “Happy breastling to you people all our best from me to you.” As 1967 raced to a close, it was exactly the kind of ribald sentiment, borne out of good humor, that George and the bandmates had shared since their very first meeting back in June 1962.
With the annual Christmas record behind them for another year, Martin and the Beatles had finally closed up shop on 1967, one of the most remarkable years in the career of any artistic fusion ever. And if things had ended right there, the bandmates might have been spared one of the most embarrassing episodes in their professional lives. But first: the good news. On Friday, December 8, Parlophone released the Magical Mystery Tour extended-player (EP). To accommodate the soundtrack’s six new songs—“Magical Mystery Tour,” “Your Mother Should Know,” “I Am the Walrus,” “The Fool on the Hill,” “Flying,” and “Blue Jay Way”—EMI released Magical Mystery Tour as a double-EP set, complete with a colorful gatefold sleeve and a twenty-eight-page booklet. In the United Kingdom, the record was an unqualified success, topping the official EP charts and climbing as high as number two on the singles charts, where it was denied the top spot by none other than the “Hello, Goodbye” backed with “I Am the Walrus” single. Writing in NME, Nick Logan praised the Beatles for “stretching pop music to its limits. The four musician-magicians take us by the hand and lead us happily tripping through the clouds, past Lucy in the sky with diamonds and the fool on the hill, into the sun-speckled glades along Blue Jay Way and into the world of Alice in Wonderland.” As Logan concluded, “This is the Beatles out there in front and the rest of us in their wake.”23
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