Sound Pictures

by Kenneth Womack

  As it happened, John had ensured that the “Hey Jude” single left the manufacturing plant with a little something extra nestled inside its grooves—and having escaped George’s detection, no less. That something—an undeleted expletive that occurred at 2:58 in “Hey Jude”—originated when Paul shouted “fucking hell!” after playing a wrong note. As balance engineer Ken Scott later remarked: “I was told about it at the time but could never hear it. But once I had it pointed out I can’t miss it now. I have a sneaking suspicion they knew all along.” While their producer may not have registered McCartney’s invective, the bandmates were well aware of the accursed moment in the mix. Indeed, tape operator John Smith remembered Lennon gleefully pointing out the expletive during playback. “Paul hit a clunker on the piano and said a naughty word,” John later reported, “but I insisted we leave it in, buried just low enough so that it can barely be heard. Most people won’t ever spot it—but we’ll know it’s there.” It was a moment of sophomoric, postadolescent humor to be sure—a reminder that the Beatles were still twentysomethings with a lot of growing up left to do. But the incident with “Hey Jude” was also reminiscent of similar moments across the group’s corpus, including the ribald “tit tit” chorus in Rubber Soul’s “Girl” or, more recently, Lennon’s vulgar reference to Epstein in the waning strains of “Baby, You’re a Rich Man.”22

  As August gathered steam, George and the Beatles’ efforts on the new long-player increased precipitously. The bandmates’ incredible pace was rendered even more impressive by the fact that they devoted several sessions and some hundred takes to a single composition—Harrison’s “Not Guilty”—that wouldn’t even make the album’s final cut. Begun back on August 7, “Not Guilty” racked up forty-six takes, most of them false starts, during the very first session. With a basic rhythm track composed of Harrison’s electric guitar and guide vocal, Lennon’s electric piano, McCartney’s bass, and Starr’s drums, the tongue-in-cheek, self-referential “Not Guilty” proved to be difficult to capture given the song’s shifting time signatures and elliptical introduction. As “Not Guilty” progressed, Lennon shifted from electric piano to the studio’s harpsichord. Meanwhile, Harrison worked painstakingly on a lead guitar overdub that had the studio techs working all hours of the night. As Brian Gibson later recalled, “George [Harrison] asked us to put his guitar amplifier at one end of one of the echo chambers, with a microphone at the other end to pick up the output. He sat playing the guitar in the studio control room with a line plugged through to the chamber.” That same evening, Friday, August 9, found McCartney toiling on a new composition, “Mother Nature’s Son,” in the wee hours of the morning—and pointedly after the other Beatles had gone home for the night. As with “Blackbird,” “Mother Nature’s Son” was a stirring acoustic ballad. But like Harrison earlier that same evening, McCartney had ventured out on his own, working individually to bring his latest song to fruition without benefit of, or artistic input from, the other Beatles. It was a practice that would have long-running implications—especially for Martin. That same evening, Paul hit upon the idea of adorning “Mother Nature’s Son” with a brass accompaniment. Dutifully preparing to concoct a score, George took home an acetate of the song for reference purposes.23

  In contrast with “Mother Nature’s Son,” Lennon’s “Yer Blues,” which he debuted in Studio 2 in mid-August, was a group effort that had begun as Lennon’s pointed response to the British blues boom and ended with the bandmates working together in arguably the closest quarters of their recording career. The idea of recording “Yer Blues” in the cozy Studio 2 annex had actually emerged during a recent session for “Not Guilty,” which by mid-August still hadn’t been captured to Harrison’s satisfaction. The Beatles set up their gear in the tiny room in order to rehearse a basic rhythm track for their fiery fusion of blues and rock ’n’ roll. As Ken Scott later recalled, “With the instruments that close together, there was so much leakage of all the instruments into all of the mics that it was just a question of doing the best you could to blend it all together to get the sound, because you couldn’t pull up the drums without increasing the level of the guitars as well. That said, I loved the drum sound we got, and it was one of the best drum sounds on the album as far as I’m concerned.” After perfecting “Yer Blues” over fourteen takes, McCartney took a break, leaving the others to lapse into the kind of protracted instrumental jam that had characterized their post-Pepper malaise. Martin made no secret of his distaste for such unfocused studio meanderings. That same week in mid-August, George and the bandmates took up another one of the Esher demos, a peculiar Lennon concoction titled “What’s the New Mary Jane.” McCartney and Starr declined to participate in the song’s rehearsal, leaving Harrison and Ono, along with Mal Evans, to provide the instrumentation. Over four takes, the makeshift Beatles, with Lennon on piano and Harrison on acoustic guitar, improvised a melody in concert with the composition’s bizarre lyrics and repetitive chorus: “What a shame Mary Jane had a pain at the party.” Take four came to a sudden conclusion with John shouting up to the booth, “Let’s hear it, before we get taken away!”24

  Fortunately for George, as the month wore on, the bandmates briefly righted their ship for “Rocky Raccoon,” McCartney’s tongue-in-cheek country and western number. Rehearsing the song during nine takes on Thursday, August 15, the Beatles’ instrumentation included McCartney’s acoustic guitar and guide vocal, Lennon’s bass, and Starr’s drums. In a rare moment in the studio, the two Georges exchanged places, with Harrison up in the booth with Ken Scott and John Smith, while Martin contributed a honky-tonk piano down below. As “Rocky Raccoon” quickly took shape, Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison provided backing vocals, with Lennon also overdubbing a harmonica part. The next day, August 16, Harrison pressed his case for “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” by convening his colleagues to perform a full-band version of the searing rock song. As they rehearsed a basic rhythm track over fourteen takes, the Beatles’ instrumentation included Harrison’s electric guitar, McCartney’s bass, Lennon’s organ, and Starr’s drums. As it happened, Martin was very likely not in attendance on August 16. The official studio documentation listed “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” as being “produced by the Beatles.” Martin’s whereabouts were unclear. He was preparing a new album of instrumental cover versions to fulfill his contractual obligation to United Artists, and, as would shortly become known, he had plans of his own in the works. As technical engineer Brian Gibson later recalled, during this period “George Martin was starting to relinquish control over the group. There were a number of occasions—holidays, and when he had other recording commitments—when he wasn’t available for sessions, and they would just get on and produce it themselves.”25

  Meanwhile, George was back in the control booth on Tuesday, August 20, in order to lead the brass overdub for “Mother Nature’s Son.” That same evening, the growing tensions among the bandmates were revealed in stark fashion. Sitting up in the booth, Ken Scott observed as McCartney and Martin discussed the brass arrangement with the session players down below in Studio 2. “Everything was great, everyone was in great spirits,” Scott recalled. “It felt really good. Suddenly, halfway through, John and Ringo walked in and you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. An instant change. It was like that for 10 minutes and then as soon as they left it felt great again. It was very bizarre.”26

  By this point, Martin was becoming increasingly aware of the band’s fragmentation. But he didn’t merely attribute it to growing emotional tensions. Since the beginning of the recording sessions for the new long-player, George had been troubled by the sheer amount of material—some thirty new compositions—that they had gleaned during their Indian sojourn. “I was a bit overwhelmed by them,” he later recalled, “and yet underwhelmed at the same time because some of them weren’t great.” A case in point emerged during the same evening as the “Mother Nature’s Son” brass overdub, when McCartney recorded the slapdash “Wild Honey Pie,” a relatively we
ak song in comparison to the contemplative, well-wrought “Mother Nature’s Son.” The wide range of different compositions necessitated a multipronged strategy that forced Martin to act as a kind of executive producer. “For the first time I had to split myself three ways because at any one time we were recording in different studios. It became very fragmented, and that was where my assistant Chris Thomas did a lot of work.” To make matters even more complicated, EMI had recently imposed a deadline, asking that George deliver the LP by the end of October in order to target its release with the holiday shopping season, a looming target that rendered the producer’s way of thinking, which he was shortly to reveal, even more suspect.27

  As for the bandmates and their growing interpersonal anxieties, things came to a head on Thursday, August 22, when McCartney unveiled a new upbeat rocker called “Back in the USSR,” a Cold War parody with affectionate nods to the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” and Chuck Berry’s “Back in the USA.” It was also the day when Ringo quit the Beatles. As it happened, the drummer barely attended the session at all. Ron Richards, George’s partner with AIR, recalled the genesis of the incident: “Ringo was always sitting in the reception area waiting, just sitting there or reading a newspaper. He used to sit there for hours waiting for the others to turn up. One night he couldn’t stand it any longer, got fed up, and left.” For his part, George had seen it coming, had recognized Ringo’s growing frustrations with his friends. Confronted with Ringo’s glaring absence and purported plans to leave the band, the Beatles and their brain trust agreed to a veil of secrecy. Like George, Richard Lush had observed Ringo’s malaise growing steadily worse since Sgt. Pepper, when he often acted as an on-call player. “Ringo probably had the hardest job in the band, playing for hours and hours,” Lush recalled, “and he probably shared the same view that we occasionally had, ‘I played that last night for nine hours. Do I have to do it again?’ He had a hard job trying to please them.” In this instance, Ringo was especially frustrated by Paul’s insistence on coaching him about how to play the drums on “Back in the USSR.” It wasn’t the first time that someone had departed the Beatles’ universe. McCartney had walked out during the “She Said She Said” sessions at the tail-end of Revolver, and Emerick had conspicuously made his exit only the month before Starr’s departure.28

  With Starr having left the other Beatles to their own devices, Martin watched as Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison shrugged the incident off for the moment and proceeded with a basic track for “Back in the USSR,” with McCartney on the drums, Lennon playing bass, and Harrison on lead guitar. The next evening, additional bass and lead guitar parts were adorned on the track, along with soaring Beach Boys–styled harmonies and a rocking piano. The song’s signature jet plane introduction was supplied courtesy of the EMI tape library’s Volume 17: Jet and Piston Aeroplane.

  On Wednesday, August 28, George and the Ringo-less bandmates relocated to Trident to take advantage yet again of the studio’s eight-track capabilities. That evening, Lennon unveiled the elegant “Dear Prudence.” The song’s basic track featured Lennon and Harrison’s exquisitely layered acoustic guitars, and, as dictated by the Beatles’ new circumstances, McCartney on drums. Over the next few days, the group superimposed a variety of different overdubs, including Paul’s inventive piano and flügelhorn tracks. By this juncture, the looming issue of Abbey Road’s failure to embrace eight-track technology had clearly reached its breaking point as far as the Beatles and their production team were concerned.

  But any confrontation with Stagge and the obstinate, conservative members of EMI’s technical staff would have to wait for the moment. On September 4, the Beatles were scheduled to record performances of “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” at Twickenham under the direction of Michael Lindsay-Hogg and with the newly appointed director of Apple Films, Denis O’Dell, in attendance. With David Frost serving as host, the promotional films were destined for broadcast on Frost’s popular British talk show, Frost on Sunday, and on the American variety show The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. To everyone’s relief, Starr had returned to the fold only the day before, his reappearance heralded by Harrison with bouquets of flowers festooned about Studio 2. For his part, George understood exactly how Ringo had felt at the time, later observing, “I think they were all feeling a little paranoid. When you have a rift between people—if you go to a party and the husband and wife have been having a row—there’s a tension, an atmosphere. And you wonder whether you are making things worse by being there. I think that was the kind of situation we found with Ringo. He was probably feeling a little bit odd because of the mental strangeness with John and Yoko and Paul, and none of them having quite the buddiness they used to have. He might have said to himself, ‘Am I the cause?’” At some level, George may have even wondered the same thing himself. In the end, Ringo had been summoned back to the fold via a well-timed telegram from his friends: “You’re the best rock ’n’ roll drummer in the world. Come on home, we love you.” For Ringo, that was reason enough to make his return. “And so I came back,” he said, reasoning that “we all needed that little shake-up.”29

  At Twickenham, the Beatles reveled in the act of performing in front of a studio audience for the first time in two years. As it was, they were actually miming their performances of “Hey Jude” and “Revolution,” and as for the audience, the assembled throng had been helpfully rounded up in the city earlier in the day by Mal Evans. In addition to noting that the group hadn’t appeared live “for goodness knows how long,” Frost playfully introduced the Beatles as “the greatest tea-room orchestra in the world.” Moments earlier, the bandmates couldn’t help taking advantage of Frost and Martin’s combined presence and tried their hand at playing “By George! It’s The David Frost Theme.” And with that, the group began miming “Hey Jude” for the cameras, save for the vocals, which were recorded live. During the famous coda, the spectators mobbed the bandmates on stage for a spirited sing-along. It was a bravura moment indeed, and the excellent vibe on stage didn’t escape the notice of the Beatles, who were thrilled to be playing in front of an audience. Long after Mal’s audience slipped back into the night, the bandmates hung out at Twickenham, drinking scotch and Cokes and reminiscing about performing in front of an audience again. “They were jamming and having a good time and having a better time than they thought they were going to have,” Lindsay-Hogg remembered. “So they sort of thought maybe there is some way they can do something again in some sort of performance way.” To the Beatles, it seemed like a splendid idea, albeit one that would have to wait at least until the new year, when the long-player had hopefully been completed.30

  While they were willing to wait a few more months before contemplating a live performance, time had run out, as far as the Beatles were concerned, for eight-track recording to be at their beck and call at EMI Studios. On September 3, the Beatles finally took matters into their own hands. That same day, they had learned what George already knew: namely, that EMI’s maintenance engineers had been in possession of 3M recorders since May. Having learned that there were eight-track machines in Francis Thompson’s office, they decided to “liberate” one of them for their immediate use. “When you’ve got four innovative lads from Liverpool who want to make better recordings, and they’ve got a smell of the machine, matters can take a different course,” technical engineer Dave Harries later recalled. With Scott and Harries as their willing confederates, the bandmates removed one of the 3M machines from Thompson’s office and installed it in Studio 2, where they resumed work on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” For the Beatles, commandeering the 3M machine must have felt like a victory in the face of EMI’s arcane ways, an opportunity to flex their muscles as the biggest artists on the record conglomerate’s roster—on the planet, really. For his part, Martin was no stranger to EMI’s old-school ways. Indeed, he had long crowed about the lack of the availability of contemporary technology at Abbey Road.31

  But in the great moment of emancipation, when the Bea
tles’ engineering team had finally succeeded in prying loose the eight-track recorder from the white-coated personnel upstairs, George was silent, having not come out to the studio that night. Nor was he on the scene when the group taped their performance for Frost on Sunday. In fact, by this point, George wasn’t even in England. As the Beatles would shortly learn, George had devised a “little shake-up” of his own.

  18

  Up on the Roof

  * * *

  ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, George mailed a postcard addressed to Ken Scott and the bandmates at 3 Abbey Road, London. At the time, he was writing from the northern coast of Sicily, not too far from the vicinity of Villa Blanca, a rustic resort town. “I have found the perfect spot for a recording studio,” he wrote. “Only hang up is that there is no electricity. Heavenly weather and swimming, completely cut off—no papers or radio. We chalk the days on the wall and cross them off one by one. Sorry I am not with you while you are working hard.” By then, Chris Thomas had shared the news with the other members of the Beatles’ production team that George had taken a breather, leaving his AIR protégé with a simple instruction: “I’m going on holiday. You take over the Beatles for a while.” Over the years, George had begun to perfect the art of tactical withdrawals in terms of his role with the band, but this may have been his boldest move yet. Other than his terse instruction to Chris, he hadn’t bothered to inform the group about his plans. Still a virtual outsider to the Beatles’ circle, Chris was about to undergo a trial by fire. When Paul McCartney encountered him at the first session after George’s unexpected departure, Chris explained that George had suggested he assist the Beatles with production during his absence, to which Paul replied, “Well, if you want to produce us, you can produce us. If you don’t, we might just tell you to fuck off.”1