The Beatles' Recording Technology - The Beatles' Attitude

The Beatles' Attitude

The success of the Beatles meant that EMI gave them carte blanche access to the Abbey Road studios—they were not charged for studio time and could spend as long as they wanted working on music. Starting around 1965 with the Rubber Soul sessions, the Beatles increasingly used the studio as an instrument in itself, spending long hours experimenting and writing.

The Beatles also demanded a lot from the studio; John Lennon allegedly wanted to know why the bass on a certain Wilson Pickett record far exceeded the bass on any Beatles records. This prompted EMI engineer Geoff Emerick to try new techniques for "Paperback Writer".

"'Paperback Writer' was the first time the bass sound had been heard in all its excitement", said Emerick in Mark Lewisohn's book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. "To get the loud bass sound Paul played a different bass, a Rickenbacker. Then we boosted it further by using a loudspeaker as a microphone. We positioned it directly in front of the bass speaker and the moving diaphragm of the second speaker made the electric current."

As early as "I Want to Hold Your Hand" the Beatles innovated using organ sounding guitars which was achieved by extreme compression on Lennon's rhythm guitar.

Engineers and other Abbey Road staff have reported that the Beatles would try to take advantage of accidental occurrences in the recording process; "I Feel Fine" and "It's All Too Much"'s feedback and "Long, Long, Long"'s resonating glass bottle (towards the end of the track) are examples of this. In other instances the group deliberately toyed with situations and techniques which would foster chance effects, such as the live (and thereby unpredictable) mixing of a UK radio broadcast into the fade of "I Am the Walrus" or the chaotic assemblage of "Tomorrow Never Knows". (The group would frequently refer to this method as 'random', although it is more correctly described as chance determinism.)

The Beatles' song "You Like Me Too Much" has one of the earliest examples of this technique, the Beatles recorded the Steinway through a Hammond B-3's rotating Leslie speaker, a 122 or 122RV, a trick they would come back to over and over again. (At the end of the intro, the switching off of the Leslie is audible.) Also on "Tomorrow Never Knows" the vocal was sent through a Leslie speaker. Although it's not the first recorded vocal use of a Leslie speaker, the technique would later be used by the Grateful Dead, Cream, The Moody Blues and others.

All of the Beatles had Brenell tape recorders at home, which allowed them to record out of the studio. Some of their home experiments were used at Abbey Road and ended up on finished masters; in particular on "Tomorrow Never Knows".

Combined with this was the conscious desire to be different. McCartney said, "Each time we just want to do something different. After Please Please Me we decided we must do something different for the next song... Why should we ever want to go back? That would be soft." The desire to "do something different" pushed EMI's recording technology through overloading the mixing desk as early as 1964 in tracks such as "Eight Days a Week" even at this relatively early date, the track begins with a gradual fade-in, a device which had rarely been employed in rock music. Paul McCartney would create interesting bass lines by overdubbing in counterpoint to Beatles tracks that were previously completed. Also overdubbed vocals were used for new artistic purposes on "Julia" with John Lennon overlapping the end of one vocal phrase with the beginning of his next.