Recording
An early acoustic demo of "What's the New Mary Jane" was recorded in late May 1968, at George Harrison's Esher home. It featured Lennon singing an octave higher than the final cut, placing the chorus at the very beginning as well as throughout, and switching the words "cooking" and "groovy" in the second verse:
- She liked to be married to yeti, he cooking such groovy spaghetti.
As opposed to:
- She liked to be married with yeti, he grooving such cookie spaghetti.
Another member of The Beatles can also be heard shouting "What's the new Mary Jane? Oh, my goodness!" near the end of the demo. This variation is notably shorter than the released version, clocking in at around 2:40. The final version of this song was recorded on 14 August 1968 during the recording sessions for the Beatles tenth album The Beatles (aka "The White Album"), with Lennon and Harrison being the only band members playing on the track. Four takes were recorded with the final being marked as the best. It was later mixed in mono on 26 September with "Glass Onion", "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", and "I Will" and in stereo on 14 October before being added to the shortlist for the new album. However during the album's final mixing stage, it was dropped due to time constraints, bringing the album down to 30 songs.
During an interview, Lennon commented on "What's the New Mary Jane", saying, "That was me, Yoko, and George sitting on the floor at EMI fooling around. Pretty good, huh?"
Read more about this topic: What's The New Mary Jane
Famous quotes containing the word recording:
“Write while the heat is in you.... The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Self-expression is not enough; experiment is not enough; the recording of special moments or cases is not enough. All of the arts have broken faith or lost connection with their origin and function. They have ceased to be concerned with the legitimate and permanent material of art.”
—Jane Heap (c. 1880–1964)
“He shall not die, by G—, cried my uncle Toby.
MThe ACCUSING SPIRIT which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)