Recording
The recordings for the album were started in December 1967 in England. The rest was recorded on 9–15 January 1968 in Bombay, India. Also recorded during the Indian sessions was the backing track to "The Inner Light", which became the B-side to "Lady Madonna", the final Beatles single on Parlophone Records.
Some of the musician's credits are pseudonyms for Harrison, Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr. Harrison is listed merely as producer, arranger and writer for the album. Peter Tork of The Monkees also played banjo (specifically, one borrowed from Paul McCartney), but was not credited. Tork has stated that his brief recording features in the movie, but not on the soundtrack album. Part of the track "Crying" was used as a coda to Harrison's 1981 album Somewhere in England, at the very end of "Save the World".
All of the tracks were composed by Harrison, and it was the first official solo album by a Beatle. It was the first album release on the newly formed Apple Records, appearing in November 1968, a few weeks before The Beatles. It would also be the first Apple record to be deleted, though it was remastered and reissued on CD in 1992.
In the CD liner notes, Harrison's description of the recording done in England is revealing: "I had a regular wind-up stopwatch and I watched the film to 'spot-in' the music with the watch. I wrote the timings down in my book, then I'd go to Abbey Road, make up a piece, record it." While the tracks recorded in England were made on multitrack recording machines and remixed, the Indian portions were recorded live to two-track stereo.
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Famous quotes containing the word recording:
“I didn’t have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“Too many photographers try too hard. They try to lift photography into the realm of Art, because they have an inferiority complex about their Craft. You and I would see more interesting photography if they would stop worrying, and instead, apply horse-sense to the problem of recording the look and feel of their own era.”
—Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870–1942)
“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)