Recording - March 2014 - 56

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recorded, and how much time was spent per song.
Their first album was made in one day. But the normal protocol-because we were working for a
corporation, EMI-was to record three songs in the
morning, three in the afternoon, and three in the
evening. But of course, that was a great learning
experience for me. It was capturing the moment in
time. When I started as an assistant engineer, we
were working on classical sessions as well. There
were a few sessions I worked on with Maria Callas.
But to go into the studio and just go into straight
stereo-and it wasn't even multitrack then-and
you're capturing that whole choir and the orchestra
and the soloist, it's quite a moving experience. I've
been brought up capturing that emotion from the
studio floor, not from the control room per se.
In the book you talk about when George Martin was
out on a particular day with food poisoning, and
how that had a very liberating effect on the Beatles. Can you describe that?
We had attempted to start "Yellow Submarine" that
day, and George was taken ill with food poisoning,
so I sort of took charge of the session. I don't think
I'm credited as producer, but we laid down the
basic backing track that day. As far as the band was
concerned, the schoolmaster reference had sort of
gone out the window, and it was more relaxed in
the studio. We sort of had good fun making the
basic track. Then there was an overdub session
when Mick Jagger came. It was like a party night, so
in the middle of "Yellow Submarine" you hear all
the clinking glasses, and Patti Boyd [later Patti Harrison] does this sort of little scream thing. We
miked John and a few other people with hand held
mics, and he runs into the Number Two studio into
the echo chamber and shouts out those commands.
It was just a good fun record to be working on. And
then George came back about a week later. We
actually cancelled a few sessions, but we worked on
it in between.
In the early days, did they realize how famous...or
did any of you realize how famous they were about
to become and the profound musical effect they
would have on a global basis?
Not really. Everyone in England at that time was
looking at them as something to latch onto because
of the anti-establishment thing. So the hits started
coming out, but it was only when we started to do
Revolver... That was my first session officially as
their recording engineer, and "Tomorrow Never
Knows" was the first track that we cut on the
album. No one had ever heard music like it, especially on "Tomorrow Never Knows." We knew it
was different, and it was getting harder to be
received in England because of its progressiveness.
We knew Revolver was a little bit special, and we
knew Sgt. Pepper was special, but we did not realize
what it was all going to lead into, obviously.
56

When you were sitting in the chair behind the console and they walked in the room to start Revolver,
how did that feel as a 19-year-old kid? 19 years old
and you're the first engineer on a Beatles' session.
Were you scared to death?
Sure I was. Norman Smith, the original recording
engineer, left to become a record producer for Pink
Floyd, and no one wanted him to carry on engineering the Beatles. George Martin said "no," and
later in life I realized why George had said, "no." It
would have meant that there would have been two
producers on the session, and no way was that
going to happen. So I was then promoted to
recording engineer when Norman was leaving. I
had been working as a recording engineer for four
or five months prior to that, and I had taken on
most of Norman Smith's bands. Manfred Mann
was the first one; "Pretty Flamingo" was my first
hit. Then about four months later, I was asked to
go to the manager's office and George Martin was
there, and he said, "Do you want to record the Beatles?" And then my heart sort of sank. I was
playing this little mind game where this little red
ball was bouncing from yes to no, yes to no. It was
almost going on to no, and then I thought, well,
I've got nothing to lose. So then it stopped on yes,
and I said yes. Prior to that, I had said, "Can I tell
you tomorrow?" and he said, "No, I've got to know
now." That was like a week or two weeks prior to
starting the Revolver sessions.
Why did you bounce back between yes and no? Any
engineer in his right mind would have given up a
body part for that gig!
I mean, I was young and extremely nervous, you
know. So anyway, on that very first session-which
was the "Tomorrow Never Knows" session-I sat
up in the control room with my assistant, and I had
a microphone in the studio that was left up. So the
Beatles came into the studio, rather the control
room first. That was in Number Three studio at
Abbey Road, not Number Two. You couldn't get
from the control room through a door into the studio, you had to go down the corridor and get into
the studio that way. So they went straight into the
studio, and I had the mic open. And you know, I'm
feeling nervous enough, but I think it was Harrison
who said to George Martin after looking through
the control room window, "Where's Norman?" And
it was at that point that I realized that I hadn't told
them that I was going to take over for Norman.
Except I think there was a nod and a wink between
George Martin and Paul. I think it must have been
discussed with Paul. Anyway, that made me feel
even worse. I really felt pretty dreadful.
So the session started, and we started "Tomorrow
Never Knows." One of the requests from John was
that he wanted the vocal on this track to sound like
the Dalai Lama singing on a mountaintop 25 miles

away. And obviously, we had no plug-ins or software. What we've got is like two tape machines and
a [recording console] and one echo chamber at that
time. So anyway, I'm looking through the control
room window into the studio and saw the revolving
speaker-which was the Leslie speaker that was
from the Hammond organ-and I thought, well, if
we could get John's voice to go into that revolving
speaker, maybe we'll get something that sounds a
bit new. So we tried that, and of course, that is
what we did use, and it's on the last verse of the
track of the song. That sort of won John over.
Then there were discussions about the drum sound.
I came through the EMI system quite quickly,
because I was a mastering engineer before I was
actually a recording engineer. I was mastering a lot
of American records for re-issue in England and
Europe, and I was hearing sounds on those records
that certainly were not coming out of EMI studios.
The Beatles had heard all these American records
and liked the good drum sounds, so there was a discussion about Ringo's drum sound. I was after a
different drum sound too, so I lowered the mics,
which was against the protocol of EMI. Again,
working for a corporation, there was a way of doing
things, and the way you shouldn't do things. So I lowered the overhead mic-there were only two at that
time on Ringo's drums. I wanted this really sort of
thumpy bass drum sound, so I took the front skin
off the bass drum and stuffed a sweater inside it,
and put the front skin back on. Later, we actually
took the front skin off and put the damper thing
inside, and left the front skin off. Anyway, I moved
the microphone about four inches away from the
drum, and I got the bass drum sound that I really
wanted, which was this hard sort of upfront thud.
Then someone sort of snitched on me saying, "Did
you know Geoff had put the microphone four
inches away from the bass drum?" Because the
rules were, you couldn't go nearer than 18 inches,
because the wind pressure was going to damage the
[microphone] capsules and so forth. To cut a long
story short, it led to the fact that there was a meeting at Abbey Road, and I was issued with a letter
giving me permission to use that microphone at
that distance on Beatles' sessions. And once the rest
of the staff knew that that was the sound that was
being achieved by using this process, everyone
wanted to do it, so gradually the rules and regulations changed. It was just the experimentation. I
mean, all I could do to accommodate requests for
new sounds for them-and they were not demanding, but asking for new ways of doing things-was
really basically just to abuse the equipment.
The only thing I had was Fairchild 660 limiters and
some Altec compressors. That was the only
outboard gear. The EQ on the [recording] desk was
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