19661966Last Live Dates: the Studio Years Begin

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19661966LAST LIVE DATES: THE STUDIO YEARS BEGIN

Beatles gear / CHAPTER 9
“ I was getting frustrated listening to American records like the Motown stuff because the bass was a lot stronger than we were putting on our records. ”
GEOFF EMERICK, BEATLES STUDIO ENGINEER FROM 1966, WITH SOME NEW IDEAS FOR THE SOUND OF THINGS TO COME
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BY THE START OF 1966 THE BEATLES HAD BECOME THE WORLD'S MOST POPULAR BAND. THEY HAD ALSO BECOME FOUR VERY WEALTHY YOUNG MEN WHO HAD LITTLE OR NO PERSONAL TIME TO ENJOY THEIR SPOILS. THEIR MANAGER, BRIAN EPSTEIN, HAD HOPED FOR A REPEAT OF THE SUCCESSFUL 1964 AND '65 SCHEDULES. UNFORTUNATELY FOR EPSTEIN, THE GROUP HAD STARTED TO TAKE CONTROL.

No longer were The Beatles willing to sacrifice themselves to an apparently never-ending .sequence of live tours and TV appearances. Epstein had hoped to begin the year with another film By the middle of 1965 plans had been set for a third Beatle movie, a Western to be titled A Talent For Loving. Time had been scheduled for the film's production, starting at the beginning of 1966. But it never happened. The Beatles rejected the script along with the notion of playing cowboys. Epstein's idea of making them into Elvis-style movie stars was foiled.

So it was that Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr found themselves with three full months off. Almost no group activity was planned. There loomed the virtually unknown luxury of personal freedom. They were called upon only once during this period, on January 5th. They went to CTS Studios, a post-production film studio in west London, because the audio tape of the recorded 1965 Shea Stadium concert needed some work before the planned TV film of the show could be released. The group were required to recreate their live sound at CTS while watching the concert performance footage on a large screen.

A contemporary report described the session and some of the equipment being delivered to the studio. "When The Beatles' management filmed and recorded their performance at the Shea Stadium, Manhattan, in August 1965, the 57,000 fans killed pretty well all their sound. So the film company decided that all their songs would have to be dubbed on. Recently, The Beatles found time to go into a Bayswater studio to record them but had to borrow a complete set of equipment from SoundCity as they had taken their gear to their own separate homes instead of leaving it all with the road manager, MalEvans."1

The idea of having a fully equipped studio in each of their homes had become appealing to the group. By the beginning of this year, Starr and McCartney had just purchased new houses, joining Lennon and Harrison as property owners. Each Beatle now had several Brenell reel-to-reel tape recorders which they used to work out new ideas for songs.

As far back as late 1964 Harrison's studio had been mentioned in a magazine item. "George decided that he wanted to put all his guitars, amplifiers and other musical gear into one big room at his new house," wrote the visiting journalist. "He's had one wall knocked down and the result is a sort of small recording studio. He also likes to have the ends of his guitar strings sticking all over the place. Says they're useful to stick ciggies onto, especially when there's no convenient ashtray near."2

Also in late 1964, Lennon's set-up had been reported. "John is having his new house completely redecorated, and one of the rooms is being equipped as a small recording studio. In future, he wants to make demos of new songs in the comfort of his own home."3 It had also been noted that Lennon had ordered an electric piano for the new home studio - presumably one of the Hohner Pianets the group had acquired. "Knowing the genius he has for extracting the most sounds out of ordinary equipment, everyone in the recording world is waiting to see what Lennon does with his piano."4 As we've learned, the results were plainly heard on Rubber Soul.

Just over a year later, in early 1966, visiting reporters had even more to see and scribble about. "Anyone who has visited John's home will no doubt be impressed by his music room," wrote one. "It is situated at the top of the house and its decor is a multi-coloured effort by John. Amplifiers, guitars, organ, piano and jukeboxes: you name it, he's got it. Everything is littered all over the place. He just can't keep it tidy like George does."5

During their three-month hiatus, the group began to write and demo new material for an upcoming record. It was reported at the time that they planned to reconvene in the spring of 1966 to record in Memphis, Tennessee. "There is a very strong possibility that The Beatles' new single will be recorded in America. After working on arrangements during late March and early April in EMI's St John's Wood studios they plan to fly to Memphis to actually record several numbers on April 11th. They have wanted to do a recording session in America for a long time now."6 Another item added: "They've heard so much about the American techniques and sound engineers so they want to see for themselves whether it makes any difference. George Martin will be accompanying them."7

Unfortunately the group never made the recording trip to Memphis. A Beatles single made at Sun studios would have been an interesting experiment. Instead, they wound up back at Abbey Roadfor another string of sessions, starting on April 6th. The sessions would eventually become part of the Revolver LP

The idea to record in the US grew from the group's continuing desire to improve and refine their sound on tape. So even though the trip to the States was off, the April sessions at Abbey Road found them pushing ever forward in the studio, striving to set fresh standards for new kinds of recording and production. The key word for these sessions would be experimentation.

A 1965 Gibson SG Standard similar to the one used by George in the studio and briefly on-stage during 1966. At the time this distinctively styled instrument was the flagship model in the Gibson solidbody electric line. Gibson's 1964 catalogue offered the SG model in three different styles: the three-pickup Custom and two-pickup Standard and Special.

Fender catalogue shot from the period showing the 'black-face' piggy-back style Showman amp and cab, which The Beatles used in the studio on the Revolver sessions.

One element in the new direction came with a change in recording personnel. At the start of the Revolver sessions the group's long-time head engineer, Norman Smith, was replaced by Geoff Emerick, a young EMI engineer eager and willing to experiment. Emerick had worked on various Beatles sessions as second engineer as far back as 'A Hard Day's Night' in 1964, but now he joined George Martin's production team as chief engineer to help translate The Beatles' ever-expanding musical ideas.

Geoff Emerick and The Beatles

During the Revolver sessions the group explored and invented new studio recording techniques -often by the relatively simple expedience of their efforts to achieve different sounds. As they requested better or more unusual sounds on their recordings, engineer Geoff Emerick tried to oblige, sometimes by using non-traditional methods.

Emerick's open-minded approach and willingness to ignore standard recording practices and techniques when necessary was exactly what the group were looking for. His input to the Revolver sessions was immediate, as he employed new working methods that helped change the sound of The Beatles' recordings. Ironically, some of Emerick's innovative approaches to recording, such as close-miking and bass-drum damping, are now considered standard practice.

Discussing his work today, Emerick says his approach to studio recording and experimentation then was simple but logical. "Recording is like painting a picture," he says. "The different sounds are like the different colours that you have to blend correctly to paint a picture." Emerick explains thathe achieved The Beatles' studio drum sound by using a basic two-microphone technique. Starr, of course, produced his own sound. "He knew when it was too 'live' sounding," recalls Emerick, "and

then he used to put a cigarette packet on top of the snare, to dampen the sound. That would always work."

A 1962 Gretsch 6120 like the one John used very briefly in the studio in 1966 (below). The model was another in Gretsch's Chet Atkins signature series that included the Country Gentleman and the Tennessean.
John pictured in April 1966 at the 'Paperback Writer' session at Abbey Road, playing the Gretsch 6120. In the foreground is a Vox 7120 amplifier, with its tubes (valves) clearly visible.

The sound of Starr's kit would end up on one track of the tape while the group recorded on to four-track machines (which they had done since October 1963 and would continue to do until the onset of eight-track at Abbey Road in summer 1968). "A lot of this was because of the limitations of the mixing desk," Emerick explains, recalling his frustration at wanting to get more material on to tape. "There were only eight inputs and four outs on our mixers at Abbey Road then. Going in, you also had access to one of the channels with a four-way pre-mixer, but that didn't have its own EQ." Emerick reports that he would use AKG D19C mikes for the overhead on the drum kit, and an AKG D20 on the bass drum, virtually throughout his time recording the group. For some instruments - possibly close-miking drums - he would return to classic "ribbon" microphones, usually Telefunken 4038s.

Emerick developed one of his pioneering drum recording techniques on the Revolver sessions. "There was this woollen sweater with four necks that they had received from a fan - they wore it for one of their Christmas shows. It was around the studio, so I stuffed it into the bass drum to deaden the sound. I moved the bass-drum microphone very close to the drum itself, which wasn't really considered the thing todo at that time. We then ran the kit sound through a Fairchild 660 valve compressor."8 Compressors were widely used on individual instruments on Beatle recordings, generally resulting in a more punchy, louder sound.

The first track recorded for Revolver was 'Tomorrow Never Knows' and it effectively set the pace for these sessions as well as many future Beatle recordings. The song was the most drastically different composition the group had recorded to date. Its hypnotic pulse derives from a core of Starr on his Ludwig 22-inch-bass kit and McCartney playing his Rickenbacker 4001S bass. The sound of a single drone note on a Hammond organ played through a Leslie speaker cabinet, layered with fuzz and backwards-recorded guitar, added to the mystical sound.

THAT'S YOUR BABY, AND IT WILL GO ON FOREVER.
Vox boss Tom Jennings,
to AC-30 designer Dick Denney

The most remarkable additions to the song were the numerous tape loops that the group apparently created themselves, expanding still further the song's mind-bending atmosphere. Emerick recalls that The Beatles recorded odd sounds using their Brenell tape machines at home, and then the tapes were looped to create repeating sounds and added to the basic track. 'Tomorrow Never Knows' stands out as one of the first recordings to use the technique now known as sampling and looping, widely employed in today's studios thanks to more user-friendly electronic systems.

New Vox and Fender amps

With the new recording sessions came much new equipment. Photographer Robert Freeman captured some fine images that help document the equipment used during the creation of Revolver. Pictures taken in studio 3 show McCartney playing his Rickenbacker 4001S bass through the cream-coloured Fender Bassman amplifier. Joining the Bassman at Abbey Road were a new pair of Fender Showman amplifiers - so new that some photos show empty Fender shipping boxes in the background. The "blackface" (black control-panel) Fender Showman was in piggy-back style -separate head and cabinet - and produced 85 watts of power. The head was essentially the chassis of a Fender Twin Reverb, without the reverb. The separate Showman speaker cabinet came with a single 15-inch JBL speaker. In 1966 the Showman with 1x15 cabinet was second from top of Fender's line of 15 amplifiers, and retailed for $660 (about £235 then; around $3,580 or £2,540 in today's money).

Freeman's photos also reveal a series of new Vox model 7120 guitar and 4120 bass amplifiers present in the studio. These 120-watt amps were designed using a solid-state pre-amp coupled with a valve (tube) output section. According to Vox man Dick Denney, The Beatles received the first Vox 4120 and 7120 amps made. He says the company were keen to innovate and constantly produced prototype designs. "I he only amp that my boss Tom Jennings would never allow us to change was the AC-30. He told me, 'That's your baby, and it will go on forever.' And how right he was."

Denney had visited Vox's US distributor, Thomas Organ, in California. "They poured loads of money into Vox," he says. "They were making the Super Beatle, the Royal Guardsman amps and others. I was sent there to help work on the various models. I tried out the prototype for the Super Beatle, and I voiced it up almost like an AC-30. They had their own concept on it all, and they had a very good transistor [solid-state] vibrato unit. I had to work up the fuzz for them that was built into that amp. I brought back the circuit from America, and we took the pre-amp circuit and put it on a powerful valve [tube] output section. That became the 7120 guitar and 4120 bass amps."

The 7120 had a 4x12 speaker cabinet and the 4120 a 2x15. Denney says that these shortlived rigs are the rarest Vox amps - not many were made, and they never went into proper production. "They had all the effects, like the American amps, but with a valve [tube] output. We gave the first ones to The Beatles and the Rolling Stones."9

New guitars: Casinos and an SG

The Revolver sessions also saw the appearance of a number of new Beatle instruments. Some would only be used briefly in the studio, while others became mainstays in the group's instrumental line-up. McCartney frequently used his Epiphone Casino on the sessions, and Lennon and Harrison too decided to join the Casino club. In the spring they each acquired a sunburst Epiphone Casino.

The most obvious difference between these two virtually identical guitars was that Harrison's Casino had a Bigsby vibrato fitted (though different to that on McCartney's), where Lennon's had the regular Epiphone "trapeze" tailpiece. Lennon's was unusual in that it had a small black rubberring mounted around its pickup selector switch. Both Casinos had the more commonly seen Epiphone-style headstock, unlike McCartney's which had the earlier Gibson-style headstock. Both Lennon and Harrison's guitars were fitted with gold-coloured volume and tone knobs, where McCartney's had black knobs.

Abbey Road studios in April 1966, and Paul digs into his Rickenbacker 4001 S bass while John and George sing a backing vocal. By this time The Beatles had started to use headphones in the studio for monitoring, which would soon become common practice.

Lennon used his new Epiphone Casino as well as his '64 Gibson J-160E throughout the Revolver sessions. Harrison meanwhile played his sonic blue Fender Stratocaster, his Gibson J-160E ... and yet another new Beatle guitar, a Gibson SG Standard. The SG line had in effect been introduced by Gibson during 1961 as new-design Les Paul models, although the "Les Paul" name was dropped from them in 1963 when they properly became SGs. The new body shape was modern and highly sculpted, with sharp double-cutaway horns.

The SG Standard kept the powerful and effective humbucking pickups of the original single-cutaway Les Paul models that were being brought to the fore in Britain in 1966 by players such as Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Harrison knew Clapton and must have noticed the effect that the guitarist and his Les Paul were having. Harrison would also have been familiar with the appeal of Gibson's humbuckers from his earlier ES-345 guitar, but maybe wanted something without that guitar's unwieldy Varitone selector, and probably liked the look of the smaller, hipper, solidbody SG. His new Gibson had been made around 1964, was finished in translucent cherry red, and had a Maestro Vibrola tailpiece unit. The SG remained one of Harrison's favoured guitars from this time through into 1968.