In this era of digital and computer music, he prefers analog tape and tube gear. Geoff Emerick - the adventurous recording engineer who as a young man (he was 15-years old when he joined the EMI staff at Abbey Road Studios in London) shaped the sounds on the Beatles' 'Revolver,' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band,' 'Magical Mystery Tour,' 'The Beatles' and 'Abbey Road' - insists he can hear the difference.
He also insists that the Beatles are best listened to in mono. Emerick's memoir, ''Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles'' (Gotham Books), written with music journalist Howard Massey, is a must-read and perhaps the best straight-up insiders view of the often not-so-fab Fab Four. Elvis Costello (Emerick recorded his 'Imperial Bedroom' album) wrote the forward.
The 352-page book is not a rehash of familiar old stories. ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Paul McCartney, from the beginning, emerges as the true leader of the often-dysfunctional band. John Lennon's lack of concentration and mood swings verge on attention deficit disorder, in contrast to his commanding presence (the image of Lennon, stripped to the waist shredding his throat on 'Twist and Shout' is startling).
George Harrison, insecure and more ham-fisted on guitar in the studio than anyone would have imagined, checked out of the band by 'Revolver' and Ringo Starr, the clown in their movies, never spoke and dreaded anything close to a drum solo. Emerick describes 'Sgt. Pepper' as McCartney's album and the so-called White Album as Lennon's raw response.
Smoke-stained Abbey Road's Studio room No. 2, with its dirty woodblock floor and quilted padded walls 'full of old seaweed' became a virtual prison for the Beatles. ''It was just a horrible place,'' Emerick said.
Toward the end, the torturous distraction of Yoko Ono “became part of the furniture.''
Amazing that it's where they recorded the “classical music of 50 years, 100 years time,” the Grammy-winning Emerick said. And sometimes the Beatles were horrible people.
Emerick walked out of the White Album sessions amid protests to stay from the band. He came back to record “Abbey Road.”
We recently picked his brain.
What was your philosophical approach? “I always treat recording sounds in a visual sense in my mind. Like microphones become camera lenses and so forth.
”
How does one write about creating those groundbreaking sounds without being too geeky? “First of all, I didn't want to make this very technical, this book, at all. Nothing can be quite as boring for people that know nothing of the technical side.
I just wanted to make it interesting to let people know what went on at those sessions because no one's ever sort of documented it. They weren't so iconic when we were doing those sessions. They were still who they were, but it's the story of real human beings in this environment with all its ups and downs.
No one's documented it. I just wanted to sort of share what it was like to work on those records. It wasn't like what a lot of people probably imagine it to be, but that was the way it was.
”
What were the limitations at EMI (today known as Abbey Road Studios)? “Our limitations were a mixing console with basically eight microphone inputs and a tape machine and microphones and few small echo devices, and that's basically what we used and had to start with. When I started to do ‘Revolver,' they wanted to go into different directions and advance.
”
The early Beatles records were only two-track recordings? “Let's go back to the earliest stuff when (engineer) Norman Smith and I was maybe assisting on the sessions, of course, they were just two-track recordings. And basically, they would actually do it live.
The main vocal would have been live. Most of those earlier ones were. All the rhythm track would be on one track and if there were any overdubs to be done, we'd do it tape to tape, a twin-track to twin-track copy — overdub little bits on the copy and edit (literally cut and tape) the bits on the copy back into the original two-track master.
And then when you went to the mono reduction it was just a question that you could at least balance the vocal against the rhythm track level.”
When the experimentation (and later the bickering within the group) began, was it more fun than tedium? “No, it wasn't tedious, because it gave us time to experiment on things.
”
Why are the Beatles records better in mono? Because we used to monitor those tracks mono, again England was behind the times as far as stereo was concerned. And it was only when we were trying to record the ‘Abbey Road' album that we actually were monitoring in stereo and giving it some consideration.
We used to monitor from one loud speaker, which was the right-hand speaker, although it was left and right, but it was to one on the right. And it was all balanced and EQ-ed and monitored on one loud speaker for mono. It used to take a long, long time, if John was playing guitar and George was playing guitar on a track together to get the distinctive sounds of each of those guitars to speak properly out of one sound source.
”
What were the benefits to the Beatles having the run of the place? “It was a nice way of working, a luxury because no other bands were working like that. It was a unique situation at that time because we had the luxury of time to craft and sculpture every tonal thing around those tracks.
We had no sort of magic boxes. I call them magic boxes to make modern sounds. We would wobble the guide rollers to make the tape wobble on the tape machine, so it would wow and flutter the tape into the echo chamber, which is quite apparent on that solo of “Lovely Rita.
” Stuff like that, with the machine almost disintegrating. We weren't supposed to treat the equipment like that.”
What does pushing equipment like audio compressors do?
“If you overdo it, like what I like to do, most compression devices, and especially the Fairchild limiter which was sort of a compression device, but faster, which actually chops peaks off, I used it for sound. And if you overload them slightly, like put more in than you should be putting in on the input, it sort of scrunches the sound up a bit. It makes it a little bit more forceful.
It's more exciting. It controls the loud part, but also the soft part of the vocal comes up to the same volume as the loud part. It brings up the breath sometimes to make it more breathy, and it accents the breaths and mouth noises if you over do it and have fast releases.
”
The Beatles could turn on and off the vibe? “When all of the bad vibes were going on, and we actually cut the track, “Bulldog,” it was just a fun track to record. It wasn't given a lot of intellectual thought, per se.
Everyone had a great time recording it and enjoying singing it and playing it. And then when it was all done it back to the vibe that there was before. It was an odd, odd situation.
”
Is genius sometimes a happy accident? “Sometimes something happened that we could have thought was a mistake, and we used that mistake as a part of the track. And you see the faces all light up, you know.
And you think, well that's great. We've got to keep that. That was brilliant.
Sometimes it was just a mistake, you know.”
What's going on with the strange stereo mixes on Beatles albums? “It was the only way I could mix it.
These were supposedly stereo versions, but again they were made as a mono record. The stereo version, there was no thought given in the process as to what I'm going to put back there because that's going to come from the left and that's going to come from the right. It was just when you start sweeping the (four) tracks left and right that's what happened.
There's guitar, drums and vocals on one track! It'd be great to reissue those mono mixes again. Because those mixes are different from the stereo mixes.
But those mono mixes are the ones made when the Beatles were present and the one deemed ‘the mix.'” (Editor's note: For example, Emerick said that “Sgt. Pepper” took three weeks to mix in mono; three days only for the stereo version.
).
Did hubris set in after “Sgt. Pepper” became so acclaimed?
“Many things happened after ‘Pepper.' Brian (Epstein) died and we went straight into, almost within two weeks, doing ‘Magical Mystery Tour,' which for all intents and purposes a bit of a disaster in England. We were thinking, oh my God.
This can't last. They thought they could do anything they liked and they couldn't go wrong. But, of course, with ‘Magical Mystery Tour,” they sort of went wrong.
”
What do you think of modern studio ProTools and autotune devices? “The artistic side has fallen by the wayside. There's a different dividing line there.
If I'm producer or engineer with an artist now, I have to work with an artist that's got proper real musical talent. I still record analog when I can. The last thing I was doing, I was running three 24s (24-track tape recorders) in lock with a few little quick overdubs coming over from ProTools.
Also, to get that richness in the sound which is still there in analog. I was brought up on analog. The young kids today, they're not brought up in analog, so they only know the sounds of ProTools, which is really discouraging to my ear.
It's gritty. It's very bland, and it's very sterile. It's as if someone sprinkled fine sand over it.
It's not smooth and it's not linear, it's just sort of gritty. It jars your ear. But it doesn't jar people's ears that only know that sound.
(To me) it's like chalk and cheese.”
What about John Lennon's post-Beatles statement about wishing to re-record and re-mix every Beatles track? “That was John's brashness, he probably didn't mean that, obviously.
Facetious is probably the right word. That was John. He'd come out with his statements.
He was brash and said things without meaning them. He would never sort of apologize for saying them. I never remember him apologizing, you know.
”
What did you learn by writing the book? “I was fortunate to have gone through the ‘60s with them. As the Beatles thing sort of gets sort of bigger by the day still, I was fortunate to have lived and worked through all that.
Who would have thought that 44 years later, we'd be talking about this? And the music's still up there. It's well structured.
It's got melody, and there's great playing, great guitar playing, great drumming, great bass playing. And it's got all the elements that you want to hear from a great record. It's entertainment, you know.
”
Was George Harrison a second-class Beatle? “He was trying to find his own thing, and he struggled. I remember in the early days, always struggling for those guitar parts and the others getting frustrated because he was talking a long time.
But as the book progresses, you see how George finds himself and brings (Indian influences) into the Beatles music. It suddenly dawned on me one day, I said to Howard, I've got a feeling here, that even going back to the ‘Revolver' days, (George was disinterested). On his face, he's somewhere else all the time.
...
. and I said to Howard, you know he really wanted out of the Beatles. Even when we were doing ‘Revolver.
'”
What's your favorite piece of gear? “My one favorite piece of gear if the Fairchild 660 limiter because it just adds a certain presence. It was great for guitars and it was great for John's voice, and any voice, really.
It just puts a lot of presence on it. I sometime still record with them and use them on the mix, too. The drums, certainly on the ‘Revolver' stuff with the whole drum kit being mono went through one Fairchild limiter.
”
Which tracks stand out? “Day In the Life,” obviously, and I guess “Strawberry Fields,” you know, and “Tomorrow Never Knows.” You know there's so many.
“Here, There and Everywhere,” of course, is one of the reason why the book is called that.” That music, the structure, the melody, the instrumentation and so forth, there was thought there. Where as today, I hear records and just sort of think, where's the thinking process behind these records?
There isn't any.”
Do you miss those days and the old gear? “I do, because the problem is I know the way things can sound.
And I can't get the sound because of modern equipment.”
His advice to young musicians and recording engineers? “Start using your ears and not your eyes.
”
Hector Saldaña
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