Quoted from Recording Sessions: p.181-183 Monday 21 July 1969. John Lennon had kept a low profile during recent Beatles recording
sessions and he hadn't offered a new song composition to the group since 'The Ballad Of John And
Yoko' on 14 April. (He and Yoko had released 'Give Peace A Chance' however, as the Plastic Ono Band.)
In fact, new compositions were generally a little thin on the ground at this time, with recordings
for the last new song, 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer', having begun on 9 July. |
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Freed too from the restrictions of a guitar, John was able to sing while simultaneously clapping his hands (again, later applied with tape echo) immediately after each time he sang the line "Shoot me!". There was only one guitar on the tape at this stage and that was George's, Paul played bass and Ringo played drums. John tapped a tambourine part-way through, too. It was a memorable recording. "On the finished record you can really only hear the word 'shoot'," says Geoff Emerick, "the bass guitar note falls where the 'me' is." This was Emerick's first full day back as the Beatles' balance engineer. "I started working with them again at Paul McCartney's request, just a week after I had left EMI to run Apple Studios. I went back to Abbey Road as the first freelance engineer that had walked in the building." |
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[It is interesting to note how, due to the Beatles, EMI - and particularly EMI Studios - suffered two exoduses of staff. In 1965, with the mirrored success and fame of George Martin, he, Ron Richards and John Burgess left to form AIR, taking with them others like Emerick, Dave Harries, Keith Slaughter and various secretarial staff in later years. (And Norman Smith left Abbey Road for Manchester Square to shore up the A&R department.) With Apple, the Beatles tempted away Emerick, Ron Pender, Malcolm Davies (the first to go, he cut the masters for 'Hey Jude' and Mary Hopkin's 'Those Were The Days' at Apple in August 1968), Phil McDonald, John Smith, John Barrett, Eddie Klein and several others. They also offered jobs to Terry Condon and John Skinner but both turned the offers down.] Tuesday 22 July. Superimposition onto take 9. |
Posted: 24 mei 2009
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