Paperback Writer - Reviews

Quoted from Recording Sessions: p.181-183

Wednesday 13 April 1966. There can't be many number one hit singles on which the French nursery rhyme 'Frère Jacques' is sung. But 'Paperback Writer' is one. It was Paul's idea that John and George should rekindle childhood memories with this unusual backing vocal, recorded on 14 April behind Paul's progressive lead. The song was recorded in just two takes, and one of those was a breakdown. But it was the subject of innumerable overdubs, on this day and again on 14 April.

Eighteen-year-old Richard Lush, another Abbey Road apprentice with a promising future, made his recording session debut as Beatles tape operator on this day. "I was pretty nervous. I'd worked with Cliff and the Shadows and they were very easy going but I knew that Beatles sessions were private. One was rarely allowed to open the door and peek in, and I heard that they took a while to accept new people. It certainly took a while before they knew me as Richard. Until then it was 'Who is that boy sitting in the corner hearing all of our music?' But everything worked out in the end."

Thursday 14 April 1966. Neither of this day's two songs made it onto Revolver, instead making up both sides of a pre-LP single, but both were chock-full of all of the Revolver technological advancements: limiters, compressors, jangle boxes, Leslie speakers, ADT.

There had for some time been puzzlement at Abbey Road as to why records cut in America sounded so much better than British cuts. The bass content in particular was greatly diminished on British records. Jerry Boys has a clear recollection of John Lennon demanding to know why the bass on a certain Wilson Pickett record far exceeded any Beatles disc. Certainly one has to listen very intently to hear Paul McCartney's bass playing on Beatles records pre-1966. But on 'Paperback Writer' all that changed. In fact, the bass is the most striking feature of the record.

"'Paperback Writer' was the first time the bass sound had been heard in all its excitement," says Geoff Emerick. "For a start, Paul played a different bass, a Rickenbacker. Then we boosted it further by using a loudspeaker as a microphone. We positioned it directly in front of the bass speaker and the moving diaphragm of the second speaker made the electric current." This was another invention of Ken Townsend's - but he paid the price, being called in to the office of Bill Livy , chief technical engineer, and reprimanded for matching impedances incorrectly!

From his disc-cutting experience, Emerick knew that record companies were loathe to press a million copies of a record if the high bass content was likely to make the stylus jump. Tony Clark, yet another top engineer and producer in later years, cut the master lacquer of 'Paperback Writer'. "It was EMI's first high-level cut and I used a wonderful new machine just invented by the backroom boys, ATOC - Automatic Transient Overload Control. It was a huge box with flashing lights and what looked like the eye of a Cyclops sta ring out at you. But it did the trick. I did two cuts, one with ATOC and one without, played them to George Martin and he approved of the high-level one."

Posted: 28 juni 2009

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