\n
\nBy Tim Riley
\n
\n
\n
\nABBEY ROAD REUNION
\n
\nor
\n
\nAll Together Now
\nTHINGS WE DID YESTERDAY
\n
\nSUBHEAD: Unsung EMI engineers gather at the legendary studios to
\ncelebrate a new book about their accomplishments
\n
\nBy Tim Riley
\n
\nEverybody knows Neil Armstrong was the first man to step onto the moon.
\nBut who\u00a0 designed his space capsule? Who sewed up those space suits to
\nsupport life while Armstrong golfed on the Sea of Tranquility?
\n
\nIn musical terms, the Beatles were aesthetic astronauts. But the sound
\nengineers who translated their performances onto tape remain obscure. The richly
\ndetailed and lavishly illustrated RECORDING THE BEATLES, by two young
\nAmerican engineers, Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, maps the audio
\nbreakthroughs that keep the Beatles’ recordings contemporary. Indeed,
\nthere are many producers in this digital age who turn their equalizers
\ninto pretzels trying to copy Abbey Road’s classic analog sound. In pop
\nterms, everybody moonwalks these days, but few understand how it was
\nfirst accomplished. “We really were a law unto ourselves,” said Ken
\nTownsend, who started as a tape librarian and worked his way up to head
\nthe company.
\n
\nAt a party last week (Nov. 9) celebrating its publication,\u00a0over thirty of\u00a0
\nthe Beatles’ recording crew gathered at\u00a0Studio 2 in St. John’s Wood.\u00a0
\nThese mild-mannered pros met the Beatles
\npoint for point in creative terms, wiring the guts of rock’s classic
\ncatalog. If it weren’t for them, the variable speeds, tape loops and
\nmulti-tracks of “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “A Day in the Life” would
\nnever have been possible. Many of these figures went on to enjoy greater
\nnotoriety in their post-Beatles careers: Chris Thomas, for example,
\nplayed some keyboards for the WHITE ALBUM, but has since produced
\nrecordings from Badfinger and Pink Floyd to the Pretenders and Pulp; and
\nRichard Lush went on from second engineer of SGT PEPPER to produce
\nWings’s RED ROSE SPEEDWAY and oversee the MOULIN ROUGE movie soundtrack.
\n
\nThe typical day in the life of these knob-twiddlers might involve an
\norchestra in the morning, a pop session in the afternoon, and an mixing
\nassist at night. “It really did bring out the best in you,”
\nsays Ken Scott, who’s since produced Supertramp and David Bowie.
\nDespite its old-school reputation, EMI staffers broke many of the rules
\nthey were rigorously trained in. Not did EMI design and build its own
\nequipment (in Hayes, Middlesex), it mastered its own in-house recordings
\nright in St. John’s Wood before sending them out for pressing.
\n
\nAs these audio rock stars recognized one another and embraced, the
\ntypical rock fan could only wonder at conversations about White
\nElephants hacked into bass microphones, or how ADT compensated for a
\nlazy John Lennon, who didn’t want to sing a song twice over. But just
\nlike a talk-happy movie crew, there was lots of backstage banter to
\ncounter the music’s brilliance. Thomas remembered an exhausted Sir Paul
\nMcCartney snoring atop a mixing console while finishing the White Album.
\nAnd Townsend remembers how John Lennon honored his promotion to producer
\nin the midst of the Beatles heyday:
\n
\n“Mr. Townsend,” Lennon said to me, “We have a very serious complaint.
\nThe toilet paper in this place, it’s very hard and shiny, you can’t wipe
\nyour bum on it. And not only that, he said.\u00a0 It’s got ‘EMI LTD’
\nstamped on every sheet. Don’t you trust the staff here?” And so Townsend
\nhad all the toilet rolls in the building replaced so to better serve
\nBeatle bums. You can still find pieces of the old corporate-stamped
\ntoilet sheets getting auctioned off on ebay.
\n
\nWith an elegant layout, helpful diagrams, and patient explanations,
\nRECORDING THE BEATLES will fascinate even the most Luddite fans. Ryan
\nand Kehew represent the finest in Beatle scholarship in an area that the
\ndigital revolution has all but swallowed up, and they remind you how
\neven the most inspired music sweats bullets backstage. They also make
\nyou wonder: what type of toilet paper did Neil Armstrong insist on for
\nhis lunar stroll?
\n
\nRECORDING THE BEATLES (Curvebender Publications)
\nhttp:\/\/www.recordingthebeatles.com
\n
\nEMI’s Abbey Road Studios
\nhttp:\/\/www.abbeyroad.com
\n
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