Category: Beatles

Beatles recording engineer Geoff Emerick has died of a heart attack. When John Lennon described how he wanted his voice to sound in “Tomorrow Never Knows” — “Like the Dalai Lama chanting from a mountaintop” — Geoff, 19 years old, had an idea.

… perhaps there was one amplifier that might work, even though nobody had ever put a vocal through it. The studio’s Hammond organ was hooked up to a system called a Leslie — a large wooden box that contained an amp and two sets of revolving speakers, one that carried low bass frequencies and the other that carried high treble frequencies… In my mind I could almost hear what John’s voice might sound like if it were coming from a Leslie. It would take a little time to set up, but I thought it might just give him what he was after.

From Here, There and Everywhere, by Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey

The effect can be heard at 1:27.

The official Beatles Channel on YouTube now features all of their albums, but not the American editions!

Coming up on 50 years. Fifty! Everybody sing Na-Na-Na-Nah!

This video is everywhere else, but what the heck, I may as well add it here too.

I missed getting this post done in time for Mother’s Day, but here it is anyway. The “double A-side” single “Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane” was a familiar sound in my house in 1967. Not only was it played frequently on Musicradio 77WABC, one of my sisters had the record. The world had changed quite a lot in the short three years since the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show!

One time when I was playing the record (without permission), my mother stopped and listened. Then she said, “This is the most original and creative music I have ever heard.” Her offhand comment has always stayed with me as a favorite memory. Six months later she threw out my comic books, which is my least favorite memory!

Audio from the original Capitol mono single that my mother heard is below, followed by the restored music videos that were released in HD a couple of years ago.

Here’s something to consider. This is the Strawberry Field Manor that was a fixture for John Lennon when growing up.

Thanks to his Aunt Mimi taking him in after he was abandoned by his parents, John did not have to live there, as it was an orphanage that began accepting boys in the 1950’s. Here is the Dakota Building, where John spent his final years, and where Yoko still lives.