In the corner of the studios, Mal and Neil and Ivan, the friend, couldn’t hear the jokes over the headphones. They’d finished their tea. Ivan was writing a letter home to his mother. Neil was filling in his diary. He’d only started it two weeks previously. He said he should have started one about five years ago.
A man in a purple shirt called Norman arrived. He used to be one of their recording engineers and now had a group of his own. The Pink Floyd. Very politely he asked George Martin if his boys could possibly pop in to see the Beatles at work. George smiled, unhelpfully. Norman said perhaps he should ask John personally, as a favour. George Martin said no, that wouldn’t work. But if by chance he and his boys popped in about eleven o’clock, he might just be able to see what he could do.
They did pop in, around 11.00, and exchanged a few halfhearted hellos. The Beatles were still going through the singing of ‘It’s Getting Better’, for what now seemed the thousandth time. By two o’clock they’d got it at least to a stage which didn’t make them unhappy.
’MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR’
The tune and all the words of ‘It’s Getting Better’ had been worked out before they got into the recording studio but when they arrived at the EMI studios at 7.30 one evening to record ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ all they had was the title and a few bars of the music.
There was the usual crowd of fans waiting for them as they went in. Not screaming. Just quiet and contrite, like humble subjects, subdued by the presence. As they went in, one girl very shyly gave George a button badge which said ‘George for PM’.
‘Why would Paul McCartney want you?’ said John to George.
Paul played the opening bars of ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ on the piano, showing the others how it would go. He gestured a lot with his hands and shouted ‘Flash, Flash,’ saying it would be like a commercial. John was wearing an orange cardigan, purple velvet trousers and a sporran. He opened the sporran and took out a cigarette, which he lit. Someone shouted that Anthony, John’s chauffeur, wanted him on the phone.
They leaned round the piano while Paul was playing, going over and over the opening. Paul told Mal to write down the order of how they would do the song. In a very slow schoolboy hand, Mal wrote down the title and got ready for Paul’s instructions. Paul said Trumpets, yes they’d have some trumpets at the beginning, a sort of fanfare, to go with ‘Roll Up, Roll Up, for the Magical Mystery Tour.’ Mal had better write that line down as well, as it was the only line they’d got. Paul told Mal to write down DAE, the first three chords of the song. Mal sucked his pencil, waiting for more of Paul’s inspired words, but nothing came.
The instruments were then set up and they got ready to record the backing, which as usual was to be the first track they would do. John came back and asked Mal if he’d got in touch with Terry yet. Mal said he couldn’t get through to him. John said it was his job to get through. Just keep on until he did.
It took a couple of hours to work out the first backing track and get it recorded. After it was done, Paul went up to see George Martin in the control room. Paul had the track played back to him, again, and again.
Below in the studio, while Paul got the technicians to do things upstairs, George got a set of crayons out of his painted sheepskin jacket and started to draw a picture. Ringo stared into space, smoking, looking very unhappy, which is his natural expression when he’s not talking. John was at the piano, sometimes playing quietly, other times jumping up, pretending to be a spastic, or thumping out loud corny tunes. No one was watching him. He smiled fiendishly to himself through his spectacles, like a Japanese gnome. Neil was reading a pile of Occult Weeklies, which they’d all been thumbing through earlier in the evening. Mal had disappeared.
Paul was at last satisfied with the sound of the first track. He came back down and said he thought they could now add a few more things to it.
Mal reappeared carrying a big brown paper bag full of socks, all in bright colours. He passed the bag to John first. He grabbed it in great delight. He chose several pairs of orange terry towelling socks, then passed the bag round for the others to have a dip. The previous night he had said, just in passing, ‘Socks, Mal.’
After the socks had been handed out, Paul asked Mal if he’d managed to get any real mystery tour posters. Mal said he had been round the bus stations all day looking for them. But he couldn’t find any.
They had hoped that some real posters would have given them some ideas for the words of the song. Instead they all tried again to think of some good words, apart from Roll Up, Roll Up, which was still all they’d got.
As they shouted out ideas, Mal wrote them all down. ‘Reservation’, ‘Invitation’, ‘Trip of a lifetime’, ‘Satisfaction guaranteed’. But they soon got fed up. They decided they would just sing any words that came into their heads, just to see what happened. So they did.
When they’d finished that, Paul decided that on the next track he would add a bit of bass to the backing. He put on the headphones, so that he could hear what they’d done so far, and strapped on his bass guitar. After that he said they should add even more instruments. All of them, Paul, Ringo, John, George, Neil and Mal, then picked up any old instruments that were lying around — maraccas, bells, tambourines. George Martin didn’t play anything, though he has done on many of their records. They all put on headphones and banged and played them to the music.
By two o’clock, they had recorded a basic backing, and had layered onto it a bass track, a lot of shouting and disjointed words, and some percussion instruments. ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ was then forgotten about for almost six months.
The Beatles do seem to record their music in apparent chaos. It is certainly an expensive trial-and-error method, making it all up as they go along. At one time, their songs were recorded at one go and on one track or at the most two. Now it takes at least four tracks, as they continually think of another instrument or effects to add. And when a 40-piece orchestra is used, as in ‘A Day In The Life’, the expense is enormous.
Listening to each stage of their recording, once they’ve done the first couple of tracks, it’s often hard to see what they’re still looking for, as it sounds so complete. Often the final complicated, well-layered versions seem to have drowned the initial simple melody. But they know it’s not right, even if they can’t put it into words. Their dedication is impressive, gnawing away at the same song for stretches of up to ten hours.
Paul often appears to be the leader in all this. This is mainly because someone has to say it’s not good enough, let’s do it once again. They all know it. But someone has to voice the instructions. Paul does it best, as he’s still the keeny. But they all have a say in any big decisions. When it’s John’s song, he does most of the directing, and the same with George. George, most of all, is in complete charge of his own songs.
The recording of all their songs follws roughly the above pattern. But there is no pattern to the writing and creating of the songs in the first place. That can happen in many ways.
‘The last four songs of an album are usually pure slog,’ says Paul. ‘If we need four more we just have to get down and do them. They’re not necessarily worse than ones done out of imagination. They’re often better, because by that stage in an LP we know what sort of songs we want.’
About a third of their songs are written like this, because they’ve got to write a song and can’t wait for any sort of inspiration. John and Paul can do these slog songs on their own, but mostly they do them together, starting at two in the afternoon and giving themselves a day to complete it.