NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION: GEOFF EMERICK AND THE BEATLES

01/17/26

At the ripe old age of 15, Geoff Emerick found himself working as an assistant engineer at the EMI studio at Number 3 Abbey Road. He worked alongside balance engineer Norman Smith and producer George Martin on the first session for a group that would soon become the biggest act in the world. 

In 1962, The Beatles would walk into EMI Studios, studio 2 specifically, for the very first time. George Martin had signed them to EMI subsidiary Parlophone, mostly used for comedy records at the time. Geoff Emerick, among virtually everyone else, had never heard the band before. Another assistant engineer working at EMI had seen them play at the Cavern Club and was excited to see them in the studio, telling Geoff that they were going to be the next big thing. Apparently, the same engineer recommended The Rollings Stones to George Martin, but he declined and they were signed to Decca. Geoff was not present for the first Beatles session, which was their artist test, but for the second. Yet, it was the first for Ringo, who had replaced Pete Best some months prior. Geoff recalls being blown away by not only their music, but the group's camaraderie. This becomes a central theme in his book, Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles, which I've just finished reading. 

Geoff didn't get to engineer on all early Beatles sessions, as he was still an assistant engineer during the recording of their first several records. He became, however, a familiar face as he spent more time in the studio with them. For the better part of 3 years, Geoff worked on and off with The Beatles. He assisted on classical recordings in studio 1 and other pop acts in studios 2 and 3 in addition to working with the boys from Liverpool. He got promoted to the lathing room to cut acetates for the artists, cutting him off from being in Beatles sessions for over a year. He always wished he could work with them permanently, but EMI rules dictated that only balance engineers and producers could work with bands in perpetuity. 

Geoff was booked for a Beatles session in April 1966, following the release of Help!. George Martin approached Geoff before the session was due to start, informing him that he'd be taking over as balance engineer for the album. Safe to say he was shocked. Geoff was curious as to how the band would react to losing Norman Smith as their engineer. George Martin had neglected to tell the group that Geoff was taking Norman's place until after they arrived at the studio. Thankfully, Geoff was a familiar enough face that there was little to no protest from the band. At 19 years old, Geoff had begun his career as a balance engineer with the sessions for Revolver.

The first track recorded during the Revolver sessions was "Tomorrow Never Knows"--the beginning of mass-experimentation on a Beatles record. The song is a single chord, backed by a sitar drone and tambura courtesy of George Harrison's new found fascination with Indian instrumentation. Ringo's drumming perfectly fits the sound of the song, as the EMI-standard mic placement was altered by Geoff, which could have easily got him fired. It was one of the first times drums had been close mic'ed. The track also featured tape loops overdubbed onto the backing track, as well as reversed guitar parts. Another first for pop music. The tape loops, recorded on 1/4 inch tapes, were threaded on tape machines with the erase head disabled so that they could be played continuously. George Martin selected 16 of the loops of the 30 provided, with 8 being played at a time, spread out on different machines across the EMI studio complex. The loops were not the last experiment on the song, Lennon told Geoff that he wanted his vocals to sound like they were being sung by the Dalai Lama from a mountain top. Geoff achieved this by putting his vocals through a Leslie speaker, which had to be rewired as it had only been used before with Hammond organs. Ken Townsend, a technician at EMI, created artificial double tracking (ADT) for John as he notoriously despised recording more than one take for his vocals. From the very first song, The Beatles knew not all the tracks they were making were meant to be played live, allowing them to create an entirely new soundscape, reinventing and redefining the sonic limitations of pop music in the '60s.

Another session, only days later, would yield more new ideas that could've gotten Geoff fired. With pressure from label executives, the band wrote tracks "Paperback Writer" and "Rain" for a new single. Both Lennon and McCartney wanted to recreate the bass sound from Motown records coming in from the U.S. for it. Engineers in London/Europe had struggled to get the same sound on their records because their tech was behind that of the Yanks. Without proper compression, the bass would cause the needle to jump out of the groove, but somehow American engineers had figured out how to do it. Geoff decided that he would rewire a speaker backwards and turn it into a microphone, as they are essentially inverse of one another. He placed the speaker cone directly on the grill of Paul's bass amp. This created a new texture that emulated, to a degree, the bass sound on Motown records. It was used on both songs during the session, but was not used again. It also helped that Paul was playing a Rickenbacker as opposed to his Hofner violin bass. "Rain" was the first Beatles song to be released that included reversed overdubs. The guitar solo was explicitly planned to be reversed and played by George Harrison. The lead vocals were bounced to a separate tape, made a loop, and reversed, playing at the end of the track. 

Revolver was recorded onto a 4-track tape machine, significantly limiting the band on choice of instrumentation. Given the technology at the time, a concept called "bouncing" was created. Some instruments would be bounced or summed down to one track to make space for other instruments. They would take two tape machines and record the original takes to one track on the second machine using a fresh reel of tape. This would result in "generation loss" or a loss in quality each bounce. Thankfully, the sound quality at EMI was among the best in the world, so the generation loss was minimal. This same concept has been used since the 50s and was used extensively on all of The Beatles albums, whether they were 4-track or 8-track.

After the release of Revolver and a tour, The Beatles were back at EMI to record. Geoff was, of course, the permanent balance engineer for the group. They had decided that they would no longer play live, opening up a world of possibilities for their next record. Paul had come up with the idea for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band while on vacation after their final tour. He wanted to use the studio as an instrument, as Brian Wilson had on The Beach Boys Pet Sounds. The first track to be recorded was "Strawberry Fields Forever", taking 55 hours of studio time total to complete it. This set a prescedent for the rest of the record. They had a massive budget and no deadlines...why not take the time to make it perfect? I honestly won't go into everything the band did during Sgt. Pepper's as it's the longest chapter in the book. I'm making you get off your phone and read a chapter of something. Don't freak out. It was just as engaging as scrolling on Instagram Reels is. At least for me.

Again, the group recorded to a 4-track tape machine. Geoff explains many of the bounces they performed in order to get the sound they wanted on the record. The orchestral crescendo at the end of "A Day In The Life" was a combination of two takes summed to one track. Absolute chaos. The giant piano chord at the end was 4 or 5 different pianos played at the same time, again, summed to one track to create a massive sound.

After Sgt. Pepper's, the bands morale and camaraderie would begin to decline. Geoff was a third party narrator. An outsider watching the worlds most popular music group begin to tear itself apart in the studio. The failure of Magical Mystery Tour, both the album and the film of the same name, put a damper on the band's willingness to collaborate. The death of their manager, Brian Epstein, at 37 from a drug overdose had left the band to sort everything out for themselves, leading to the creation of Apple. Geoff saw the group become increasingly disillusioned with one another, the spats between former songwriting partners, and the loss of George Martin's authority as producer. This all came to a head during the recording of The Beatles, a.k.a The White Album. By this point, no one wanted to work with The Beatles. Everyone knew their sessions ran long into the night, rarely productive as increased drug usage numbed their minds. The in-fighting of the band made everything worse. Geoff explained that the album was given a white cover and no name because the group couldn't even agree on what to call it. John's wife, Yoko Ono, had also begun to sit in on every session, irritating the engineers, George Martin, and the rest of the band. Geoff decided very early into the recording of The White Album that he was done recording The Beatles. He told George Martin that he was finished and that someone else would have to take his place. The atmosphere had turned toxic. Paul's continuous strive for perfection did Geoff in. While recording "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", Paul wanted to do take after take to perfect the vocals. Geoff decided he'd had enough and essentially walked out of the session, ending his initial time with the band.

The Beatles recorded Let It Be prior to recording Abbey Road in 1969. The sessions were plagued from the beginning. Geoff did not work on Let It Be but was told that the sessions had been tumultuous by colleagues. Geoff was asked to engineer Abbey Road by George Martin and Paul, claiming that it would be like old times. No fighting. Under that one condition, Geoff returned to record the album. 

Geoff explained that Abbey Road was made easier because the band very often did not record in the same studio with one another. There was only 1 or 2 sessions that all 4 Beatles were present for. When they recorded the complex harmony for "Because", Geoff watched the band become whole again. They were exactly as they were when they first stepped through the doors at EMI. John, Paul, and George bunched together around one microphone with Ringo sitting close providing moral support. This would only be a small moment in the rather poisonous environment the band would be surrounded by. John made very few appearances on the record, besides his 3 songs and snippets used in the side-b medley. Geoff also mentioned that George Harrison had far more confidence during Abbey Road than he ever had in any other session. One of the only technical changes on the record was the new mixing desk that EMI had put in studio 2. It was a solid-state transistor desk not the tube desks that had been in all the studios prior to Abbey Road. The new desk gave the record a different sound. It was softer than those recorded on a tube desk. I assume that the difference had something to do with inputs pushing the tubes to break up, which isn't possible on a solid-state desk. The record has more clarity than other Beatles albums as a result.

After Abbey Road, Geoff would leave EMI and begin working at Apple, rebuilding their studio entirely. A fellow by the name of Magic Alex had built the previous studio before Geoff got involved. Geoff found that the studio was not properly built, based upon false promises and general idiocrasy spewed by Magic Alex. He left Apple around 1972 to rejoin George Martin at AIR, a studio he'd started after leaving EMI production. In 1973, Geoff and what was left of Wings went to Nigeria to record Band On The Run at an EMI studio in Lagos. He would continue to engineer many of Paul's solo albums.

Geoff definitely had a major bias towards Paul. Much of the criticism seen online focuses on this and the fact that he disliked George Harrison's guitar playing and songwriting. I could tell that he was not a huge fan of George, but there wasn't ever a time where I think he went too far. He had his fair share of compliments for him too. There's also some controversy regarding the accuracy of his story. Some of it is embellished a bit, mostly in the back and forth dialogue. But to me, the factual parts that really matter are the technological experimentation and how they recorded/engineered the albums. In fact, it was really inspiring. I'm a huge fan of the analog sound, but I'm particularly fascinated by the limitations of it and how it changes the discipline of recording an album as a whole. I just recently picked up a Tascam 244, the predecessor to Tascam's 4 track Portastudio. I find that recording to a DAW is too daunting a task. You have too many available tracks, virtual buttons and faders, and a lack of needed limits. There are some limits that are a necessity for me. As is written in the title, Geoff said that necessity was the mother of invention when they were recording Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's. They had to work with and around the technical limitations of the time to create works of art. And I mean WORKS OF ART. He won a Grammy for Sgt. Pepper's and Abbey Road for f**ks sake! Then why can't I apply the same limits to myself? I feel that they'll be necessary for my creative process. I want to work the way that they worked and chase the sound they chased. 

I seriously cannot recommend Geoff's book enough. I finished it in a week because of how much I loved it. If you're a fan of the technical aspects of music and recording, this is a must read. It's a testament to how creativity, and thereby invention, is critical when recording and engineering music. I've given you a brief synopsis--the parts that struck me the most. Read the book and you'll see for yourself.

"Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream." See you next week...

Cheers,

Jack