The Beatles, the ’60s Sound Revolution, the Hall of Fame

Geoff Emerick

The most revered and respected pop music of all time is, indisputably, that made by the Beatles. Almost forty years after they were recorded, their words and melodies are still heard all over the world. Even today, producers and musicians speak of Beatles’ records with awe as they strive for some modicum of the artistic and commercial success achieved by those records. And while many much more recent albums have quickly become dated, the Beatles’ records still sound fresh, current, and desirable—as evidenced recently by the chart-topping success of Beatles 1, 2000’s Apple/Capitol Records compilation.

Now, think of the greatest Beatles’ works: “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Penny Lane,” Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road. Behind the console for all these milestones was Geoff Emerick, an engineer who truly, has never been accorded his due respect. The superb songwriting of Lennon and McCartney and the brilliant polish of producer George Martin were, of course, essential elements, but without the courage, vision, and determination of Emerick, these recordings would have been lesser accomplishments. He pushed the boundaries of recording, doing things that others had either never thought of, or never dared to try. He challenged hidebound traditions and rigid administrators, and created perfect sounds, along the way developing groundbreaking techniques that today’s engineers invariably take for granted.

It’s almost impossible for those currently in the field, who work in a world with limitless access to specialized equipment—and limitless numbers of tracks—to imagine the skill and creativity required to make those records. Emerick was a maverick—one who saw music in colors and engineering as artistic expression. Not only was he unafraid of new ideas, he embraced them. Simply put, Geoff Emerick brought record engineering into the modern era.

Since those long ago Beatles’ days, Emerick has amassed, as both a producer and an engineer, a lengthy roster of credits. He’s worked with the Zombies, Badfinger, Supertramp, Tim Hardin, America, Robin Trower, Jeff Beck, and Split Enz, as well as on numerous albums for Elvis Costello, including Costello’s classic Imperial Bedroom and 1996’s All This Useless Beauty. He has also continued to work with Paul McCartney, and with Wings, on records including Band on the Run, Tug of War, and Flaming Pie. But in our interview the summer before Emerick’s 2002 TEC Hall of Fame induction, the talk was mostly Beatles. I met with him one sunny afternoon as he was taking a break from production rehearsals with a new young band he was readying to record at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles.

I guess my first question has to be, “Why you?” How did it happen that you became the Beatles’ engineer at that particular place and time?

Well, I’d started at EMI as a second engineer when I was 16, right out of school. It was, actually, the same month that the Beatles went in for their artist test. I used to get on well with George Martin, so when I was an assistant, I used to do most of his sessions. Norman Smith, who was the Beatles’ original engineer, used to like working with me as well, and we had a great relationship. He taught me some priceless fundamentals that I’ve never forgotten.

From assisting, I was promoted to mastering—disc cutting. The reason for that was, in those days, to know mastering was to know what you could get on the tape that could actually be transferred to the master. Because, of course, if you overdid the bass end, or didn’t get the phasing right when you were recording, there were problems.

Learning mastering was a part of your training.

Yes. At that time, you were never going to be a recording engineer and producer until you were forty years old. That was just the system. When the Beatles started, of course, things began to move at a different pace. And then Norman, their engineer, wanted to become a producer. He also wanted to carry on engineering the Beatles, but EMI said, “No way.” So suddenly, the situation arose where Norman had to be replaced. EMI knew that was coming, and as I’d been second engineer on some of the Beatles’ sessions, and got on well with George Martin, it was decided to promote me to engineer.

I was not quite twenty, so everyone was aghast at this. Because, you see, in the studios, there were the second engineers and the tape ops who were youngsters, and there were the engineers, who were all over forty. The age bracket of twenty to forty were all in mastering, away from the recording scene. But EMI knew that Norman was going to leave, and they had to have someone, so I was made an engineer.

How did that go?

Well, I was terrified. For one thing, multitrack wasn’t on every session at that time. You had to record straight to stereo—huge orchestras and a singer—the whole bit. And the mixing console had only eight ins and four outs, so you had to know what you were doing. Because no one’s going to spend a fortune putting an orchestra in the studio with you, if you don’t. The responsibility was absolutely enormous. I was doing Matt Munro, Cilla Black, Manfred Mann—all EMI artists. My first hit was Manfred Mann’s “Pretty Flamingo.” And then George Martin approached the Beatles and said, “Here’s the situation: Norman’s going to leave, and I’m going to suggest that Geoff take over.” And I was called up to the manager’s office.

You hadn’t realized what was in the works.

I was shocked at being asked to do it. I was playing this little game in my head—eenie meenie, back and forth. If it stopped on this, I was going to do it; if it stopped on that, I wasn’t. And it stopped on yes.

At the time you got the position with the Beatles, had you already shown signs of being a bit of a maverick?

Really, it all started when I was mastering. We used to get American records in and wonder how they got the sounds they did. We, of course, were limited to EMI equipment. There was no outside equipment allowed in, apart from a few Altec compressors. If they did bring a piece of equipment in, they took it apart and rebuilt it . . . just to find out how it worked, I guess.

So we were listening to these records, like the ones from Tamla, and there was all that extra bass end. And we were always talking about how did they get that sound? Now, a lot of it was the musicianship, of course. But there was no one to tell us these things; we had to find out by our own methods.

It was the amount of bass and also the level—the loudness—that fascinated us. You see, there were certain things that we weren’t allowed to do. There were limitations on how much bass we were allowed to have on, because in the early days, there had been one particular Beatles single that was mastered and it jumped [skipped]. They’d pressed about a quarter million of them, and they had to redo them all. After that, for any Beatles single that was cut in England, everyone was instructed to cut all bass below 50 cycles.

You just had to roll it all off.

Yes, and it also had to be 2 to 2 1/2 dBs quieter than any other records. It was ridiculous, but they were selling in those huge quantities, which, of course, had never been done before, and they were afraid the records would jump. Later on, when I was the Beatles’ engineer, we had a discussion—which became quite heated—with the manager, myself, the Beatles, and George Martin, and it was decided that we would be allowed to cut them louder.

The first record you did with the Beatles was Revolver.

Yes, and “Tomorrow Never Knows” was the first track.

Of course. They would start with what was to become the most complicated track. Can you describe a bit of what the equipment was like?

The 4-track was remote, in those days; it was never in the control room. We had two 4-track rooms where the tape machines were, and there were three studios, so they had to patch them through. But because of the difficulties of recording “Tomorrow Never Knows” with the backwards things and so forth, where you had to communicate with an intercom to tell the tape op to drop in— which was ridiculous—we requested that the 4-track machines be brought into the control room.

Well, that was just a “no go” area, but eventually they relented. And they sent out six technical staff from the main EMI technical department to supervise the moving of the 4-track machine up the corridor.

There goes the azimuth!

Yes, they were sure the azimuth would go out, it wasn’t going to work, all sorts of things . . . really, it was unbelievable. And the sheer look of horror on their faces as it was lifted over the door threshold!