Flying

As the Beatles began recording songs for the soundtrack of their film for television Magical Mystery Tour, they knew that they would also need some instrumental music for sections of the program.  In the past, such music had been provided by George Martin (A Hard Day's Night) and Ken Thorne (Help!), but for this particular project the boys had taken it upon themselves to control every aspect of the production.

So, on September 8th, 1967, they met at Abbey Road Studios and laid down the basic track for a tune called Aerial Tour Instrumental.  It would become the first song credited to all four Beatles, though Paul McCartney claims that he wrote the simple theme.  The basic track had Paul, George and Ringo on their usual instruments and John playing chords on an organ.  By take six, they had arrived at the best, so overdubbing began.  George added a mellow countermelody on guitar during the second half of each verse as John played Paul's simple theme on the Mellotron for the second and third verses.  The third verse of this instrumental also incongruously included the voices of all four Beatles singing the melody in unison as a simple "la la la."  According to engineer Geoff Emerick in his book Here, There and Everywhere, it was Paul's idea to have Ringo's voice most prominent in the mix, thus sounding unlike any previous blend of the Beatles' voices.

All of this came in at a little under two minutes, but a jazz saxophone recording found among the Mellotron's many sound effects was added, as well as several minutes of doodling on the Mellotron, some of it recorded backwards.  The group returned to the track on September 28th, adding a bit more Mellotron, guitar and maracas.  John and Ringo then overdubbed a number of tape loops over the swirling Mellotron section of the piece, stretching it out to somewhere between nine and eleven minutes in length.

Once it came to the mono mixing stage, however, the song was cut back to just the three verses and a tiny fraction of the effects section, omitting the saxophone tape entirely and coming in at a modest 2'16".  By the time that the stereo mix was done in November, the song was now known by the title Flying.

It is played early on in the film as the patrons look out the right side of the bus and the countryside changes colors in classic psychedelic fashion.  When the BBC broadcast the film in black and white on Boxing Day of 1967, this sequence was, of course, quite unremarkable to the audience.  Some of the film used, by the way, came from none other than Stanley Kubrick.  Magical Mystery Tour producer Denis O'Dell somehow got the legendary director to give him footage that was shot for either Dr. Strangelove or 2001: A Space Odyssey according to various sources.

The original double-EP of Magical Mystery Tour released in the UK credits the song to Harrison/Lennon/McCartney/Starkey.  My copy of the American LP lists the credit as Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starr.

Fixing a Hole

This McCartney composition was partly inspired by a farmhouse in Scotland, which Paul had purchased at the suggestion of his long-time girlfriend Jane Asher in 1966.  The farmhouse had not only a leaky roof, but also a dreary wall that Paul, Jane and another friend took the time to decorate with colored pens that Paul bought in the nearby village.  From these unlikely inspirations came a song about states of mind akin to Lennon's Rain.

A little help in the writing of the song came not from Lennon, however, but from the band's assistant Mal Evans.  According to Mal in an interview shortly before his death in 1976, Paul asked him if he would be okay with not getting credit as long as some royalties came his way.  The ever-loyal roadie agreed.

The recording is notable for being the first taped by the Beatles at a studio not owned by their label's parent company EMI.  All three studios at Abbey Road were booked on the evening of February 9th, 1967, so the boys reported to Regent Sound Studios elsewhere in London.  As an employee of EMI, the group's usual engineer Geoff Emerick could not attend this session, but their producer George Martin, now a freelancer, could.  Regent provided the services of one Adrian Ibbetson as engineer for the evening.

Paul led the band through a series of rehearsals, choosing to sing a guide vocal (unusual during the Sgt. Pepper sessions) while playing a harpsichord.  With Paul at the keyboard, John picked up the bass guitar, leaving Ringo on drums and George limited to maracas.  The first proper take had this unusual lineup.  This take was then bounced down onto another four-track machine and called take two.  Another take, called take three, featured the same lineup.  This take is now available on the 50th anniversary edition of the album.  The tempo feels slightly faster than the version we all know, and Paul plays a few different fills on harpsichord as well as singing a number of simple variations in his lead vocal.

They did not return to the song until February 21st at Abbey Road Studios with Geoff Emerick back in the engineer's seat.  They chose to record a new take one, intending to superimpose it onto take three of the Regent tapes.  This idea was abandoned and they went back to Regent's take two (which was actually identical to Regent's take one, remember), with Paul overdubbing his vocal here and there, and supplementing John's bass line a bit as George Martin did the same thing to Paul's harpsichord part.  John and George also supplied some backing vocals, but the most important addition was George's superb lead guitar line.  While it contains some of his best playing on the album, it does have the feel of being rather precisely constructed by Paul.

Though Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band famously took months to record, Fixing a Hole stands out as being one of the simplest and most straightforward pieces on the album.  Yet it fits in seamlessly alongside the much more complex recordings, more for its subject matter than for its not-very-psychedelic instrumentation (the old-fashioned harpsichord is the only "exotic" instrument present on the track).

Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby

Like Dizzy Miss Lizzy, many critics have dismissed this song as a weak choice to close out an album, yet the Beatles themselves had a great fondness for their cover of this Carl Perkins rockabilly number, and there are quite a few versions of it available from various stages of the group's career.

The Beatles were familiar with the song, but did not add it to their live act until their stints in Hamburg in the early 60's, when the need to fill the countless hours of performing caused them to play anything and everything they knew.  It immediately became a showcase number for George both as a singer and guitarist.  On the brink of stardom during their visit to West Germany in December of 1962, they played the song one last time for those local fans, as you can hear on any of the multiple releases of the Star Club tapes.  They were notoriously loose and goofy on this farewell night.  After playing the song at a frantic pace, Ringo, still somewhat new to the group at this time, pushes them through no less than four false endings!

As their fame increased, their shows became much shorter, and George found himself limited to one vocal spotlight per performance.  His latest album track - such as Do You Want to Know a Secret or Roll Over Beethoven - became his moment at the microphone.  Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby was still played on occasion on BBC Radio programs like Pop Go the Beatles, but that was about it...

...until the evening of October 18th, 1964.  In an effort to finish work on their fourth album, the boys stayed in the studio all day, churning out eight titles, including the A-side of their next single.  They turned to familiar tunes from their old stage act for the final three songs, rapidly recording them in only a few takes.  Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby required just one take, with a bit of double-tracking on George's lead vocal and a tambourine overdub.

Producer George Martin selected this number to close out the album Beatles for Sale.  Perhaps the tempo of this recording, a bit slower than any live performance, accounts for the disdain many have for it.  It does lack the ferocity of previous album-closers like Twist and Shout or Money (That's What I Want), plus it has a ridiculous amount of echo, making the track sound as if it is being played in an empty, cavernous hall, but Capitol Records in the US agreed with Martin's assessment of the song, placing it at the end of the album Beatles '65.  The American label even included it on the rare EP 4 by the Beatles.

The song soon returned to the group's live act, first surfacing on a November 17th recording for the BBC Radio program Top Gear.  This same recording was reused a week later at a November 25th session for another BBC Radio offering, Saturday Club.  This performance, which is very close to the album version recorded a month earlier, can be heard on the 1994 release Live at the BBC.

It remained George's spotlight number for the 38 performances of Another Beatles Christmas Show from December 24th to January 16th in London, as well as the European and American tours of 1965. The two shows on June 20th, 1965 in Paris were recorded and broadcast, thus providing material for bootleggers.  The band's pace is brisk and George is in fine form both vocally and instrumentally on one such bootleg tape in my possession.

For me, the most remarkable performance of the song is from the historic Shea Stadium concert on August 15th, 1965.  The sonic wash of screaming fans permeates the recording as the Beatles play on, sounding heavier than they ever had up to this point in their career.  The 1996 release Anthology 2 allowed us to hear this for the first time, perfectly capturing the awesome essence of Beatlemania at its peak.

And we have yet another version of the song on this year's Live at the Hollywood Bowl release, which now includes this song from the group's August 30th, 1965 appearance at that venue.  By the time of the December '65 British tour, however, the song was finally retired from the set list and replaced by George's Rubber Soul composition If I Needed Someone.

Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

On June 26th, 1968, this became one of the first songs to be worked on for the sprawling double album The Beatles.  It was also the first written in reference to Lennon's blossoming romance with Yoko Ono, who was now a permanent fixture by John's side, even in the studio.  While the group had certainly had a number of visitors attend sessions over the years, this was unprecedented, resulting in a considerable amount of discomfort and tension that would not dissipate during the remainder of the band's career.

Whenever the tapes started rolling, however, that tension was set aside as the four individuals who comprised the world's most famous band came together and functioned superbly as a unit, as they always had.  On that first night, they had the luxury of simply rehearsing the number innumerable times, tightening the arrangement over the course of several hours.  They returned the following evening and began a series of proper takes, with John and George on electric guitars, Ringo on drums and Paul alternating between a fireman's bell and a chocahlo.  The previous night's rehearsal paid off, as they required only six takes before arriving at the best basic track.

In his book The Beatles: Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn reports that the song was 3'07" in duration at this point.  Perhaps the most extreme case of the Beatles speeding up a track then occurred as a reduction mix made the track come in at 2'29".  And an additional 5 seconds would eventually be lopped off by a later reduction mix!  This accounts for the furious pace of the finished product as it appears on the album.

July 1st saw Paul overdub his bass line and John record his lead vocal for the first time.  He decided to re-record his vocal on July 23rd.  He and Paul then overdubbed layers of backing vocals, especially near the end of the song with the multiple calling out of the simple phrase "come on."

This raucous number is little-known and often overlooked (how on earth was it not included on the Rock and Roll Music compilation?), yet it stands as one of the hardest-rocking tracks the group ever recorded.  And it remains a testament to a claim that Ringo has made many times over the years - though the "White Album" sessions were often contentious, the Beatles did get back to being a band on quite a few occasions during that tumultuous period.

Every Little Thing

The album Beatles for Sale was not the rush job that many would have us believe.  A few songs were recorded in August of 1964 and, when the group returned to the studio on September 29th, there was no sense of urgency yet.  They spent a good portion of that day working on two songs, Every Little Thing being one of them, that would be leisurely (by 1964 standards) reworked and completed in later sessions.

The band laid down four takes of the basic track on the afternoon of the 29th.  While Paul and Ringo played their usual instruments, John and George switched roles, with George on acoustic rhythm guitar and John on electric lead guitar.  And, though the composition is primarily Paul's, John and Paul share the lead vocal with John's voice actually more prominent in the mix.  At this stage, John reportedly played many more guitar phrases throughout the song than on the final version, and Paul attempted some different vocal harmonies, as well.

They returned to the song for the entire afternoon session on the 30th, recording five more takes before they were satisfied.  John refrained from playing his guitar on these takes as he had done the day before, instead overdubbing it onto take nine.  Overdubbing also included Paul adding a secondary bass part, as well as some occasional low notes on piano and, most intriguingly, Ringo pounding out a few dramatic accents on timpani during each chorus.

I consider this tune to be one of the group's hidden gems.  While it is buried on the middle of side two on Beatles for Sale, it stands out a bit more as the final track on the American compilation album Beatles VI.  Though the lyrics are simplistic for this stage of McCartney's development as a songwriter, the melody is catchy, the performance by the band is crisp and the fadeout alone is sheer delight.

They never played the song live, but George referenced it during the Get Back sessions in January of 1969 when talking about oldies ("but goldies," someone mutters) that the group should consider for the grand upcoming concert that was to conclude that project.  "I'll tell you which is a good one," he said.  He then played John's opening guitar passage before he and Paul sang a snippet of the song.  This brief exchange can be heard on the bonus Fly on the Wall disc from the 2003 release Let It Be...Naked.