By Mark Beech - Forbes Producer Chris Thomas and engineer Ken Scott have been speaking about the double LP, which has the formal eponymous title of The Beatles.
Scott and Thomas recall John Lennon’s surprising choice of favorite songs; why Ringo Starr walked out at one point; how George Harrison came into his own and stood up to George Martin.
Thomas, now 71, recals: " “I came back at the beginning of September. There was a little handwritten note from George Martin on my desk saying ‘I hope you had a nice holiday, I am off on mine now. Make yourself available to The Beatles. Neil and Mal know you’re coming down.’”
(Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans were both assistants to the band.) “Talk about thrown in the deep end!” says Thomas. In the first session, he nervously interrupted the group a few times to point out various mistakes and won them over with his production skills.
George Harrison had demoed his anti-capitalistic rant “Piggies” on acoustic guitar. Thomas, looking for a different instrument, found a harpsichord being used for a classical recording in Abbey Road’s Studio No. 1: “George was playing it and suddenly started on another song. I said, ‘that’s fantastic, it is much better than ‘Piggies.’’ It was ‘Something.’ It was the first time George had played it to anybody and I said: ‘It’s great, we should really do that.’ He said ‘Do you really think it is good? I will give it to Jackie Lomax.
“There was tension at times between George Martin and the band. We were in No. 2 mixing ‘Savoy Truffle.’ George Harrison wanted it very high-endy, it was almost painful. We recorded the saxes and he wanted them distorted. George Martin came in halfway through and said ‘’Don’t you think it’s a bit toppy?’ and George Harrison turned around and said ‘Yeah, and that’s the way I want it.’ George Martin just went out.”
Thomas recalls “we did seven songs in a couple of weeks and it just became a factory. There was one day when I was with George in No. 2 working on ‘Savoy Truffle.’ George Martin was in No. 3 with John and Yoko chopping up bits of ‘Revolution 9,’ and then Paul suddenly appeared and said ‘listen to what I have done’ and he had recorded ‘Why Don’t We Do It in the Road’ and mixed it.”
“At about 9 a.m. Ken walked in and says ‘Chris, can you help me? Paul wants to do a new stereo remix of ‘Helter Skelter’ again and he has fallen asleep on the desk.’ So we remixed it.”
Scott recalls that Paul ordered him to fade out the stereo mix, then fade back up and down and with a final blast before Starr’s line “I’ve got blisters on my fingers.” Scott explained: “Paul said ‘we have had lots of letters from fans about the differences between mono and stereo mixes so we thought if we made lots of differences we would sell twice as many records.’”
