bennettk.com

ha… there’s some kid with long red hair behind me in the lobby of the hostel playing Stairway on someone’s acoustic guitar (after teasing us with a few licks from Smells Like Teen Spirit)

but I digress. I’m here today to a) pass the time until Em calls and I pass out for six hours until my shuttle takes me to the airport and 2) to talk about seeing Geoff Emerick speak the other day. (You’re welcome, Erik & Missy.)

Easily the most interesting and, as far as I know, the most popular event at the AES Amsterdam convention was the panel where Geoff Emerick, the Beatles’ recording engineer, spoke about the project he was commissioned to do by the BBC to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. For this project, Geoff was asked to recreate a number of tracks from the album using contemporary bands to perform the music and using only original gear from Abby Road studio that they used during the recording of the actual album– namely, their home-built four-track recording setup. No ProTools in sight. In fact, all the mixes he made were in mono (oh god, the kid’s playing Polyethylene Pam now) to be true to the original mix of the album.

Needless to say, this was quite a culture shock for the young bands that were brought on board: the Fray, Travis, Kaiser Chiefs, Stereophonics… I’m sure even Bryan Adams was out of practice from recording straight to tape without any digital studio magic.

So they aired segments that were filmed for the documentary– I’m pretty sure the more technical bits were outtakes but I’m not sure which of the not-too-technical bits made it into the BBC’s broadcast, which may or may not have already happened but there’s apparently already a torrent for it. Here’s who played and what they played and what Bennett thought:

- The first segment they showed was on the Kaiser Chiefs doing “Getting Better”. They certainly did a respectable job, and they took the route of adapting the song to be sort of their own as opposed to doing a spot-on Beatles cover. While I respect that approach, hearing those songs in any way other than the original (after having listened to the original at least hundreds of times) is weird. My favorite quote of possibly the whole show was by the Kaiser Chiefs’ lead singer equating everything about being a rock band to being like a ‘little brother’ to the Beatles– “everything’s pretty much hand-me-down after The Beatles.” (maybe it was better in context)

- next up– and I can’t believe I’m saying this– was Bryan Adams- yes, “Everything I Do, I Do It For You” Bryan Adams– and his version of the first Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. And, what do ya know, he did an excellent version, complete with spot-on harmonies with his band and some very good yelling to reach the high notes just like Paul did on the original recording. Well done, budday. (say that with a Canadian accent)

- aaaaand then… teh suck. This group I’d never heard of called Magic Numbers sang “She’s Leaving Home” and… completely butchered it. They brought in an excellent string section and conductor who completely nailed the string arrangement (which– something I never knew– was actually NOT done by George Martin but rather someone named Mike Leander because George was too busy at the time to do the arrangement). Then these singers piss over the whole thing. Magic Numbers is a group consisting of a guy and two girls, and Geoff had to comment on how they had a very tough time just teaching the two girls to be able to sing together in time and in pitch– something you’d think a vocal group would have taken care of. So the girls sang the harmony parts (“Sheeeee….. is leeeeavinnnggg…. hooooooome”) while their male counterpart did what he could to try to sing the lead. And he was awful. Sorry, guy, but even beyond the obvious need for a very very generous dosage of pitch correction, your performance was crap.

- Next up was The Fray, who I apparently have to really check out. They’re definitely young, and they’re definitely the hip thing that I don’t know about. They are also total Beatles geeks, which I really appreciated, and they took a stab at “Fixing a Hole”. They played the live keyboard and everything, and they did a spot-on instrumentation for the track. Their singer’s voice is nothing like Paul’s, and I guess I have to respect the fact that he tried to sing it with his own voice instead of aping Paul, but as I mentioned, it’s a bit jarring hearing those songs with anything but the original parts in them.

- I think Travis was my favorite of the clips they showed. They did Lovely Rita, and it started out with one of them (Travis?) rehearsing the acoustic guitar part in the stairwell in Abby Road and realizing the natural echo in the stairwell would sound really cool, so they recorded it that way. They totally nailed the harmonies (mind you, this is a four track recording– they had to sing the harmonies together, none of this sing-one-track-at-a-time-and-fix-it-then pro tools stuff) and, even cooler, they nailed the paper-on-comb parts (the kazoo sounding bits in the song were actually played with pieces of paper placed against combs). Very very cool.

- Last up in the presentation we saw was Stereophonics doing Sgt Pepper’s (Reprise). They also nailed it. Nothing more to say but well done.

Between these clips, the moderator would pause and ask Geoff a question or two. A lot of them focused on the gear they had to work with, like the REDD recording console they used at Abby Road until they got an 8-track desk. REDD = Recoording Equipment Development Department, and Lenny Kravitz owns one of the three REDD boards ever made. Geoff Emerick is a totally dyed-in-the-wool advocate of having the band play together and creating the energy and magic in a recording not in the editing room but on the recording studio floor. He said that the energy often wasn’t really there at the beginning of the sessions but by the end when the bands got the hang of the whole playing live & having only four tracks to work with thing the energy really built. A few more odds and ends from my notes from the session:
- The sweaters the Beatles wore in some Help! photo shoots? Geoff took one of them and that was the first time he put a dampener into the kick drum to achieve the Beatles drum sound. On a related note, the drummer from The Fray (the self-professed biggest Beatles geek of the band) said they had to use ‘real authentic British tea towels) on his drums to really get that Ringo damped drum sound.
- They used a Neumann U48 (which I guess isn’t made anymore) a LOT while recording (they showed a picture from the scene in Help! where they’re performing “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl”) because the mic has a great figure-8 pattern. I’m not very good with mic patterns, but visualize a microphone and then mentally draw an ’8′ over it. Each circle of the ’8′ represents an area where the mic picks up sound. This means one Beatle could stand on either side of the mic and sing and it would pick each up well.
- A very funny and nice Russian man got up during the Q&A and thanked Geoff Emerick for the lasting impact he’s had on the Russians. He then gave him a bottle of very fancy Russian vodka. Really.
- I never knew this but there’s a harmonium under the last chord of “A Day In The Life”.
- I get really really awkward about Q&A sessions. I always feel like I have to ask a question but I also always feel like I’ll fuck that question up. I’m pretty sure this dates back to a class trip in fifth grade where we saw a performance of The Nutcracker and there was a Q&A session afterwards. I got up to ask a question but when I was handed the microphone all I could stammer out was ‘…uh… I… forgot what I was going to ask.’ Everyone laughed me and I haven’t been the same ever since.

On that note, I hope you enjoyed my summary of seeing Geoff Emerick speak. If you haven’t read his book and you have any remote interest in either recording the Beatles, read the damn book. And I have to pack up the rest of my crap to get ready to head home.