On November 24, 1966, The Beatles
rolled into Abbey Road and began recording their eighth LP. They'd had
enough touring, churning out hits to shrieking girls who couldn't tell what
song they were playing, unable to hear themselves. Spurred on by their
experiments in sound on Revolver, the new album would comprise songs that could
be performed only in the studio. At this point in their career, and
unprecedentedly, they had unlimited use of the studio and no limit to the
budget. The project, of course would morph into Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band, Paul McCartney's grandiose plan to send out a fictitious touring band in
their place - on vinyl, instead of on the road.
The session
kicked off, as did virtually all Beatle sessions, with a Lennon song. In Almeria
in southern Spain he wrote "Strawberry Fields Forever." The song was
titled after a Salvation Army children's home, Strawberry Field (he added the s), in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton. The Victorian edifice was a
landmark from his boyhood and he had fond memories of attending the annual fĂȘte
there with his Aunt Mimi.
In Abbey Road's
Studio Two, Lennon strummed the somnolent, opening bars: "No one I think
is in my tree..." Geoff Emerick, at only 19 years of age, was the Beatles'
sound engineer. His inventive and nimble fingers had spliced tape and nudged
faders alongside the steady hand of the producer George Martin on Revolver and
would do so on most of The Beatles' subsequent recordings. "It was just a
great, great song, that was apparent from the first time John sang it for all
of us, playing an acoustic guitar," Emerick says. "Everyone was fired
up and full of creative ideas after the break. Most exciting was the idea that,
freed from the rigours of touring, they no longer had to worry about having to
play the new material live, so we literally could take the song in any
direction."
There was just
one hitch to the initial recordings: "John had been listening to his
acetate of 'Strawberry Fields'... and he decided he didn't like it,"
recalled Emerick. It needed to be "heavier."
Said George
Martin, "That November John came into the studio, and we went into our
regular routine. I sat on my high stool with Paul standing
beside me, and John stood in front of us with his acoustic guitar and sang the
song. It was absolutely lovely. Then we tried it with Ringo on drums, and Paul and George on
their bass and electric guitars. It started to get heavy - it wasn't the gentle
song that I had first heard. We ended up with a record which was very good
heavy rock. Still, that was apparently what John wanted, so I metaphorically
shrugged my shoulders and said: 'Well, that really wasn't what I'd thought of,
but it's OK.' And off John went.
"A week later [November 28, 1966] he came back and said:
'I've been thinking about it, too, George. Maybe what we did was wrong. I think
we ought to have another go at doing it. Up to that time we had never remade
anything. We reckoned that if it didn't work out first time, we shouldn't do it
again. But this time we did. 'Maybe we should do it differently,' said John.
'I'd like you to score something for it. Maybe we should have a bit of strings,
or brass or something.' Between us we worked out that I should write for cellos
and trumpets, together with the group. When I had finished we recorded it again,
and I felt that this time it was much better. Off went John again.
"A few days later he rang me up and said: 'I like that
one, I really do. But, you know, the other one's got something too,'
"'Yes, I know,' I said, 'they're both good. But aren't we
starting to split hairs?'
"Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word 'split', because
John's reply was: 'I like the beginning of the first one, and I like the end of
the second one. Why don't we just join them together?'
"'Well, there are only two things against it,' I said.
'One is that they're in different keys. The other is that they're in different
tempos.'
"'Yeah, but you can do something about it, I know. You can
fix it, George.'"
As December drew
to a close, the final master of the song was made. They worked late into the
evening, as Emerick, Lennon and McCartney skilfully edited the tapes together.
Such close collaboration, says Emerick, was unusual. "In general, Paul and
John didn't watch over my shoulder; they trusted George Martin and me to
translate their ideas into reality. For the most part, they stayed in the
studio working on the music and we stayed up in the control room working on the
sounds." Emerick discovered that by speeding up the playback of the first
take and slowing down that of the second, he could match them in both pitch and
tempo. The join was made exactly one minute in. "George [Martin] and I
decided to allow the second half to play all the way through at the slower speed,"
says Emerick. "Doing so gave John's voice a smoky, thick quality that
complemented the psychedelic lyric and swirling instrumentation."
By the new year,
EMI was demanding a single. With only three songs completed, the Beatles'
manager, Brian Epstein, made his selection. Originally "Strawberry Fields
Forever" was to be paired with "When I'm Sixty-Four", but fate -
or Martin - intervened and it was diverted to seven-inch as a double A-side
with "Penny Lane", in February 1967. Astonishingly, it was kept from
the No. 1 spot by Engelbert Humperdinck's cabaret styled, "Release
Me".
Dick Clark premiered the "Strawberry Fields"
video on American Bandstand in March 1967. The audience reaction
pinpointed a defined unease - not with what they heard but with what they
saw: the kids were caught off guard by The Beatles' appearance. Just
about all their comments referred to the mustaches and brand of
dress. Nothing was mentioned about the innovative sound. It
was just a year prior to the "Summer of Love," when these same teens
would most likely mirror the Beatles 'strange' look.
It was on this day in 1967 that my brother came into my room where undoubtedly The Monkees' "She" was blasting from my Voice of America phonograph. My mother wouldn't let him play 45s on the living room console. He said, "Listen to this instead," and he put on "Strawberry Fields." I was five years old and it blew my little brain (though when he left, I flipped it over to "Penny Lane" and listened to it a thousand times).
STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER
Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 24, 28-29 November; 8-9, 15, 21-22 December 1966
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Geoff Emerick
Recorded: 24, 28-29 November; 8-9, 15, 21-22 December 1966
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Geoff Emerick
Released: 17 February 1967 (UK), 13 February 1967 (US)
John Lennon: vocals, acoustic
guitar, piano, bongos, Mellotron
Paul McCartney: Mellotron, bass, electric guitar, timpani, bongos
George Harrison: electric guitar, svarmandal, timpani, maracas
Ringo Starr: drums, percussion
Mal Evans: tambourine
Neil Aspinall: guiro
Terry Doran: maracas
Tony Fisher, Greg Bowen, Derek Watkins, Stanley Roderick: trumpets
John Hall, Derek Simpson, Norman Jones: cellos
Paul McCartney: Mellotron, bass, electric guitar, timpani, bongos
George Harrison: electric guitar, svarmandal, timpani, maracas
Ringo Starr: drums, percussion
Mal Evans: tambourine
Neil Aspinall: guiro
Terry Doran: maracas
Tony Fisher, Greg Bowen, Derek Watkins, Stanley Roderick: trumpets
John Hall, Derek Simpson, Norman Jones: cellos