Mixing "All You Need Is Love"

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The day after the “Our World” satellite broadcast of The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love“, the song was mixed for its upcoming release as a single.

The mixing process involved nine attempts, designated as Remix Mono 2 through 10, but only five were finished. After careful consideration, RM4 was selected as the best mix and became the mono version released to the public.

Our plan — ambitious, if not a little crazy — was to try to get the final mix of “All You Need Is Love” shipped off to the factory that very night [May 25] so that the record could be in the shops before the end of the week. […] but we were all knackered from the events of the day, so George Martin made the decision to postpone the mix for twenty-four hours so we could all come in fresh. Rejuvenated and refreshed by a good night’s sleep, we were able to complete the mix in short order, and the tape was then transferred to vinyl by Ken Scott, who was apprenticing as a mastering engineer. The single still made it out by the end of the week, only it hit the shelves on a Friday instead of a Thursday, something that didn’t seem to hurt sales. “All You Need Is Love” shot straight to number one and remained atop the charts for several weeks.

Geoff Emerick – From “Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles“, 2006

It duly went to number one. Unfortunately, there was a sting in the tail for me. I was being paid the princely sum of fifteen pounds for arranging the music and writing the bits for the beginning and ending, and I had chosen the tunes for the mixture in the belief that they were all out of copyright. More fool me. It turned out that although ‘In the Mood’ itself was out of copyright, the Glenn Miller arrangement of it was not. The little bit I had chosen was the arrangement, not the tune itself, and as a result EMI were asked by its owners for a royalty.

The Beatles, quite rightly I suppose, said: ‘We’re not going to give up our copyright royalty.’ So Ken East, the man who had by then become managing director of EMI Records, came to me and said: ‘Look here, George, you did the arrangement on this. They’re expecting money for it.’ ‘You must be out of your mind,’ I said. ‘I get fifteen pounds for doing that arrangement. Do you mean to say I’ve got to pay blasted copyright out of my fifteen quid?’

His answer was short and unequivocal. ‘Yes.’

In the end, of course, EMI had to settle with the publishers.

George Martin – From “All You Need Is Ears“, 1979

Last updated on April 1, 2023

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