Peter Willison

Peter Willison was a cellist, who played on The Beatles’ track “Blue Jay Way” and on Paul McCartney’s solo album “Tug Of War”.

The fixer who arranged string players for lots of Beatles sessions was Sid Sax. He died in 2005. [… Peter Willison, a cellist my dad shared a flat with in St John’s Wood in the mid-to-late 1960s, remembers returning home at about 10 p.m. on 6 October 1967 after a concert at the Albert Hall and getting a call from Sax, telling him to drive to Studio Two at Abbey Road, immediately, for an all-night recording of what turned out to be ‘Blue Jay Way’. Peter arrived at the studio still wearing tails. At 27, he was about the same age as the Beatles. ‘They didn’t really have a clue what they were doing,’ Peter told me. ‘There were no other musicians. There was no music stand and no music. George Martin asked me to listen to the track and just play along. We experimented a bit. Finally at 4 a.m. we were finished.’ Could he remember my dad playing on any Beatles tracks? He couldn’t.

From Adam Smyth | A Day in the Life · LRB 24 December 2020

Recording sessions Peter Willison participated in

Albums, EPs & singles which Peter Willison contributed to