Mixing "A Day In The Life"

Monday, January 30, 1967 • For The Beatles

Album Songs recorded during this session officially appear on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (50th anniversary boxset) Official album.
Studio:
EMI Studios, Studio Three, Abbey Road

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About

The Beatles began recording “A Day In The Life” on January 19 and January 20, 1967.

On this day, between 7 pm and 8:30 pm, a rough mono mix of the track was made for demo purposes. In 1996, a part of this mix was used in Anthology 2 to create a composite of Takes 1, 2 and 6. The full mix was released on the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (50th anniversary boxset)” in 2017.

Takes 1, 2 and take 6 overdub. Assembled expressly for the Anthology, this composite embraces the best of the unreleased outtakes of A Day In The Life, plotting the making of the song that brought such a monumental close to the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. […] After the counting, the track slips into mono to illustrate a guide vocal from Paul, taped on 20 January as an overdub on to Take 6 but then superseded by a better recording of the passage on 3 February. The original survives, however, thanks to a mono mix done in the interim, on 30 January. […]

From the Anthology 2 liner notes

The Beatles didn’t attend this session, nor did they need to. They were instead filming the promotional video for “Strawberry Fields Forever” at Knole Park, Sevenoaks.

Last updated on February 16, 2023

Songs recorded


1.

A Day In The Life

Written by Lennon - McCartney

Mixing • Mono mixing - Remix 1 from take 6

Album Officially released on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (50th anniversary boxset)

Staff

Production staff

George Martin:
Producer
Geoff Emerick:
Engineer
Richard Lush:
Second engineer

Going further


The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions • Mark Lewisohn

The definitive guide for every Beatles recording sessions from 1962 to 1970.

We owe a lot to Mark Lewisohn for the creation of those session pages, but you really have to buy this book to get all the details - the number of takes for each song, who contributed what, a description of the context and how each session went, various photographies... And an introductory interview with Paul McCartney!

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The Beatles Recording Reference Manual: Volume 3: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band through Magical Mystery Tour (late 1966-1967)

The third book of this critically - acclaimed series, nominated for the 2019 Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) award for Excellence In Historical Recorded Sound, "The Beatles Recording Reference Manual: Volume 3: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band through Magical Mystery Tour (late 1966-1967)" captures the band's most innovative era in its entirety. From the first take to the final remix, discover the making of the greatest recordings of all time. Through extensive, fully-documented research, these books fill an important gap left by all other Beatles books published to date and provide a unique view into the recordings of the world's most successful pop music act.

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If we like to think, in all modesty, that the Paul McCartney Project is the best online ressource for everything Paul McCartney, The Beatles Bible is for sure the definitive online site focused on the Beatles. There are obviously some overlap in terms of content between the two sites, but also some major differences in terms of approach.

Read more on The Beatles Bible

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