Monday, March 6, 1967
For The Beatles
Last updated on August 14, 2024
Recording "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"
Nov 24, 1966 - Apr 20, 1967 • Songs recorded during this session appear on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (UK Mono)
Recording studio: EMI Studios, Studio Two, Abbey Road
Session Mar 02, 1967 • Recording and mixing "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds"
Session Mar 06, 1967 • Recording and mixing "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"
Article Mar 07, 1967 • Peter Blake and Jann Haworth have supper at Paul's
AlbumSome of the songs worked on during this session were first released on the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (UK Mono)" LP
The Beatles recorded the basic track of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and vocals over a period of two days, on February 1 and 2, 1967. After a little over a month, on March 3, they returned to it to add some additional overdubs.
On this day, from 7 pm to 12:30 am, they completed the track by adding some sound effects, to give the impression of Sgt. Pepper’s band giving a concert.
They used several sources for the sound effects, including ambient sounds recorded during the orchestral overdub session for “A Day In The Life” on February 10, 1967. They also used sounds from “Volume 28: Audience Applause and Atmosphere, Royal Albert Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall” of the EMI Studios’ sound collection to suggest the audience murmuring at the start of the track. They also added applause and laughter sounds from “Volume 6: Applause and Laughter,” which were recorded during a live 1961 performance of the revue “Beyond The Fringe” at the Fortune Theatre in London by George Martin.
The title song is really a good old-fashioned rocker, but it pulls people into the album with its illusion of a live performance. By adding the sound effects of applause, tuning up, and so on, we tried to paint a tableau: of the curtain going up and seeing the band on the stage. Once again, we were trying to create the illusion of being able to shut one’s eyes and see a complete picture, created by music. Sgt. Pepper’s band really was up there blasting away for us. In fact, of all the songs on the album, the opening song was the nearest we got to a fully fledged live performance in the studio. It was a ‘live’ show in its own right, every time, even though only a privileged few of us ever saw it.
George Martin – From “With A Little Help From My Friends: The Making of Sgt. Pepper“, 1995
We had an audience laughing on the front of ‘Sgt. Pepper.’ It had always been one of my favorite moments; I’d listened to radio a lot as a kid, and there had always been a moment in a radio show, say with somebody like Tommy Cooper, where he would walk on stage and he’d say hello, and they’d laugh, and he’d tell a joke, and they’d laugh, and there would always be a moment in these things, because it was live radio, where he wouldn’t say anything, and the audience would laugh. And my imagination went wild whenever that happened. I thought, ‘What is it? Has he dropped his trousers? Did he do a funny look?’ I had to know what had made ‘em laugh. It fascinated me so much, and I’d always remembered that, so when we did ‘Pepper’ there’s one of those laughs for nothing in there, just where Billy Shears is being introduced they all just laugh, and you don’t know what the audience has laughed at.
Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997
We sat through hours of tapes, just giggling, it was just hilarious listening to an audience laugh. It was a great thing to do actually.
Paul McCartney
It was about three or four weeks before the final session when they started thinking about the running order of the songs. The concept of it being Sgt. Pepper’s band was already there when Paul said, ‘Wouldn’t it be good if we get the atmosphere? Get the band warming up, hear the audience settle into their seats, have the songs as different acts on the stage?’
Geoff Emerick – From “The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions” by Mark Lewisohn, 1988
We had to go to extreme lengths to convince people, using numerous sound-effects, that they were actually listening to a live show. It meant overdubbing that wonderful ‘hush’ of an audience before the performance starts, adding applause and laughter, and so on. So I used a recording I had made at a performance of “Beyond the Fringe’, a comedy revue I’d seen at London’s Fortune Theatre in 1961, starring Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller. A lot of the atmosphere was wild-tracked from that show, but the tuning up sounds themselves came from the ‘A Day In The Life’ orchestra recording, on 10 February.
George Martin – From “With A Little Help From My Friends: The Making of Sgt. Pepper“, 1995
The collection [of sound effects at EMI Studios] began in about 1956, when Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Michael Bentine and others used to make records at Abbey Road. We started to keep bits and pieces. If we did location recording somewhere we’d keep what outtakes were possible. Then I and people like Ken Townsend used to make recordings in our spare time.
Stuart Eltham – Balance engineer and curator of the sound effects collection – From “The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions” by Mark Lewisohn, 1988
Towards the end of the session, mono and stereo mixes of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” were made. Two attempts at creating the mono mix were done, labelled Remix Mono 2 and 3. RM3 was considered the best and released on the mono version of the album.
Eight stereo mixes were then made, labelled Remix Stereo 1 to 8. RM8 was considered the best and released on the stereo version of the album.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Recording • SI onto take 10
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Mixing • Mono mixing - Remix 2 from take 10
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Mixing • Mono mixing - Remix 3 from take 10
AlbumOfficially released on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (UK Mono)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Mixing • Stereo mixing - Remix 1 from take 10
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Mixing • Stereo mixing - Remix 2 from take 10
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Mixing • Stereo mixing - Remix 3 from take 10
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Mixing • Stereo mixing - Remix 4 from take 10
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Mixing • Stereo mixing - Remix 5 from take 10
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Mixing • Stereo mixing - Remix 6 from take 10
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Mixing • Stereo mixing - Remix 7 from take 10
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Mixing • Stereo mixing - Remix 8 from take 10
AlbumOfficially released on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (UK Stereo)
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!
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.
If we modestly consider the Paul McCartney Project to be the premier online resource for all things Paul McCartney, it is undeniable that The Beatles Bible stands as the definitive online site dedicated to the Beatles. While there is some overlap in content between the two sites, they differ significantly in their approach.
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