Recording and mixing "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"

About

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.

Last updated on February 7, 2024

Songs recorded

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