Recording "Cry Baby Cry", "Helter Skelter"

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On this day, The Beatles continued the work on “Cry Baby Cry” began on July 16, with more overdubs added onto take 12. Whistling and some sound effects were added, as well as some guitar contributions from Paul McCartney and George Harrison, and some tambourine from Ringo Starr.

“Cry Baby Cry” was considered done at the end of this 2.30 pm – 9.30 pm session. The last overdubs would be added two months later, on September 17.

During the second session of the day (from 10:30 pm to 3:30 pm), The Beatles also started recording “Helter Skelter“, which was at this stage a slow blues jam. They recorded three takes of the song. Take one lasted 10 minutes 40 seconds, take two lasted 12 minutes 35 seconds, and take three 27 minutes and 11 seconds !!

They recorded the long versions of Helter Skelter with live tape echo. Echo would normally be added at remix stage otherwise it can’t be altered, but this time they wanted it live. One of the versions developed into a jam which went into and then back out of a somewhat bizarre version of Blue Moon. The problem was, although we were recording them at 15 ips [inches per second] – which meant that we’d get roughly half an hour of time on the tape – the machine we were running for the tape echo was going at 30 ips, in other words 15 minutes… The Beatles were jamming away, completely oblivious to the world and we didn’t know what to do because they all had foldback in their headphones so that they could hear the echo. We knew that if we stopped it they would notice.

In the end we decided that the best thing to do was stop the tape echo machine and rewind it. So at one point the echo suddenly stopped and you could hear ‘bllllrrrrippppp’ as it was spooled back. This prompted Paul to put in some kind of clever vocal improvisation based around the chattering sound!

Brian Gibson, technical engineer – The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn

[This live tape echo] is an effect created by having a second machine recording with its fader open. When the tape reaches the playback head after the audio has been recorded onto it by the record-head, the reproduction of the audio is delayed. How much delay depends on how far apart the heads are and the speed of the tape. In this session, the four-track machine was running at 15 inches-per-second, while the machine for tape-reverb ran at 30 ips. This created a fairly short delay on Paul’s voice. The tape delay used at Sun Records in the 1950’s, heard on early Elvis Presley records, was usually longer because it came from a tape running at 7.5 ips.

From “The Beatles” Super Deluxe edition book (2018)

Take 2 was released, in a truncated form, on the “Anthology 3” album in 1996, and its entirety on the “The Beatles” boxset in 2018. From the Anthology 3 liner notes:

A couple of months before recording the White Album version of Helter Skelter, the Beatles taped three extended performances of this new Paul McCartney number, which – because of their length and unreleased status – have assumed legendary standing. Take 2, which runs in excess of 12 minutes, has been respectfully pruned to under five here, preserving the essential elements of what was, fundamentally, an impromptu jam. Following balance engineer Ken Scott’s “Take 2” announcement the band immediately begins the slow, insistent groove on top of which Paul adds his compelling vocal; the mix is mono to compensate for the track configuration on the original tape: all the instruments appeared on one track, the vocal was isolated on a second and the two remaining tracks were vacant.

The Beatles would turn “Helter Skelter” into the precursor of the heavy metal genre heard on “The Beatles” album, during two days of work, on September 9 and September 10.

From YouTube, November 1, 2018

Giles Martin talks us through the recording of Helter Skelter, from the first sessions of blues jams through to the revisited loud and heavy sessions and how it became the iconic finished master. Now remixed for the 2018 release of the White Album.

Last updated on September 11, 2021

Songs recorded

Staff

Musicians on "Helter Skelter"

Paul McCartney:

Vocals, Guitar

Ringo Starr:

Drums

John Lennon:

Bass

George Harrison:

Guitar

Musicians on "Cry Baby Cry"

Paul McCartney:

Guitar, Whistling

Ringo Starr:

Tambourine

John Lennon:

Whistling

George Harrison:

Guitar

Production staff

George Martin:

Producer

Ken Scott:

Engineer

Richard Lush:

Second Engineer