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- Album Songs recorded during this session officially appear on the Yellow Submarine (Mono) LP.
- Studio:
- De Lane Lea Music Recording Studios, London, UK
Timeline
More from year 1967
Some songs from this session appear on:
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About
On May 25, 1967, The Beatles began recording “It’s All Too Much,” a song written by George Harrison, which would be used for the soundtrack of the “Yellow Submarine” animation film, at the independent De Lane Lea Studios.
On this day, the group returned to De Lane Lea Studios, to resume work on the track. As for the first session at De Lane Lea Studios, the studio’s in-house engineer Dave Siddle and tape operator Mike Weighell managed the session as George Martin was not present on this occasion.
The session started with two reduction mixes of Take 4, all instruments being merged on a single track. In an EMI Studios session, these mixes would have been designated as Takes 5 and 6 after the four backing track takes, but they were labelled Takes 1 and 2 for this session.
Take 2 was deemed the best and received overdubs. George provided double-tracked lead vocals, while John Lennon and Paul McCartney contributed double-tracked backing vocals and handclaps. Some unknown Beatles then added percussion with tambourine, maracas and cowbell.
The song was still eight minutes long at this point, with a lengthy instrumental section that permitted ad-libbed vocalizations by all. The Beatles chanted “too much” in various ways, which eventually gave way to “tuba, tuba” and then “Cuba, Cuba” before the song’s conclusion. During this time, George recited “with your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue” twice, a line from The Mersey’s hit song “Sorrow“.
Work on “It’s All Too Much” continued on June 2.
Last updated on April 18, 2023
Songs recorded
1.
2.
3.
Staff
Musicians on "It's All Too Much"
- Paul McCartney:
- Backing vocals, Handclaps
- John Lennon:
- Backing vocals, Handclaps
- George Harrison:
- Lead vocals
- ?:
- Tambourine, Cowbell, Maracas
Production staff
- Dave Siddle:
- Engineer
- Mike Weighell:
- 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!
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 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.
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