- Album Songs recorded during this session officially appear on the Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane 7" Single.
- Studio:
- EMI Studios, Studio Two, Abbey Road
Timeline
More from year 1967
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About
The Beatles had so far spent five sessions recording Paul McCartney’s “Penny Lane”, on December 29 and December 30, 1966, and on January 4, January 5 and January 6, 1967.
The goal of the session on this day, which took place from 7 pm to 1:45 am, was to record wind and horn arrangements composed by George Martin.
In contrast to John, who had only the vaguest of ideas about how he wanted “Strawberry Fields Forever” to be recorded, Paul had very definite thoughts about the instrumentation he wanted on “Penny Lane.” George Martin was tasked with creating an arrangement for flutes, trumpets, piccolo, and fluegelhorn, to which were added oboes, cor anglais (English horn), and bowed double bass. Combined with Paul’s stellar bass playing and superb vocals (with backing from John and George), the track was beginning to sound full, polished, and quite finished to me.
Geoff Emerick – From “Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles“, 2006
Four flautists (Ray Swinfield, P Goody, Manny Winters and Dennis Walton) and two trumpeters (Leon Calvert and Freddy Clayton) were present. Three of those musicians also added overdubs for two piccolos parts and a flugelhorn, but it is not known who play played which instruments. These recordings were added onto track three of Take 9.
At the end of the session, two rough mono mixes were created, numbered 5 and 6.
Work on “Penny Lane” would continue the next day, January 10, 1967.
Last updated on February 6, 2023
Songs recorded
1.
2.
3.
Staff
Musicians on "Penny Lane"
- Ray Swinfield:
- Flute
- P Goody:
- Flute
- Manny Winters:
- Flute
- Dennis Walton:
- Flute
- Leon Calvert:
- Trumpet
- Freddy Clayton:
- Trumpet
- ?:
- Two piccolos, Flugelhorn
Production staff
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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