Recording "I'm Only Sleeping"

About

This was the seventeenth day of the recording sessions for the “Revolver” album. From 9:30 pm to 3 am, The Beatles continued the work on John Lennon’s “I’m Only Sleeping“.

On April 27, 1966, they had recorded the basic track, with take 11 considered the best. On April 29, they had considered doing a remake of the song but had finally added the lead vocals onto take 11. On this day, they decided to add lead guitar parts, played by George Harrison and Paul McCartney, with a backward effect.

There are two ways of recording backwards instruments, one easy, one difficult. The easy way is to play the instrument normally and then turn the tape around. The other involves working out the notation forwards, writing it out backwards, then playing it as the notation says, so that it comes out back to front. This way, although the sound still has the aural attraction of a backwards tape the instrument is actually playing a melodic run of notes.

The Beatles, of course, chose the latter alternative, hence this near six hour session for just the guitar overdub.

From The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn, 2004

[Paul McCartney] recalls that George was attempting to record the guitar solo for “I’m Only Sleeping” on May 5th when the tape operator inadvertently put the tape on ‘tails out,’ which created quite a stir when The Beatles heard it played back to them. “It played backwards,” Paul explains as if this was the first time they heard backward guitars. He continues: “and, ‘What the hell is going on?’ Those effects! Nobody knew how those sounded then. We said, ‘My God, that is fantastic! Can we do that for real?’ So George Martin, give him his due, being amenable to ideas like that, being quite experimental for who he was, a grown-up, said, ‘Yes. Sure, I think we can do that.’ So that was what we did and that was where we discovered backwards guitar. It was a beautiful solo actually. It sounds like something you couldn’t play.”

From beatlesebooks.com

Some days, of course, were better than others. There was one especially tedious session where we all wished we had never come up with the concept of backwards sounds. The song was “I’m Only Sleeping,” and George Harrison was determined to play a backwards guitar solo on it. At the best of times, he had trouble playing solos all the way through forwards, so it was with great trepidation that we all settled in for what turned out to be an interminable day of listening to the same eight bars played backwards over and over and over again. Phil McDonald told me later that his arms were sore for days afterward from having to repeatedly lift the heavy tape reels off the machine and turn them over. I can still picture George — and later, Paul, who joined him to play the backwards outro in a bizarre duet —hunched over his guitar for hours on end, headphones clamped on, brows furrowed in concentration. George Martin conducted them from the window of the control room, using grease pencil marks I had put on the back of the tape on each beat as a reference. To borrow Ringo’s phrase, that nine-hour session certainly was one hard day’s night!

Geoff Emerick – From “Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles“, 2006

Work on “I’m Only Sleeping” would continue on the following day.

Last updated on October 17, 2022

Songs recorded

Staff

Musicians on "I'm Only Sleeping"

Paul McCartney:

Lead guitar

George Harrison:

Lead guitar

Production staff

George Martin:

Producer

Geoff Emerick:

Engineer

Phil McDonald:

Second Engineer