All of us have an agenda whether we want to admit it or not. No one is objective 100% of the time.
I read “Here, There, and Everywhere” when it was published close to 20 years ago, and it’s still on my shelf. I enjoyed the book, but it was quite clear that Geoff was not fond of George.
Yeah agreed, no one is 100% objective.
I haven’t read it in a while but I thought it was pretty interesting in terms of hearing about the recording sessions. For example, really enjoyed reading about the Revolver sessions and Band on the Run.
Emerick def had a front row seat and was instrumental in helping them get the sounds they had in their heads onto tape.
(For example sending John’s voice thru a leslie speaker for tomorrow never knows and using a big speaker as a microphone to record Paul’s bass on Paperback Writer).
that of the 4, he was the least charming and amicable ( mayybe true, Harrison seems grumpy and unhappy so many times)
and that he wasnt a really GOOD guitar player until around the White album, many Beatles songs having to be repeated time and again while recording to capture his guitar playing without mistakes.
"Fumble-fingered." "Not four men, but the John-and-Paul show." G. Harrison comes off as resentful and second-rate in his telling, and Ringo as a non-entity! BUT: Emerick says G. Harrison grew to be quite a good producer.
It’s pretty much Geoff Emerick -> Paul and Ken Scott -> George and Phil Spector -> John.
But back then, lots of musicians knew very little about recording and you had to describe what you wanted.
Jimmy Page knew a lot about recording from being a session player.
Nowadays musicians sometimes know an awful lot because there’s so much info.available.
I got to work with him for a week or two on some Paul stuff in studio.
I get what you mean, but he’s really just kinda British like that. Definitely no ego.
As a huge fan, I’d ask him about what it was like recording horns for Sgt Pepper or something and he was just like “eh I just put some mics up no biggie”.
He was cool as long as you had your shit together.
Unrelated but I remember reading about how he got his job at Abbey Road once. He literally saw an ad in a newspaper and just showed up at the studio and started working. And then he just happened to start engineering sessions for the greatest band in the world.
He was very talented and hard working but man. No interviews, no applications, no references, no audio school degree. Man the 60s were something else
I mean, he was working there for four years before he was engineering them. He started working as an assistant and gained knowledge over several years and then when Norman Smith moved to other things, he replaced him. It's more like...he learned on the job and then his boss gave him a promotion.
That being said, I wish I could just walk into a recording studio like that and just get a job, I love doing that work!
Regardless of your opinion in regards to the beatles, he sounds like a good guy. More often than not, guys that are that humble tend to be the coolest in the music industry.
I never got to meet him but someone I know said the same thing of Gus Dudgeon— talented down to earth guy who definitely had no illusions beyond getting the job done and getting the job done excellently.
All Beatle authors have a bias or slant. That includes Lewisohn. They're still enjoyable. I've read several of them.
You read them carefully, enjoy info provided and make your way around the editorialization.
If you're interested in this topic check out the Another Kind of Mind podcast series Tuning In. Its...like...10 episodes but just listen to episodes 2 and 3 and you'll get the gist.
I read the book and, at times, thought it was a John Lennon bio.
I haven't read the book, but isn't the point of a memoir/autobiography that you're supposed to be honest? He knew all four Beatles from when they were barely out of their teens, so it's not like he came to the party as a fawning fanboy. And though George Martin was the fifth Beatle, he's a solid candidate for the sixth...
Whatever you think of his opinions, Geoff Emerick is an absolute genius when it comes to engineering. He was just 20 when he took over as their main engineer and his first session as lead engineer was Tomorrow Never Knows. A lot of things George Martin gets credit for were actually done by Emerick. Just like the Beatles were innovating with their songwriting, Geoff was innovating as an engineer
It’s such a weird one, I love Harrison but if you try to perform an objective historical analysis Emerick is probably a far more influential figure in the development of music as a whole - his techniques were that seminal and wide reaching in their influence.
Emerick loved “The Beatles”, and their disagreements in the later years were very painful to him, painful enough that he stopped working with them during the White Album. And I think it would be difficult to argue that George wasn’t the Beatle least interested in being a Beatle. They weren’t a great platform for his input, in his opinion, and he had a difficult time getting the others to take his work seriously (not surprising, considering who his competitors were!). Also, starting on Rubber Soul and continuing to Let it Be, the Beatles became more interested in the music than the band, as the live stuff was just getting in the way, it wasn’t fun for them anymore. So, they are working in the studio, and keyboards come more to the fore, and both John and Paul also liked playing “lead guitar” sometimes, and meanwhile George has dropped his interest in guitar and is studying Indian music and sitar!
So, it’s no wonder that George is feeling less integral to the band, and having problems with the others, and with Emerick, who is also more interested in the production versus pleasing the prickly George. And finally, George has many gifts, but he was a composer of lead guitar parts, and he often had problems playing them in the studio. Emerick goes out of his way to praise George when he would get it right, such as when he dropped his “Something” solo in at the same time as the orchestral overdub, but that just highlights how many times he DIDNT get it right. So George was difficult, and prickly, and frankly, not that great at his “job” in the band, at least, not until the very end, when he got interested in playing guitar again.
That, I think, is Geoff Emerick’s “problem” with George.
Well said.
George played quite a few lovely solos ("All You Need Is Love," "Savoy Truffle," "Something," "Come Together," "I Dig a Pony," "Hey Bulldog," "Dear Prudence," etc.). However, many solos, especially the earlier ones, were weak. His songwriting was weak except for a few songs ("Something," "Here Comes the Sun," "Savoy Truffle," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"). Nothing came easily to George. You can see this in *Get Back* when he says he has been trying to come up with lyrics for "Something" for months to no avail. And he seemed to be a very negative person, even if he was also sometimes witty and fun. He was not talented to anywhere near the same degree as McCartney or Lennon. And he was a very resentful person. Take away Paul or John and the Beatles would not have been nearly so magical. Take away George or Ringo and they still would have been incredible.
I just relistened to the solo and it sounds good in the context of the song. George had a nice tone on guitar and an ear for catchy little licks. I'd rather hear that solo than hear Steve Vai "shred" on that song.
Who said anything about shredding or Steve Vai? There is a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of room between what George did on AYNIL and a Steve Vai solo. Something up to George’s usual standard would have been great. It starts out ok, but after 4 bars, he just gives up. Maybe two more bars of catchy little licks (no finger tapping or sweep arpeggios needed) would have made it more satisfying.
Here you go, dipshit:
“From the very first playback, the four Beatles were knocked out by what they were hearing,” Emerick recalled. “Harrison winced a little during his guitar solo, but [Emerick’s assistant] reassured him, saying, ‘It’ll be fine. We’ll put a little wobble on it and it will be great.'”
Is George also a “ninny” for recognizing that he flubbed a solo on live TV? Also, the stings don’t really swell up until two bars after George hits one note and just stops until then.
You're a humiliating disaster. It was a great single, guitar solo included. But I guess we need to defer to joepinapples, the accomplished recording artist.
They replaced John’s vocal and added a drumroll to the beginning. I doubt the majority of the record buying public happened to be watching it and, even if they had, would notice or be upset that the guitar solo was different.
Yes weird. Though i think pretty much every Beatle fan was watching, it was also the first transatlantic television broadcast so pretty huge audience. Maybe they thought it didnt matter and most people wouldn’t notice. I didnt notice for years and there are fans of the solo on this thread 🤷♀️
Well, the solo is one phrase repeated twice. No one is going to go out and buy a transcription. But like his best solos, it is simple and fits perfectly. Harrison was obviously a limited guitarist, and he effectively said so himself in *Get Back*. He was far from "the best." None of the Beatles were "the best" on their instruments, with the possible exception of Paul on bass. But that's not why people love the Beatles.
The Beatles wouldn’t have published it with a mistake. They rerecorded much smaller and nuanced parts and were perfectionists. Even if the performance wasn’t intentioned from the beginning, they all 4 decided during playback that they wanted to keep it that way
The performance was live, George did not want to redo it unlike John with some overdubs the next day, maybe he was happy with it but im sure ive read somewhere he was not but was too traumatised by messing up the worldwide broadcast to think about it again before release
And there absolutely are mistakes in many other Beatles songs, the channel You Can’t Unhear This on youtube covers many of them
"Nothing came easily to George" is a good summary. The most time-consuming part of the "A Hard Day's Night" session was his guitar solo. I remember even on an *All Things Must Pass* bootleg, he was complaining that it was hard to play the harmonica part on "Apple Scruffs" right because of his facial hair. No idea why he didn't just shave his mustache for that, lol, facial hair grows back. XD
John and Paul could have been successful with any drummer and any lead guitarist. Ring and George were just ok musicians. I like them as people, and there's something to be said for having the right chemistry. But the Beatles were really John and Paul.
Maybe, but I certainly dont think its coincidence they only became successful upon Ringo joining the band
Also they wouldn’t have been nearly as good, George and Ringo still brought a lot to the table, the Beatles were definitely not just John and Paul
I think it would be hard to argue that Ringo wasn't the best musician in the band at the beginning. George Martin would not have put up with a 2nd rate drum track (and didn't, thinking Ringo wasn't up to snuff on their first recorded song).
But check out the drum track of "I Feel Fine". The early Beatles were carried by their vocals and Ringo's drumming.
I'm not saying Ringo was a bad drummer. I'm saying that if the Beatles had a different but good drummer they still would have been incredible. Same with George. I like George's guitar playing, especially beginning in the late 1960s. But he was not the reason the Beatles were amazing. George and Ringo made many contributions in musical and extra-musical ways. But they were not the essence of the Beatles. John and Paul were. And to deny that is to engage in revisionist history. The Beatles were not Led Zeppelin.
I feel it has to be said that the camaraderie between all four of them was just as vital to the essence of the band—I think the John/Paul/George dynamic plays a pretty big role in their history, *especially* their formation and breakup, so George can't just be removed so easily from that history.
Sure, they could've gotten Eric Clapton in when George quit, but was he really going to be able to fill George's place besides his guitar playing? And Ringo served to sort of ground the other three with his consistent drumming and being an easygoing sort of person.
I think claiming that George and Ringo were replaceable is just as revisionist—John and Paul may have been a major element to their success, but I doubt it would have had the same impact. Why else did Mick Jagger call them the "four-headed monster"?
Again, I appreciate George's and Ringo's musicality and their personalities. But there are numerous lead guitarists and drummers who would have been roughly equivalent. It's a sort of survivor bias to believe that ONLY George and Ringo could have filled those spots. Whereas, the magic between Lennon and McCartney was irreplaceable. Just look at "The Ballad of John and Yoko," one of my personal favorites of the Beatles. Or look at "A Day in the Life," or "Strawberry Fields," or "Hey Jude." Replace George and Ringo and you still get 90% of their best songs. Replace EITHER John or Paul, and it's more like Wings or John Lennon solo work. Still good, but not nearly the same.
Even George's best songs would have been just as good with other guitarists. In fact, both "Taxman" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" featured other lead guitarists -- Paul and Eric Clapton, respectively. If you just had John and Paul writing songs and performing with overdubs, they would be almost as good as the Beatles. Paul's drumming on "Back in the U.S.S.R." and "Dear Prudence" are two examples of Ringo being replaceable. There is only one example of Paul being replaced on bass -- "She Said She Said." But none of the Beatles were amazing at their instruments. None of them were Hendrix level or as good as John Bonham. They were a good little band, but if they were only playing covers, they would have been just OK. It was the songwriting and singing that made them amazing. Take away Paul or John and you lose one great vocalist and one great songwriter. Approximately half of their best songs are gone. (Sorry, I don't think *All Things Must Pass* has a lot of great songs, and I think George only wrote about four great songs with The Beatles.)
*criticizes me for being able to hold two thoughts in my head at once: (a) most of George's songs were weak; (b) some were great* \[as I explicitly said\], Moron.
Portraying George like a blind squirrel that found a few nuts is doubly ridiculous when his hits are not just good songs, but literally some of the most beloved pop songs of the 20th century. The guy didn't just fuck around and write "Something" - he had talent. Even his hit rate, while sub-John or Paul, isn't anywhere near as bad as you'd like to pretend - but the fact that Savoy Truffle makes your list of great ones tells me all I need to know about your taste.
I agree with you and like I say, George himself confirmed in this 1966 interview (http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1966.10gh.beatles.html) that John and Paul actively encouraged him with his songwriting efforts and gave him very good feedback.
I am also sick and tired of George being misrepresented and portrayed as a victim of the tyrannical song-hogging dictators John and Paul when he was not.
I dunno if his songwriting skills were weak either lol he did write some utter classics. Btw his song brainwashed on his last album is wow man , I love that song , his voice and especially the lyrics 😍
I disagree with Geoff's nonsense about George and frankly, much of what he claimed about George's musicianship, songwriting and singing has no basis in reality.
George himself told a very different story in 1966 (http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1966.10gh.beatles.html), which is something that so many biographers "conveniently" fail to mention or realize, either out of ignorance or perhaps they just want to exaggerate the nonsense.
To be totally fair I don’t think George treated Geoff particularly well. George could be a real asshole sometimes. But holding a grudge for 50 years is very petty and I’ll never respect anyone who writes their own opinions as fact.
I remember reading that he started writing the book after Anthology, during which George was apparently quite rude to him. So it hadn't really been that long, and he did soften on George a bit towards the end of the book. I don't think a memoir being subjective and opinionated is bad or unusual, though - we all know when we're reading it that it's one person's take, so whether or not that needs to be emphasized in every paragraph is debatable.
Yeah but it goes over the line when his bias causes him to be dismissive of George’s talent and contributions to the band, which he did often in the book
As impactful as George Martin was on The Beatles' success, it's hard to argue that he wasn't also a coattail riding glory hog. To hear him talk, you'd think he was the only one producing and engineering those records.
In record label land, it’s like the producer is the captain of the ship who gets all the credit for success, and all the blame for shortfalls. Part of the producer’s job is to hire the right people for the needs of the project. If an engineer like Geoff Emerick does groundbreaking work and really escalates the record in his own way, then he did his job, but Martin was the visionary creative genius to have him on staff and bring him in on the project.
Kind of like when George Harrison creates the signature chord hook for And I Love Her, and the general reaction is “fantastic song, Paul!“
>“The Inside Personal Story of the Genius Who Created the Beatles,”
To be fair, that appears to be added by the publisher. I doubt George Martin wanted that added.
I haven’t read his book, but I remember reading in the comments here how he basically looked down on Ringo and was critical of him for quietly reading comic books, while the others would read novels and engage in discussions about news, pop culture, tv shows etc.
Reminds of the type of person to say video games are a waste of time while gladly watching twice the amount of tv.
Also it’s kind of fucked up to make fun of someone and look down on their reading choices when you know they didn’t get fair shake at an education, and especially in Ringo’s case since he spent years in hospital. And his book came out 2006, he had plenty of time to reflect on his judgements from his youth.
For that anecdote alone I have no interest in his book
You haven’t read his book, and have no context for that statement. That’s called “prejudice”. And frankly, how could anyone who is interested the Beatles music and production refuse to read the words directly from the mouth of the guy who did the bulk of the engineering of their most famous works because he had an opinion on the reading habits of the drummer?
Yep im biased and I’m free to be prejudiced about his opinions as much he is free to interject his prejudices amongst his technical experiences as an engineer. But the difference is no one has to pay to me for my opinion.
I’d be happy to read his technical commentary about their music production without his opinions about their personalities, but that’s not how he wrote his book.
Well, the other difference is that he engineered most of the Beatles’ most interesting works, and you didn’t, but to each his own. However; again you are judging something you actually haven’t read.
That’s such an odd comparison, I never said I was an engineer or a better engineer than him.
My judgment is that I’m not interested in his point of view about their personalities. I don’t need to be an engineer of the beatles most interesting works to think he comes across as a snob. And my view of his personality isn’t a judgement of his engineering, which I think was very good.
The people replying to you and downvoting you are fucking dumbasses lol. Like, where did you state that you think he's a bad engineer or something??? Or that you can offer some special insight on the Beatles that he can't?????
Genuinely one of the stupidest threads I've seen on this subreddit, which is saying quite a lot.
Emerick was a dolt. That is pretty clear based on anything of his you read, and it has nothing to do with his "britishness". There are tons of British people of his generation who are not judgemental & relaxed personalities. Frankly, considering he just walked into Abbey Road and started working there, he really just happened to be at the right place at the right time. And his recollection of events from the 60s is challenged by Ken Scott and by the various bootlegs that exist.
Emerick was not a ‘dolt’. An unworthy and unfair remark. He was a brilliant engineer who shared his memories of his close working relationship with the greatest band in history, and let’s be glad on both counts. He is not the only person close to the group to feel that George was difficult (see also Alf Bicknell and indeed George Martin Himself) and, much as I love George Harrison, I’m sure he could be peevish, intolerant and rude. I would be. Emerick’s memory has been shown to be flawed on some points, sure, but his overall impressions of that time are unique and invaluable.
Thanks, wow, I thought I was going mad. If you hadn’t replied it probably would have gone from -5 to -20 or more. People love to pile on downvotes. I’m allowed to not be interested in his book based on snippet, just like anyone can not be interested in a movie based on a clip.
Being a dolt didn't stop people like Alan Klein coming into the picture. Being a shitty person hasn't stopped others from rising to prominence or fame in the past. Emerick was a brilliant engineer and he's also a short fused dolt lol.
I did hear in several of his interviews that he loved scifi (not just comics) and the Goodnight Vienna album cover and music videos with a space ship and his space suit are an homage to the day the earth stood still
I cannot comprehend the fact that someone has criticized Ringo for reading comic books. How could someone hate Ringo because of that? I find that absolutely insane, absolutely bonkers! Geoff is mad as a hatter! Someone hating Ringo is fucking Wacko! Ringo is so fucking adorable.
I didn’t interpret that as hate, just Geoff being a judgmental snob, while implying Ringo was dumb or unsophisticated for not engaging in group conversations and keeping to himself with entertainment Geoff thought of as less worthy of respect
Cmon what? It’s ok to bash the guy and imply he’s dumb for reading comics - because he wrote 2 songs in a band with some of the most prolific & best songwriters in history? His corner of their shared painting in Japan was the most interesting and well crafted. He’s a great photographer, the most successful actor, voice narrator, and director amongst them, and doesn’t deserve to be shit on and called not artistic or creative just for reading comics books. Your comment doesn’t even make sense in the context of this post. You just want to dunk on him
I go to Geoff Emerick for technical, engineering, and production insights. I don't go to Geoff for commentary on musicianship and psychological analysis.
The group ran him off during 1968 sessions. I would guess Hari pulled rank (“you can’t speak that way to a Beatle” is one quote, possibly apocryphal and certainly characteristic Harrison drollery)
I haven't read the book, but I've read excerpts critical of George and Ringo. He seems to have believed that John and Paul were the real artists, that George had a lot of trouble playing guitar solos (at least until 1968 or so), and that Ringo was not a great drummer. He also believed that George and Ringo were somewhat unpleasant. Those seem like reasonable observations. Maybe he was blunt, but come on: John and Paul were the real artists, Paul was the most competent musician, and George definitely seemed temperamental. I hadn't heard that Ringo was unpleasant before. The personality conflicts might be personal, but the musical observations seem 100% on point. Ringo's drumming fit perfectly, but Paul often directed Ringo on what exactly to play, as well as directing George. and Paul often took over solo guitar when George couldn't muster a solo. I appreciate it when people are honest.
He also said John was 'somewhat unpleasant'. He was kneeling down beside John fixing a stand or something and John said something along the lines of 'a good spell in the Army would fix you'.
Yes, Lennon was no saint. And even though Emerick got along with Paul, Paul was overbearing and a perfectionist. Couldn't have been easy 100% of the time for any of them. Hence, they broke up.
He absolutely did. He came up with the amazing drum pattern on "Ticket to Ride" and many others. And if you watch *Get Back* you can see Paul telling Ringo what to play. Also, Ringo has spoken about being tired of being told how to play the drums. I think Ringo's drum playing fits very well on most Beatles records, and Ringo had a good feel and was a musical drummer. But Paul absolutely did come up with a lot of the specifics of what Ringo played.
According to Mark Lewisohn George Harrison was the one who started it by being absolutely mean and horrible to Geoff right from the start so Geoff never forgot it and decided to get his own back when writing the book .
Can’t say I blame him George Harrison by many accounts was a nasty piece of work.
When did the feud start? All 4 Beatles were pretty standoffish to the production team, I mean pretty significantly with George Martin at first. Was it the case that Geoff never actually progressed past that original unfamiliarity or did they literally just have it out for each other?
It started pretty much straight away but reached its zenith when Geoff became the new engineer for Revolver .
George Martin took Geoff down to the studio floor and introduced him to the group everyone was fine with the change but George Harrison immediately said “where’s Norman “ and from then on it was bad between Geoff and George Harrison .
Apparently once George Harrison got something in his head or if he didn’t like you it would be impossible to shift his opinion even when told by people he liked and trusted he was wrong , George Harrison did not listen .
As I said Harrison was a nasty piece of work and have a couple of friends that had the misfortune to meet him and he was horrible .
Definitely a case of never meet your heroes.
Get as high as you want to mate .
I kind of feel the same .
Am sick of the whole George was held back and treated poorly by John and Paul as that is absolute rubbish.
George did not have the songwriting talent John and Paul did and have and if George was never in The Beatles we would never have heard of him .
Horrible miserable person by all accounts.
Totally , I don’t know where it came from as it’s totally unjustifiable on every level .
Yes he had All Things Must Pass was a huge album but in hindsight it’s a bit of a bloated mess and is not that great and George never reached those heights again .
i understand that you guys found a safe space to dance on george’s grave, but you take ATMP out your mouth. its one of the finest double albums ever recorded.
I do like it and think it’s got some great songs, but it’s too long, and it’s overcooked and somewhat muddy on a production level. Every song has the same flat wall of sound, same intensity, same volume, so that by the end of the album, my ears are kind of bored by the sameness.
It is also clear that he completely shot his wad, considering the albums that followed.
Yes he totally shot his wad with All Things Must Pass .
Totally agree it sounds absolutely horrible particularly on the wall of sound sings like Wah Wah and Let it Down it’s a full on assault on the ears and not in a good way .
I can't help but notice that it's John and George who get the sainting, and they're both dead.
Can you imagine once all the Beatles have died? It'll be a free-for-all...
Actually, it can be pretty discouraging to be a John fan these days, at least online. It’s nothing but trashing him and calling him a garbage human being and accusing him of everything but bathing in the blood of babies. Not in this sub, necessarily, but everywhere else.
Nothing major as George did not engage .
He was in Australia a lot in the 80’s and 90’s mainly for the Grand Prix and also with Derek Taylor at the launch of Fifty Years Adrift which fans could purchase tickets to and George was rude to the people I knew that went .
George was really really shy, never comfortable with fame, never accepted anyone but John as an ‘alpha male’ (hated Paul trying to be one and in fairness Paul wasn’t very good at it) chased the money (despite his spirituality) as the only thing that would make the sacrifices he made to fame worthwhile, he was privately brilliant and charming but publicly often gauche and peevish, often addicted (I believe) to drugs especially coke and casual sex in between periods of complete abstinence, and combined writing dumb crap like Piggies with ethereal, celestial genius like Long Long Long. In short, a human being, coping with something unimaginable: to be one of the most famous people on the planet at 20. And a very brilliant man indeed. Wouldn’t have happened without him, folks.
All of that is fair. As a huge John fan, I have no room to knock the personal failings of George and wouldn’t even think to do so. They were mere human beings and they were very young, trying to work through their shit and grow up under unbelievably extraordinary circumstances.
My irritation is really just that nowadays, John smearing—some of it based on exaggerations, some of it based on things that we only know about because he himself admitted to them and very openly worked on rectifying—has practically become an internet sport, while it’s become fashionable to fawn over and pity deep, spiritual George as an unsung genius who was bullied and ignored by big meanies Paul and John, all while glossing over or justifying the lurid, nasty and annoying details of his personality and behavior.
I completely agree what you have said .
The smearing of John has gotten completely out of hand and I am guessing is being driven by confused millennials and Gen Z’s.
Yes this myth of George being an unsung Genius is just laughable as there is no evidence for that as his subsequent solo career makes very clear .
As is the myth of George’s material being ignored is simply not true .
George himself withdrew All Things Must Pass from consideration as he probably realised he needed it for a solo album he knew was coming .
Paul in particular contributed a lot to George’s songs with arrangements etc and George never acknowledged this .
He just kept to the mindset he was hard done by and was on the same level as John and Paul .
Talk about delusions of grandeur .
Exactly.
George himself acknowledged that he had a naughty period in the 1970's, which would've coincided with his separation from Pattie.
The idea that John and Paul held back George's songwriting efforts is laughable, because after *Beatles for Sale*, the Beatles never again made an album without including any songs written by George - the running orders can easily verify this.
I think you’re really perpetuating very common myths there .
I have never seen any evidences of George being really really shy .
Right from the start he spoke his mind and that continued right to the end as we have seen in Get Back where he made his thoughts known and he actually made a lot of sense and was thinking more clearly than John and Paul especially.
I am a massive Paul fan but I have to admit in Get Back he comes across as completely annoying and makes no sense whenever he does talk .
Am not too sure about The Beatles never happening without George but it would not have been the same that’s for sure .
I think I am repeating some commonly accepted facts, rather than ‘myths’. George was an introvert, but very clever and funny. He was the indulged youngest sibling in a big family (alone among the Beatles - he was on his third guitar when Paul was pretending to play a broken one he couldn’t afford to replace). He hated being third in the hierarchy when he believed he was equal second. He loved working with other musicians who respected and revered him, and why not? He stayed rational in 1968-1969 when the others were losing it.
And I think by saying ‘it wouldn’t have been the same’ without George I think you’re agreeing that it wouldn’t have happened without him.
George was a genius. No George, no Beatles.
He's very obviously biased towards Paul who seemingly treated him best. He criticized George for taking a bunch of takes to nail a solo but then lauded Paul for taking hours to perfect his bass part until 3am. His critiques of George Martin are hilarious. George literally played and/or arranged a bunch of the actual parts of the songs and Geoff wanted to minimize his contribution which is ridiculous.
I read this book. It’s just that he liked Paul so much better. Paul was friendly & personable to him, while the other Beatles really weren’t-especially George. And Geoff makes it sound like it was really Paul that cared about getting the studio sound & audio mixing right. He spent more time with the engineers, so Geoff got to know him better. I think this was just Geoff’s honest perspective on the band as someone who was there & worked closely with them for years.
WE think of Something as a finished project.
GEOFF probably thought of all of the hours of “Mister Show, oh Mister Show” prior. To give one example.
The same way that Ringo, John, and George thought about Maxwell’s, is probably how Geoff thought of George overall.
If you are a working engineer and producer, you want to work on hits. You tend to listen for things like gaps of space where there is no melody, or chord changes that have odd bar counts, as things to push the artist to reign in. It probably provoked a lot of anxiety for Geoff to have to work in a situation where someone who he thought was an inferior writer was constantly pushing his material in, and possibly harming the quality projects he would also be credited on.
Geoff was firmly in the Paul camp and obviously had deep inspiration for that sort of tunefulness.
George Martin wasn’t exactly big on pushing George’s stuff either.
Geoff was a very kind person, smart, and did in fact speak easily and charmingly. He was apathetic towards pretentiousness.
Sometimes people just don’t get along.
That is preposterous.
What I mean is that in Geoff’s shoes, you’re in the job of helping lead something to completion and you want it to be as good as possible. If one person is constantly coming in with half written stuff that sounds half ass to you, it becomes a source of frustration. Geoff didn’t want The Beatles record he was at the helm of to be where things dropped off in quality. It was a fair amount of pressure. He had to live up to the bar George Martin set, as well as fantastic engineers like Norm Smith.
I mean, I had the opportunity to chat with him about it and other projects he worked on. Great guy. George was super talented of course. Sometimes people just don’t jive.
We've heard Lewisohn say that once George gets an opinion of someone, right or wrong, he's stuck in it. I think it was mostly the jiving. We then see Chris Thomas come in and he's playing on a few of George's so they must have had a good rapport.
George Harrison accused Lewisohn of bootlegging, entirely unfairly, and publicly, and he was thrown off the Anthology project as a result. Olivia has, ever since, refused to reverse George’s position of not cooperating with ML for his matchless books, as she never reverses any decisions that George made since his passing. Oh, apart from releasing Now And Then. I wonder why?!
With Now and Then, enough things had changed to allow Olivia to agree to the project, including Dhani having more say (similar to Sean Lennon), Emerick and George Martin are dead, and Paul becoming this really nice old man who can talk up the good times with Harrison.
Perhaps George’s problem with Emerick was his very obvious preference for Paul? Because Harrison had good relations with Phil McDonald and Ken Scott, two other Beatles engineers.
A Paul sycophant through and through & grossly disrespectful & dismissive of George Harrison. A talented engineer who I do think tended exaggerate his ingenuity & overall impact on the group's recording sessions that he was involved with, coming across at times as if felt he was the true genius behind it all and George Martin could suck it.
I thought I was the only one who noticed this while reading! I also remember some pretty out of pocket homophobic comments about John and George that bothered me.
Exactly.
If he hated George's songs so much, then he would've deliberately avoided working on the sessions for them, but he didn't, and neither did George Martin.
George acknowledged that Paul played the guitar solo on *Taxman* and the fuzz bass on *Think for Yourself*, but despite what so many biographers want us to believe, John did not deliberately go AWOL from the sessions for George's songs, and it's often overlooked that he tended to diversify his contributions to George's songs.
I kind of agree about George. He seems to be a constant downer. Watching Get Back it is obvious that he resented McCartney being heavy handed (as well as his underlying resentment of McCartneys amazing natural talent) and was bitter because John thought so little of him and had very little tome for his songs. Watching it, I think most of the negative vibes came from George.
My suspicion is he just had a couple of bad experiences with George and forever hated him. It’s clear that Emerick’s account is heavily biased against George especially, to the extent that fellow engineer Ken Scott wrote a memoir specifically to refute Emerick.
Precisely and I agree with you.
What Geoff failed to mention, let alone acknowledge, is that the relative limitations of 4-track tape, not to mention subsequent reduction mixes, meant that it wouldn't have been feasible for Paul to redo George's guitar solos, even if he wanted to.
He was absolutely right that George could be ham fisted early on during solos. And says John was a prick to him which is super believable. He’s honest and correct.
I have a suspicion most of his stories are made up and he's lying in some parts...
I've watched a lot of interviews actually the same for Norman Smith's and he even called Geoff a liar because in Geoff's book he mentioned Norman somewhat played the drums for a Hard day's night but Norman replied to that, that he never did but only the bongos .
I know and some of his claims in subsequent interviews are either fabricated, exaggerated or questionable.
If working on the White Album at EMI was as miserable as he said it was, why did he bother returning there to work on *Abbey Road*?
(Without regard to sequencing:)
Back in the USSR
Dear Prudence
Glass Onion
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Happiness Is a Warm Gun
I'm so tired
Blackbird
Mother Nature's Son
... Me and My Monkey
Revolution 1
Savoy Truffle
Cry Baby Cry
😆 I was being an arse but thanks for sending, it looks good. The thing is, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts so even the average or silly tracks are essential for me. The white album is unlike anything else in their discography which makes it all the more special.
Tbh I think it’s just too varied and not cohesive. But you could make 2 pretty good single albums out of it, one great rock album and a second of the more acoustic tracks. But there’s just so much whiplash as it is.
All of us have an agenda whether we want to admit it or not. No one is objective 100% of the time. I read “Here, There, and Everywhere” when it was published close to 20 years ago, and it’s still on my shelf. I enjoyed the book, but it was quite clear that Geoff was not fond of George.
Yeah agreed, no one is 100% objective. I haven’t read it in a while but I thought it was pretty interesting in terms of hearing about the recording sessions. For example, really enjoyed reading about the Revolver sessions and Band on the Run. Emerick def had a front row seat and was instrumental in helping them get the sounds they had in their heads onto tape. (For example sending John’s voice thru a leslie speaker for tomorrow never knows and using a big speaker as a microphone to record Paul’s bass on Paperback Writer).
I agree 100%, the book is a fascinating read!
What kind of things did he say about George
that of the 4, he was the least charming and amicable ( mayybe true, Harrison seems grumpy and unhappy so many times) and that he wasnt a really GOOD guitar player until around the White album, many Beatles songs having to be repeated time and again while recording to capture his guitar playing without mistakes.
Geoff didn't know what he was talking about - he was clearly exaggerating.
"Fumble-fingered." "Not four men, but the John-and-Paul show." G. Harrison comes off as resentful and second-rate in his telling, and Ringo as a non-entity! BUT: Emerick says G. Harrison grew to be quite a good producer.
I don't believe Geoff's trash.
Geoff targeted the wrong guitarist and IMO, fumble-fingered is more applicable to Sid Vicious.
He said a lot of things. I’m too lazy to find them and type them all out! You can Google “Geoff Emrick George Harrison” and you’ll get some results.
He also just seems like a “can’t be bothered” kind of guy. I’ve seen several interviews with him and he is very short.
It's not my fault, I'm not taller than you are, your smaller than I am
No actually, we’re just good friends
It’s pretty much Geoff Emerick -> Paul and Ken Scott -> George and Phil Spector -> John. But back then, lots of musicians knew very little about recording and you had to describe what you wanted. Jimmy Page knew a lot about recording from being a session player. Nowadays musicians sometimes know an awful lot because there’s so much info.available.
I think history shows who made the right choice there personally if not musically RE Phil Spector
I got to work with him for a week or two on some Paul stuff in studio. I get what you mean, but he’s really just kinda British like that. Definitely no ego. As a huge fan, I’d ask him about what it was like recording horns for Sgt Pepper or something and he was just like “eh I just put some mics up no biggie”. He was cool as long as you had your shit together.
Unrelated but I remember reading about how he got his job at Abbey Road once. He literally saw an ad in a newspaper and just showed up at the studio and started working. And then he just happened to start engineering sessions for the greatest band in the world. He was very talented and hard working but man. No interviews, no applications, no references, no audio school degree. Man the 60s were something else
I mean, he was working there for four years before he was engineering them. He started working as an assistant and gained knowledge over several years and then when Norman Smith moved to other things, he replaced him. It's more like...he learned on the job and then his boss gave him a promotion. That being said, I wish I could just walk into a recording studio like that and just get a job, I love doing that work!
Norman Smith was actually promoted to producer and Geoff had previously worked on Beatles sessions as a tape operator.
Regardless of your opinion in regards to the beatles, he sounds like a good guy. More often than not, guys that are that humble tend to be the coolest in the music industry. I never got to meet him but someone I know said the same thing of Gus Dudgeon— talented down to earth guy who definitely had no illusions beyond getting the job done and getting the job done excellently.
loved the book. he had a front row seat and the book let us all take a peek
Eh… that doesn’t mean it’s fact. John was literally *in* the band and his stories change from interview to interview
i didn’t say it was the gospel just that he had a unique vantage in history and i enjoyed reading it.
Depending on your perspective, his biggest problem might be being dead.
All Beatle authors have a bias or slant. That includes Lewisohn. They're still enjoyable. I've read several of them. You read them carefully, enjoy info provided and make your way around the editorialization.
Lewisohn definitely has a bias. According to him, Paul was just a journeyman who was beyond lucky to be associated with John Lennon.
He's pretty much worshipped here. I'm tired of talking about it.
>That wasn't my take away from Tune In.
It's full of worship for John and minimization of Paul. And I'm a Lennon guy through and through.
If you're interested in this topic check out the Another Kind of Mind podcast series Tuning In. Its...like...10 episodes but just listen to episodes 2 and 3 and you'll get the gist. I read the book and, at times, thought it was a John Lennon bio.
I haven't read the book, but isn't the point of a memoir/autobiography that you're supposed to be honest? He knew all four Beatles from when they were barely out of their teens, so it's not like he came to the party as a fawning fanboy. And though George Martin was the fifth Beatle, he's a solid candidate for the sixth...
Exactly. I'd rather read a candid, if contentious, account, than hagiography.
Whatever you think of his opinions, Geoff Emerick is an absolute genius when it comes to engineering. He was just 20 when he took over as their main engineer and his first session as lead engineer was Tomorrow Never Knows. A lot of things George Martin gets credit for were actually done by Emerick. Just like the Beatles were innovating with their songwriting, Geoff was innovating as an engineer
It’s such a weird one, I love Harrison but if you try to perform an objective historical analysis Emerick is probably a far more influential figure in the development of music as a whole - his techniques were that seminal and wide reaching in their influence.
What techniques did he pioneer?
I think he was one of the first to close-mic drums. And to use a speaker to mic a bass amp. Probably some other stuff.
Methods of recording bass. Using a speaker as a mic, and recording direct.
Emerick loved “The Beatles”, and their disagreements in the later years were very painful to him, painful enough that he stopped working with them during the White Album. And I think it would be difficult to argue that George wasn’t the Beatle least interested in being a Beatle. They weren’t a great platform for his input, in his opinion, and he had a difficult time getting the others to take his work seriously (not surprising, considering who his competitors were!). Also, starting on Rubber Soul and continuing to Let it Be, the Beatles became more interested in the music than the band, as the live stuff was just getting in the way, it wasn’t fun for them anymore. So, they are working in the studio, and keyboards come more to the fore, and both John and Paul also liked playing “lead guitar” sometimes, and meanwhile George has dropped his interest in guitar and is studying Indian music and sitar! So, it’s no wonder that George is feeling less integral to the band, and having problems with the others, and with Emerick, who is also more interested in the production versus pleasing the prickly George. And finally, George has many gifts, but he was a composer of lead guitar parts, and he often had problems playing them in the studio. Emerick goes out of his way to praise George when he would get it right, such as when he dropped his “Something” solo in at the same time as the orchestral overdub, but that just highlights how many times he DIDNT get it right. So George was difficult, and prickly, and frankly, not that great at his “job” in the band, at least, not until the very end, when he got interested in playing guitar again. That, I think, is Geoff Emerick’s “problem” with George.
Well said. George played quite a few lovely solos ("All You Need Is Love," "Savoy Truffle," "Something," "Come Together," "I Dig a Pony," "Hey Bulldog," "Dear Prudence," etc.). However, many solos, especially the earlier ones, were weak. His songwriting was weak except for a few songs ("Something," "Here Comes the Sun," "Savoy Truffle," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"). Nothing came easily to George. You can see this in *Get Back* when he says he has been trying to come up with lyrics for "Something" for months to no avail. And he seemed to be a very negative person, even if he was also sometimes witty and fun. He was not talented to anywhere near the same degree as McCartney or Lennon. And he was a very resentful person. Take away Paul or John and the Beatles would not have been nearly so magical. Take away George or Ringo and they still would have been incredible.
All you need is love is probably the naffiest pathetic solo in the history guitar solos man get a grip!! And I'm a big George fan
The absolute pits. He totally fucked it. Must’ve been super traumatic for George though
Strange that he didn’t choose to redo it or at least add a few more notes where he stumbled and trailed off when John replaced his vocal the next day.
I just relistened to the solo and it sounds good in the context of the song. George had a nice tone on guitar and an ear for catchy little licks. I'd rather hear that solo than hear Steve Vai "shred" on that song.
Who said anything about shredding or Steve Vai? There is a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of room between what George did on AYNIL and a Steve Vai solo. Something up to George’s usual standard would have been great. It starts out ok, but after 4 bars, he just gives up. Maybe two more bars of catchy little licks (no finger tapping or sweep arpeggios needed) would have made it more satisfying.
He doesn't give up you ninny. The stings take over.
Here you go, dipshit: “From the very first playback, the four Beatles were knocked out by what they were hearing,” Emerick recalled. “Harrison winced a little during his guitar solo, but [Emerick’s assistant] reassured him, saying, ‘It’ll be fine. We’ll put a little wobble on it and it will be great.'” Is George also a “ninny” for recognizing that he flubbed a solo on live TV? Also, the stings don’t really swell up until two bars after George hits one note and just stops until then.
Incorrect he flubs a note and stops. Look it up dude it was a humiliating disaster.
You're a humiliating disaster. It was a great single, guitar solo included. But I guess we need to defer to joepinapples, the accomplished recording artist.
The version in the album version WAS redone by George later.
Yes wonder why. Maybe cos it went out live and everyone knew what it sounded like and it wouldn’t be the ‘live’ version
They replaced John’s vocal and added a drumroll to the beginning. I doubt the majority of the record buying public happened to be watching it and, even if they had, would notice or be upset that the guitar solo was different.
Yes weird. Though i think pretty much every Beatle fan was watching, it was also the first transatlantic television broadcast so pretty huge audience. Maybe they thought it didnt matter and most people wouldn’t notice. I didnt notice for years and there are fans of the solo on this thread 🤷♀️
Well, the solo is one phrase repeated twice. No one is going to go out and buy a transcription. But like his best solos, it is simple and fits perfectly. Harrison was obviously a limited guitarist, and he effectively said so himself in *Get Back*. He was far from "the best." None of the Beatles were "the best" on their instruments, with the possible exception of Paul on bass. But that's not why people love the Beatles.
He did actually mess up the solo, its not how it was supposed to go
I don't think so. It sounds good to me.
It sounds fine, but he literally did mess it up, can’t remember where i read it but he didnt do it as planned and messed up towards the end
The Beatles wouldn’t have published it with a mistake. They rerecorded much smaller and nuanced parts and were perfectionists. Even if the performance wasn’t intentioned from the beginning, they all 4 decided during playback that they wanted to keep it that way
The performance was live, George did not want to redo it unlike John with some overdubs the next day, maybe he was happy with it but im sure ive read somewhere he was not but was too traumatised by messing up the worldwide broadcast to think about it again before release And there absolutely are mistakes in many other Beatles songs, the channel You Can’t Unhear This on youtube covers many of them
"Nothing came easily to George" is a good summary. The most time-consuming part of the "A Hard Day's Night" session was his guitar solo. I remember even on an *All Things Must Pass* bootleg, he was complaining that it was hard to play the harmonica part on "Apple Scruffs" right because of his facial hair. No idea why he didn't just shave his mustache for that, lol, facial hair grows back. XD
Imagine Stevie Wonder that can't even SEE the harmonica😂
Stevie Wonder is a phenom.
"You want a snort, Steve? A toot? It's goin' round." - John Lennon
Nah, each Beatle was an integral part to the puzzle, it’s no coincidence they only made it after Ringo joined
John and Paul could have been successful with any drummer and any lead guitarist. Ring and George were just ok musicians. I like them as people, and there's something to be said for having the right chemistry. But the Beatles were really John and Paul.
Maybe, but I certainly dont think its coincidence they only became successful upon Ringo joining the band Also they wouldn’t have been nearly as good, George and Ringo still brought a lot to the table, the Beatles were definitely not just John and Paul
Agreed. Ringo, especially, carried the band in their early songs, along with the Beatles' vocals which they had honed so long in Hamburg.
I think it would be hard to argue that Ringo wasn't the best musician in the band at the beginning. George Martin would not have put up with a 2nd rate drum track (and didn't, thinking Ringo wasn't up to snuff on their first recorded song). But check out the drum track of "I Feel Fine". The early Beatles were carried by their vocals and Ringo's drumming.
I'm not saying Ringo was a bad drummer. I'm saying that if the Beatles had a different but good drummer they still would have been incredible. Same with George. I like George's guitar playing, especially beginning in the late 1960s. But he was not the reason the Beatles were amazing. George and Ringo made many contributions in musical and extra-musical ways. But they were not the essence of the Beatles. John and Paul were. And to deny that is to engage in revisionist history. The Beatles were not Led Zeppelin.
I feel it has to be said that the camaraderie between all four of them was just as vital to the essence of the band—I think the John/Paul/George dynamic plays a pretty big role in their history, *especially* their formation and breakup, so George can't just be removed so easily from that history. Sure, they could've gotten Eric Clapton in when George quit, but was he really going to be able to fill George's place besides his guitar playing? And Ringo served to sort of ground the other three with his consistent drumming and being an easygoing sort of person. I think claiming that George and Ringo were replaceable is just as revisionist—John and Paul may have been a major element to their success, but I doubt it would have had the same impact. Why else did Mick Jagger call them the "four-headed monster"?
Again, I appreciate George's and Ringo's musicality and their personalities. But there are numerous lead guitarists and drummers who would have been roughly equivalent. It's a sort of survivor bias to believe that ONLY George and Ringo could have filled those spots. Whereas, the magic between Lennon and McCartney was irreplaceable. Just look at "The Ballad of John and Yoko," one of my personal favorites of the Beatles. Or look at "A Day in the Life," or "Strawberry Fields," or "Hey Jude." Replace George and Ringo and you still get 90% of their best songs. Replace EITHER John or Paul, and it's more like Wings or John Lennon solo work. Still good, but not nearly the same.
Even George's best songs would have been just as good with other guitarists. In fact, both "Taxman" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" featured other lead guitarists -- Paul and Eric Clapton, respectively. If you just had John and Paul writing songs and performing with overdubs, they would be almost as good as the Beatles. Paul's drumming on "Back in the U.S.S.R." and "Dear Prudence" are two examples of Ringo being replaceable. There is only one example of Paul being replaced on bass -- "She Said She Said." But none of the Beatles were amazing at their instruments. None of them were Hendrix level or as good as John Bonham. They were a good little band, but if they were only playing covers, they would have been just OK. It was the songwriting and singing that made them amazing. Take away Paul or John and you lose one great vocalist and one great songwriter. Approximately half of their best songs are gone. (Sorry, I don't think *All Things Must Pass* has a lot of great songs, and I think George only wrote about four great songs with The Beatles.)
Paul did play bass on "She Said She Said".
'His songwriting was weak except for a few songs' *proceeds to list several of the greatest songs ever written*
*criticizes me for being able to hold two thoughts in my head at once: (a) most of George's songs were weak; (b) some were great* \[as I explicitly said\], Moron.
Portraying George like a blind squirrel that found a few nuts is doubly ridiculous when his hits are not just good songs, but literally some of the most beloved pop songs of the 20th century. The guy didn't just fuck around and write "Something" - he had talent. Even his hit rate, while sub-John or Paul, isn't anywhere near as bad as you'd like to pretend - but the fact that Savoy Truffle makes your list of great ones tells me all I need to know about your taste.
I agree with you and like I say, George himself confirmed in this 1966 interview (http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1966.10gh.beatles.html) that John and Paul actively encouraged him with his songwriting efforts and gave him very good feedback. I am also sick and tired of George being misrepresented and portrayed as a victim of the tyrannical song-hogging dictators John and Paul when he was not.
I dunno if his songwriting skills were weak either lol he did write some utter classics. Btw his song brainwashed on his last album is wow man , I love that song , his voice and especially the lyrics 😍
I disagree with Geoff's nonsense about George and frankly, much of what he claimed about George's musicianship, songwriting and singing has no basis in reality. George himself told a very different story in 1966 (http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1966.10gh.beatles.html), which is something that so many biographers "conveniently" fail to mention or realize, either out of ignorance or perhaps they just want to exaggerate the nonsense.
To be totally fair I don’t think George treated Geoff particularly well. George could be a real asshole sometimes. But holding a grudge for 50 years is very petty and I’ll never respect anyone who writes their own opinions as fact.
I remember reading that he started writing the book after Anthology, during which George was apparently quite rude to him. So it hadn't really been that long, and he did soften on George a bit towards the end of the book. I don't think a memoir being subjective and opinionated is bad or unusual, though - we all know when we're reading it that it's one person's take, so whether or not that needs to be emphasized in every paragraph is debatable.
Yeah but it goes over the line when his bias causes him to be dismissive of George’s talent and contributions to the band, which he did often in the book
Yeah, well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, man...
Precisely - that is one of the reasons why I dislike Geoff's book. If George was still alive, he could've sued Geoff for defamation.
Geoff himself acknowledged in a 1979 interview that he remembered virtually nothing of his sessions with The Beatles.
As impactful as George Martin was on The Beatles' success, it's hard to argue that he wasn't also a coattail riding glory hog. To hear him talk, you'd think he was the only one producing and engineering those records.
In record label land, it’s like the producer is the captain of the ship who gets all the credit for success, and all the blame for shortfalls. Part of the producer’s job is to hire the right people for the needs of the project. If an engineer like Geoff Emerick does groundbreaking work and really escalates the record in his own way, then he did his job, but Martin was the visionary creative genius to have him on staff and bring him in on the project. Kind of like when George Harrison creates the signature chord hook for And I Love Her, and the general reaction is “fantastic song, Paul!“
Agreed. However, EVERYONE downplayed the role of engineers and session players back then. They were seen as “the help” to an extent.
I thought this was about George Harrison
[удалено]
>“The Inside Personal Story of the Genius Who Created the Beatles,” To be fair, that appears to be added by the publisher. I doubt George Martin wanted that added.
You misunderstand the world of publishing, authors famously have little to do with title/cover ..etc. and he was a genius.
I haven’t read his book, but I remember reading in the comments here how he basically looked down on Ringo and was critical of him for quietly reading comic books, while the others would read novels and engage in discussions about news, pop culture, tv shows etc. Reminds of the type of person to say video games are a waste of time while gladly watching twice the amount of tv. Also it’s kind of fucked up to make fun of someone and look down on their reading choices when you know they didn’t get fair shake at an education, and especially in Ringo’s case since he spent years in hospital. And his book came out 2006, he had plenty of time to reflect on his judgements from his youth. For that anecdote alone I have no interest in his book
You haven’t read his book, and have no context for that statement. That’s called “prejudice”. And frankly, how could anyone who is interested the Beatles music and production refuse to read the words directly from the mouth of the guy who did the bulk of the engineering of their most famous works because he had an opinion on the reading habits of the drummer?
Yep im biased and I’m free to be prejudiced about his opinions as much he is free to interject his prejudices amongst his technical experiences as an engineer. But the difference is no one has to pay to me for my opinion. I’d be happy to read his technical commentary about their music production without his opinions about their personalities, but that’s not how he wrote his book.
Well, the other difference is that he engineered most of the Beatles’ most interesting works, and you didn’t, but to each his own. However; again you are judging something you actually haven’t read.
That’s such an odd comparison, I never said I was an engineer or a better engineer than him. My judgment is that I’m not interested in his point of view about their personalities. I don’t need to be an engineer of the beatles most interesting works to think he comes across as a snob. And my view of his personality isn’t a judgement of his engineering, which I think was very good.
The people replying to you and downvoting you are fucking dumbasses lol. Like, where did you state that you think he's a bad engineer or something??? Or that you can offer some special insight on the Beatles that he can't????? Genuinely one of the stupidest threads I've seen on this subreddit, which is saying quite a lot. Emerick was a dolt. That is pretty clear based on anything of his you read, and it has nothing to do with his "britishness". There are tons of British people of his generation who are not judgemental & relaxed personalities. Frankly, considering he just walked into Abbey Road and started working there, he really just happened to be at the right place at the right time. And his recollection of events from the 60s is challenged by Ken Scott and by the various bootlegs that exist.
Emerick was not a ‘dolt’. An unworthy and unfair remark. He was a brilliant engineer who shared his memories of his close working relationship with the greatest band in history, and let’s be glad on both counts. He is not the only person close to the group to feel that George was difficult (see also Alf Bicknell and indeed George Martin Himself) and, much as I love George Harrison, I’m sure he could be peevish, intolerant and rude. I would be. Emerick’s memory has been shown to be flawed on some points, sure, but his overall impressions of that time are unique and invaluable.
Thanks, wow, I thought I was going mad. If you hadn’t replied it probably would have gone from -5 to -20 or more. People love to pile on downvotes. I’m allowed to not be interested in his book based on snippet, just like anyone can not be interested in a movie based on a clip.
If he was a “dolt” how and why did Paul hire him multiple times for Wings/solo projects?
Being a dolt didn't stop people like Alan Klein coming into the picture. Being a shitty person hasn't stopped others from rising to prominence or fame in the past. Emerick was a brilliant engineer and he's also a short fused dolt lol.
Is there any info on what comics Ringo read?
Well there’s this https://preview.redd.it/vgvi3nopf7oc1.jpeg?width=723&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b2fbefd694ecbea8c720ccbd17dfa58d19f0514
Found the exact issue he's reading: https://www.comics.org/issue/333507/ I guess he liked sci-fi.
Steve Ditko cover!
I did hear in several of his interviews that he loved scifi (not just comics) and the Goodnight Vienna album cover and music videos with a space ship and his space suit are an homage to the day the earth stood still
I cannot comprehend the fact that someone has criticized Ringo for reading comic books. How could someone hate Ringo because of that? I find that absolutely insane, absolutely bonkers! Geoff is mad as a hatter! Someone hating Ringo is fucking Wacko! Ringo is so fucking adorable.
Who said “hate”?
That’s my bad, I misinterpreted it. Sorry.
I didn’t interpret that as hate, just Geoff being a judgmental snob, while implying Ringo was dumb or unsophisticated for not engaging in group conversations and keeping to himself with entertainment Geoff thought of as less worthy of respect
That’s my bad, I misinterpreted it. Sorry.
Citation?
But Ringo was the least creative and gifted as an artist? That’s understood, he’s a good drummer, but c’mon
Cmon what? It’s ok to bash the guy and imply he’s dumb for reading comics - because he wrote 2 songs in a band with some of the most prolific & best songwriters in history? His corner of their shared painting in Japan was the most interesting and well crafted. He’s a great photographer, the most successful actor, voice narrator, and director amongst them, and doesn’t deserve to be shit on and called not artistic or creative just for reading comics books. Your comment doesn’t even make sense in the context of this post. You just want to dunk on him
I go to Geoff Emerick for technical, engineering, and production insights. I don't go to Geoff for commentary on musicianship and psychological analysis.
Then don’t read his book
You're overlooking the story of George's biscuits.
The group ran him off during 1968 sessions. I would guess Hari pulled rank (“you can’t speak that way to a Beatle” is one quote, possibly apocryphal and certainly characteristic Harrison drollery)
He takes all the perks of being a Beatle, yet hates upon them, and their fans commonly.
I haven't read the book, but I've read excerpts critical of George and Ringo. He seems to have believed that John and Paul were the real artists, that George had a lot of trouble playing guitar solos (at least until 1968 or so), and that Ringo was not a great drummer. He also believed that George and Ringo were somewhat unpleasant. Those seem like reasonable observations. Maybe he was blunt, but come on: John and Paul were the real artists, Paul was the most competent musician, and George definitely seemed temperamental. I hadn't heard that Ringo was unpleasant before. The personality conflicts might be personal, but the musical observations seem 100% on point. Ringo's drumming fit perfectly, but Paul often directed Ringo on what exactly to play, as well as directing George. and Paul often took over solo guitar when George couldn't muster a solo. I appreciate it when people are honest.
He also said John was 'somewhat unpleasant'. He was kneeling down beside John fixing a stand or something and John said something along the lines of 'a good spell in the Army would fix you'.
Yes, Lennon was no saint. And even though Emerick got along with Paul, Paul was overbearing and a perfectionist. Couldn't have been easy 100% of the time for any of them. Hence, they broke up.
Paul didn’t often tell ringo exactly what to play. Sometimes like on come together, but you can’t say often
He absolutely did. He came up with the amazing drum pattern on "Ticket to Ride" and many others. And if you watch *Get Back* you can see Paul telling Ringo what to play. Also, Ringo has spoken about being tired of being told how to play the drums. I think Ringo's drum playing fits very well on most Beatles records, and Ringo had a good feel and was a musical drummer. But Paul absolutely did come up with a lot of the specifics of what Ringo played.
According to Mark Lewisohn George Harrison was the one who started it by being absolutely mean and horrible to Geoff right from the start so Geoff never forgot it and decided to get his own back when writing the book . Can’t say I blame him George Harrison by many accounts was a nasty piece of work.
When did the feud start? All 4 Beatles were pretty standoffish to the production team, I mean pretty significantly with George Martin at first. Was it the case that Geoff never actually progressed past that original unfamiliarity or did they literally just have it out for each other?
It started pretty much straight away but reached its zenith when Geoff became the new engineer for Revolver . George Martin took Geoff down to the studio floor and introduced him to the group everyone was fine with the change but George Harrison immediately said “where’s Norman “ and from then on it was bad between Geoff and George Harrison . Apparently once George Harrison got something in his head or if he didn’t like you it would be impossible to shift his opinion even when told by people he liked and trusted he was wrong , George Harrison did not listen . As I said Harrison was a nasty piece of work and have a couple of friends that had the misfortune to meet him and he was horrible . Definitely a case of never meet your heroes.
I’m trying not to get high on how vindicated I feel about George.
Get as high as you want to mate . I kind of feel the same . Am sick of the whole George was held back and treated poorly by John and Paul as that is absolute rubbish. George did not have the songwriting talent John and Paul did and have and if George was never in The Beatles we would never have heard of him . Horrible miserable person by all accounts.
I get so sick of the George sainting.
Totally , I don’t know where it came from as it’s totally unjustifiable on every level . Yes he had All Things Must Pass was a huge album but in hindsight it’s a bit of a bloated mess and is not that great and George never reached those heights again .
i understand that you guys found a safe space to dance on george’s grave, but you take ATMP out your mouth. its one of the finest double albums ever recorded.
Yes it’s good but outside of Beatles fans I don’t think it’s held in high regard .
I do like it and think it’s got some great songs, but it’s too long, and it’s overcooked and somewhat muddy on a production level. Every song has the same flat wall of sound, same intensity, same volume, so that by the end of the album, my ears are kind of bored by the sameness. It is also clear that he completely shot his wad, considering the albums that followed.
Yes he totally shot his wad with All Things Must Pass . Totally agree it sounds absolutely horrible particularly on the wall of sound sings like Wah Wah and Let it Down it’s a full on assault on the ears and not in a good way .
I can't help but notice that it's John and George who get the sainting, and they're both dead. Can you imagine once all the Beatles have died? It'll be a free-for-all...
I dunno, Paulie is pretty sainted around here from what I’ve seen.
inb4 the Ringo sainting, peace and love
Actually, it can be pretty discouraging to be a John fan these days, at least online. It’s nothing but trashing him and calling him a garbage human being and accusing him of everything but bathing in the blood of babies. Not in this sub, necessarily, but everywhere else.
I applaud you
Oh PLEASE spill the tea about those personal encounters with George. I gotta know!
Nothing major as George did not engage . He was in Australia a lot in the 80’s and 90’s mainly for the Grand Prix and also with Derek Taylor at the launch of Fifty Years Adrift which fans could purchase tickets to and George was rude to the people I knew that went .
Ah, so just standoffish? I’d be surprised if he wasn’t tbh
No it was more than standoffish .
George was really really shy, never comfortable with fame, never accepted anyone but John as an ‘alpha male’ (hated Paul trying to be one and in fairness Paul wasn’t very good at it) chased the money (despite his spirituality) as the only thing that would make the sacrifices he made to fame worthwhile, he was privately brilliant and charming but publicly often gauche and peevish, often addicted (I believe) to drugs especially coke and casual sex in between periods of complete abstinence, and combined writing dumb crap like Piggies with ethereal, celestial genius like Long Long Long. In short, a human being, coping with something unimaginable: to be one of the most famous people on the planet at 20. And a very brilliant man indeed. Wouldn’t have happened without him, folks.
Piggies is an amazing song
No it isn’t.
All of that is fair. As a huge John fan, I have no room to knock the personal failings of George and wouldn’t even think to do so. They were mere human beings and they were very young, trying to work through their shit and grow up under unbelievably extraordinary circumstances. My irritation is really just that nowadays, John smearing—some of it based on exaggerations, some of it based on things that we only know about because he himself admitted to them and very openly worked on rectifying—has practically become an internet sport, while it’s become fashionable to fawn over and pity deep, spiritual George as an unsung genius who was bullied and ignored by big meanies Paul and John, all while glossing over or justifying the lurid, nasty and annoying details of his personality and behavior.
I completely agree what you have said . The smearing of John has gotten completely out of hand and I am guessing is being driven by confused millennials and Gen Z’s. Yes this myth of George being an unsung Genius is just laughable as there is no evidence for that as his subsequent solo career makes very clear . As is the myth of George’s material being ignored is simply not true . George himself withdrew All Things Must Pass from consideration as he probably realised he needed it for a solo album he knew was coming . Paul in particular contributed a lot to George’s songs with arrangements etc and George never acknowledged this . He just kept to the mindset he was hard done by and was on the same level as John and Paul . Talk about delusions of grandeur .
Exactly. George himself acknowledged that he had a naughty period in the 1970's, which would've coincided with his separation from Pattie. The idea that John and Paul held back George's songwriting efforts is laughable, because after *Beatles for Sale*, the Beatles never again made an album without including any songs written by George - the running orders can easily verify this.
I think you’re really perpetuating very common myths there . I have never seen any evidences of George being really really shy . Right from the start he spoke his mind and that continued right to the end as we have seen in Get Back where he made his thoughts known and he actually made a lot of sense and was thinking more clearly than John and Paul especially. I am a massive Paul fan but I have to admit in Get Back he comes across as completely annoying and makes no sense whenever he does talk . Am not too sure about The Beatles never happening without George but it would not have been the same that’s for sure .
I think I am repeating some commonly accepted facts, rather than ‘myths’. George was an introvert, but very clever and funny. He was the indulged youngest sibling in a big family (alone among the Beatles - he was on his third guitar when Paul was pretending to play a broken one he couldn’t afford to replace). He hated being third in the hierarchy when he believed he was equal second. He loved working with other musicians who respected and revered him, and why not? He stayed rational in 1968-1969 when the others were losing it. And I think by saying ‘it wouldn’t have been the same’ without George I think you’re agreeing that it wouldn’t have happened without him. George was a genius. No George, no Beatles.
He's very obviously biased towards Paul who seemingly treated him best. He criticized George for taking a bunch of takes to nail a solo but then lauded Paul for taking hours to perfect his bass part until 3am. His critiques of George Martin are hilarious. George literally played and/or arranged a bunch of the actual parts of the songs and Geoff wanted to minimize his contribution which is ridiculous.
I read this book. It’s just that he liked Paul so much better. Paul was friendly & personable to him, while the other Beatles really weren’t-especially George. And Geoff makes it sound like it was really Paul that cared about getting the studio sound & audio mixing right. He spent more time with the engineers, so Geoff got to know him better. I think this was just Geoff’s honest perspective on the band as someone who was there & worked closely with them for years.
WE think of Something as a finished project. GEOFF probably thought of all of the hours of “Mister Show, oh Mister Show” prior. To give one example. The same way that Ringo, John, and George thought about Maxwell’s, is probably how Geoff thought of George overall. If you are a working engineer and producer, you want to work on hits. You tend to listen for things like gaps of space where there is no melody, or chord changes that have odd bar counts, as things to push the artist to reign in. It probably provoked a lot of anxiety for Geoff to have to work in a situation where someone who he thought was an inferior writer was constantly pushing his material in, and possibly harming the quality projects he would also be credited on. Geoff was firmly in the Paul camp and obviously had deep inspiration for that sort of tunefulness. George Martin wasn’t exactly big on pushing George’s stuff either. Geoff was a very kind person, smart, and did in fact speak easily and charmingly. He was apathetic towards pretentiousness. Sometimes people just don’t get along.
The idea that Geoff Emerick was worried about his credit on a Beatles album because of a George Harrison track is beyond preposterous.
That is preposterous. What I mean is that in Geoff’s shoes, you’re in the job of helping lead something to completion and you want it to be as good as possible. If one person is constantly coming in with half written stuff that sounds half ass to you, it becomes a source of frustration. Geoff didn’t want The Beatles record he was at the helm of to be where things dropped off in quality. It was a fair amount of pressure. He had to live up to the bar George Martin set, as well as fantastic engineers like Norm Smith. I mean, I had the opportunity to chat with him about it and other projects he worked on. Great guy. George was super talented of course. Sometimes people just don’t jive.
We've heard Lewisohn say that once George gets an opinion of someone, right or wrong, he's stuck in it. I think it was mostly the jiving. We then see Chris Thomas come in and he's playing on a few of George's so they must have had a good rapport.
George Harrison accused Lewisohn of bootlegging, entirely unfairly, and publicly, and he was thrown off the Anthology project as a result. Olivia has, ever since, refused to reverse George’s position of not cooperating with ML for his matchless books, as she never reverses any decisions that George made since his passing. Oh, apart from releasing Now And Then. I wonder why?!
With Now and Then, enough things had changed to allow Olivia to agree to the project, including Dhani having more say (similar to Sean Lennon), Emerick and George Martin are dead, and Paul becoming this really nice old man who can talk up the good times with Harrison.
Fully agree, Daphnie3. And I’m very glad she agreed. I just wish, for selfish reasons, she’d let Mark L ‘go through the bins’.
you mean "jibing"
He must have had an ugly tie.
Perhaps George’s problem with Emerick was his very obvious preference for Paul? Because Harrison had good relations with Phil McDonald and Ken Scott, two other Beatles engineers.
True. But then a working relationship has to go both ways and George did not go very far in working with the staff, to put it mildly.
Paul was the only one who said hello to him when he first met them. First impressions seem to matter to Geoff a lot.
A Paul sycophant through and through & grossly disrespectful & dismissive of George Harrison. A talented engineer who I do think tended exaggerate his ingenuity & overall impact on the group's recording sessions that he was involved with, coming across at times as if felt he was the true genius behind it all and George Martin could suck it.
I thought I was the only one who noticed this while reading! I also remember some pretty out of pocket homophobic comments about John and George that bothered me.
Lol that book and him have become legendary because of that crap. He was downright cruel regarding Harrison, really. It was shocking when I read it
Harrison was himself an asshole.
They all were at times.
True - there's no such thing as a perfect human being.
Exactly. If he hated George's songs so much, then he would've deliberately avoided working on the sessions for them, but he didn't, and neither did George Martin. George acknowledged that Paul played the guitar solo on *Taxman* and the fuzz bass on *Think for Yourself*, but despite what so many biographers want us to believe, John did not deliberately go AWOL from the sessions for George's songs, and it's often overlooked that he tended to diversify his contributions to George's songs.
I kind of agree about George. He seems to be a constant downer. Watching Get Back it is obvious that he resented McCartney being heavy handed (as well as his underlying resentment of McCartneys amazing natural talent) and was bitter because John thought so little of him and had very little tome for his songs. Watching it, I think most of the negative vibes came from George.
My suspicion is he just had a couple of bad experiences with George and forever hated him. It’s clear that Emerick’s account is heavily biased against George especially, to the extent that fellow engineer Ken Scott wrote a memoir specifically to refute Emerick.
It's clear that Geoff was fabricating or exaggerating nonsense about George.
As I said, he likely just didn’t get along with George for whatever reason and let that influence his account pretty heavily.
Precisely and I agree with you. What Geoff failed to mention, let alone acknowledge, is that the relative limitations of 4-track tape, not to mention subsequent reduction mixes, meant that it wouldn't have been feasible for Paul to redo George's guitar solos, even if he wanted to.
And yet he still came back to do voice acting for The Beatles Rock Band
He was absolutely right that George could be ham fisted early on during solos. And says John was a prick to him which is super believable. He’s honest and correct.
So? It wasn't like George was anywhere near a Sid Vicious-like level.
Why all of this unwarranted or spiteful trashing of George?
I have a suspicion most of his stories are made up and he's lying in some parts... I've watched a lot of interviews actually the same for Norman Smith's and he even called Geoff a liar because in Geoff's book he mentioned Norman somewhat played the drums for a Hard day's night but Norman replied to that, that he never did but only the bongos .
He’s lowkey annoying. Could never stand his interviews
I know and some of his claims in subsequent interviews are either fabricated, exaggerated or questionable. If working on the White Album at EMI was as miserable as he said it was, why did he bother returning there to work on *Abbey Road*?
I found his book not that interesting.
He also said that The White Album is "Unable to listen" The White Album...
He said the white album is unlistenable?
Half of the white album is terrible. The other half is amazing. Would have made a great single LP.
Woah! Fresh take! Tell me your track listing
(Without regard to sequencing:) Back in the USSR Dear Prudence Glass Onion While My Guitar Gently Weeps Happiness Is a Warm Gun I'm so tired Blackbird Mother Nature's Son ... Me and My Monkey Revolution 1 Savoy Truffle Cry Baby Cry
😆 I was being an arse but thanks for sending, it looks good. The thing is, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts so even the average or silly tracks are essential for me. The white album is unlike anything else in their discography which makes it all the more special.
Tbh I think it’s just too varied and not cohesive. But you could make 2 pretty good single albums out of it, one great rock album and a second of the more acoustic tracks. But there’s just so much whiplash as it is.
I seem to be the only person who likes the entire White Album.
That's more applicable to "Two Virgins" and "Metal Machine Music".