Have you figured out by now that I’m a big Beatles fan? Anything related to their songs or studio life is very fascinating to me and in today’s world of the interwebs it has gotten easier and easier to find little gems such as this.
This is a clip that not only shows the behind-the-scenes of the mighty Beatles recording and rehearsing “Hey Jude”, but also shows a glimpse of their infighting.
This was being filmed for a TV show in England called “Music”. The presence of the TV crew put the band on edge (at this time in their career almost anything would put them in an edgy state) and resulted in Paul and George going at it with each other. George, consequently, refused to participate and sat in the control room with their producer George Martin. You can hear George talking with Martin at one point and it is clear that Paul and George were fighting over the direction of the song.
George is heard saying “That’s the difficulty I find… It’s just a concept. You can say it doesn’t go like that, it goes like that. But, it goes like that and it goes like anything. It can become pop, jazz, classic…whatever you want to do with it.”
It must have been hard to be George Martin during those tense moments in the studio. Despite, they were all still capable of pulling together a #1 hit.
Another interesting factoid regarding this clip is that the audio you hear on the video was intended to be the basic track of the song on the album. The Beatles took this track over to another studio, Trident Studios, to add overdubs. Trident was the only studio in London at the time that had 8 track recorders, so the intention was to use those extra tracks for the overdubs and swelling chorus at the end. However, transferring the track didn’t work out and they ended up re-recording what we hear today as the basic track at Trident Studios.
At any rate, enough of me jabbering…
http://youtu.be/p8yDZA5v8gc
Till next time…
David (Cali Dingo)