The real sampling pioneers?
Among the most elaborate Beatles tracks is Tomorrow Never Knows, described in the Anthology 2 liner notes as “a thrilling orgy of sound” from multiple tape loops. The looping principle developed as an extension of the endlessly repeating ‘closed’ groove of a vinyl record (used artistically some 20 years before the novelty ending of Sgt Pepper). Paul McCartney had encountered tape loops in the art-meets-noise musique concrète of Karlheinz Stockhausen, and dabbled with it at home on his Brennell tape machine. Lennon’s quasi-spiritual closing track on Revolver involved the suitably surreal process of running five separate loops randomly through individual tape decks to the central console feeding the multitrack. Fading the volume of each loop in and out created an eerie aural collage comprising a diverse range of sounds. According to Ian MacDonald, these include McCartney’s laughter speeded up; Paul’s
Taxman guitar solo cut up and reversed; a rising sitar scale; Mellotron flute and string sounds; and a single orchestral chord complementing the song’s harmonic drone.
Sounds of laughter, shades of life
The most distinctive loop on a Beatles record is surely the hypnotic “number nine” on Revolution 9, one of several loops on the White Album’s avant-garde electronic extravaganza. In complete contrast, McCartney’s home loops of wind chimes and chirping crickets delicately herald the Sun King on Abbey Road.
Mr Kite’s carousel is a case in point. George Martin describes how he instructed Geoff Emerick to cut up tapes of generic stream organs and “throw them up in the air” until they formed a random, unidentifiable sequence. The resulting looped edits hugely enhanced the song’s circus feel.
Three further examples illustrate the imaginative ways in which the Beatles used ‘imported’ sounds. The band that “begins to play” at 01:06 on Yellow Submarine was not a bunch of session musicians, but an extract from an old uncredited 78 RPM record; the audience’s laughter on the Sgt Pepper title track can be traced to a 1961 live show by the Beyond The Fringe comedy team; while the animal noises on Good Morning Good Morning were nabbed from the EMI archives.
Perhaps the ultimate Beatles sound collage is Revolution 9, comprising some 45 elements (some looped, as discussed), including a few bars of classical music by Vaughan Williams, Schumann and Sibelius. Not all imported extracts were as highbrow, as shown by the “It’s a goal!” commentary from BBC legend Kenneth Wolstenhome, that closes the Anthology 3 take of Lennon’s Glass Onion.
I notice it’s turning
Despite the rich harmonising and doubling of Beatles vocals (whether real or via ADT), John Lennon would regularly request studio alterations to his voice. His plea to “smother it with tomato ketchup or something!” became, on Tomorrow Never Knows, an instruction to sound like “the Dalai Lama singing from the highest mountain top”. Picking up the gauntlet, the studio team routed John’s vocals through the rotating Leslie speaker cabinet that gives a Hammond organ its distinctive swirling sound. The effect was so stunning that the Beatles would soon demand it for instruments as well as vocals. Examples include Harrison’s guitar on Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds; the rhythm guitars of Magical Mystery Tour and Something; and the tamboura and tom-tom of Across The Universe. The spinning Leslie also provides a fittingly watery effect for the guitar and backing vocals of Octopus’s Garden.
“The studio team routed John’s vocals through the rotating Leslie speaker”