The Beatles (121 page)

No matter how “artistic” or “complex” the songs, when played they became instantly hummable melodies. Every so often—unavoidably—a recognizable riff or backbeat would cut through the atmospheric production to remind people that beneath this new psychedelic guise and ultrahip pretension, the Beatles remained rock ’n rollers at heart. But being a rock ’n roller no longer meant what it had. “
The people who have bought our records
in the past must realize that we couldn’t go on making the same type forever,” John explained. “We must change, and I believe those people know this.”

If they didn’t, they were about to find out.

Chapter 31
A Very Freaky Experience

T
hough die-hard Beatles fans anticipated something exceptional from their heroes, no one, not even other musicians, was prepared for the sound of
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
. The music sounded unlike anything the Beatles had ever done before. Even the structure of the album was unconventional: it was
conceptual,
a kaleidoscope of interconnecting songs without the standard three-second break between tracks.

What to make of it?
Especially considering the tumultuous state of popular music at the time. As EMI and Capitol prepared to release the latest Beatles opus, competing forces vied for the ears of the disenchanted—and divided—young audience. Top 40 pop, like its consumer base, had been rocked by tremors of social and cultural upheaval. A good portion of its listeners—specifically, those teenagers affected by the outburst of creative energy that embraced poetry, drugs, anti-establishment politics, and a general alternative lifestyle—no longer related to the bloodless, derivative pop music that was passed off as rock ’n roll. It didn’t speak to their groovy new way of life; it no longer resonated. Radio stations continued to play the slickly polished toe-tappers and ballads that dominated the charts, but a darker, more sensual strain of music—turned-on music, for want of a better term (“
cheerful music for dope smokers
,” as one critic called it), and very early acid rock—began to creep onto playlists. It was music for “serious” rock fans, and it raised the level of artistry that fans expected from the records they bought.

Groups like the Doors and those psychedelic boogie bands that were emerging out of San Francisco put listeners on notice that rock music was growing up. Within the next few years, they would be joined by virtually the entire sixties rock pantheon: Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, Traffic, Jethro Tull, Sly and the Family Stone, the Band, the Chambers Brothers, Ten Years
After, the Jefferson Airplane, Elton John, Credence Clearwater Revival, the Allman Brothers, Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, as well as the entire Motown and Stax/Volt rosters—all of them swept in in the aftermath of the British invasion and subsequent demise of the Brill Building factory sound. “To those of us making music for a living,” said Pete Townshend, “it seemed like, finally, rock ’n roll had found a perfect groove.” Pop playlists began mixing more progressive “album cuts” with singles, so that songs such as “Windy,” “Happy Together,” and “Somethin’ Stupid” were programmed with “For What It’s Worth” and “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”

As all participants scrambled for a piece of the rock, the Beatles watched impassively from the sidelines. Throughout the first four months of 1967, they remained secluded in Abbey Road, working steadily, fussily, on the new album. Never had they enjoyed such a luxury of time to record. In the past there had always been a deadline looming, always a last-minute crunch to write enough material and get it down before the next tour began. For four years EMI had cracked the whip to ensure that the Beatles released four singles and two albums a year—an output unthinkable by today’s standards. But now, at last, they had time, precious time. No deadlines, no tours, no commitments—no
nothing.

The studio, always off-limits to outsiders, erupted under a crossfire of loud, jangly, exotic—indescribable—sounds competing like car horns at rush hour. George Martin considered it
the Beatles’ “playground
,” but a laboratory was more like it. No song was safe. Ideas that once might have been polished off in a day or two were turned inside out, upside down, to see what might happen. They pounced on “
every trick brought out
of the bag,” according to George Martin. At any time, a “final take” consigned to the can might attract someone’s attention and be reworked entirely the next day. At home following a long night’s work, when a well-deserved joint unleashed some profound, spacey insight, John, Paul, or George might listen to an acetate of the day’s work, pick up a guitar, and bang out a riff that sent everyone back to the drawing board. Instead of learning a new song and recording it, as was customary, there was more a tendency to let it develop organically, idea by idea, overdub by overdub.

The effects of this technique began to pay off immediately. By the middle of January, when they began work on the epic “A Day in the Life,” in essence the first entirely new piece for the album,
^*
the Beatles were able
to build the song’s magnificent production, take by take and layer by layer, at their leisure, from the ground up.

They began on January 19 with a simple, two-track rendition, laying down the basic rhythm—Paul on piano, Ringo on bongos, and George on maracas—accompanied by John’s despairing, spectral vocal saturated in echo “
because he wanted to sound like Elvis
Presley on ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ ” The middle section had yet to be written, so an arbitrary twenty-four bars were left blank, each counted down aloud by Mal Evans, who indicated the end by setting off a noisy alarm clock that was eventually put to good use.

Even in the early run-through, the song showed unmistakable brilliance. The gorgeous melody, as stark as it is soulful, stands as one of the Beatles’ finest accomplishments. John’s “
dry, deadpan voice
” aches with disbelief as he comments on both tragic and inane news items that defy common logic. The lyric came, he maintained, during a stretch at the piano, with the January 17 edition of the
Daily Mail
propped open on the music stand in front of him. “
I noticed two stories
,” he explained. “One was about the Guinness heir”—Tara Browne, a friend of Paul’s—“who killed himself in a car.
^*
That was the main headline story…. On the next page was a story about four thousand potholes in the streets of Blackburn, Lancashire, that needed to be filled.”
^*
Paul’s contribution, he said, was “the beautiful little lick ‘I’d love to turn you on’ ” that had been “floating around” unused.

Or so John claimed. Like all Beatles’ recollections, parts of that account were, indeed, accurate, while other parts improved with age. In fact, John was inspired by the newspaper inasmuch as he set out to write a lyric based on actual events. But when he arrived at Paul’s house to work on the song, only the first four lines existed, along with a bit of the second verse and the melody. “
The verse about the politician
blowing his mind out in a car we wrote together,” Paul recalled. As far as he could remember, there was no discussion about Tara Browne. “The ‘blew his mind’ was purely a drug reference, nothing to do with a car crash.”

They spent the next few hours constructing the rest of the song, filling in “
funny… little references
” and adapting the Blackburn potholes story
from John’s newspaper. It was a delicious bit of absurdity, blithely surreal and apropos of, well… nothing:
perfect!
In the meantime, they stitched in the “woke up, fell out of bed…” sequence that Paul borrowed from another song he’d been fiddling with—“
a little party piece
of mine”—leaving the rest for improvisation in the studio.

Back at Abbey Road, the Beatles were encouraged by a happy coincidence. The “woke up, fell out of bed…” sequence fit into the song exactly at the point where Mal’s alarm clock rang! It was almost too good to be true. But they still had twenty-four bars to account for. The best they could hope for was an outrageously long middle eight to materialize.

But the gap whetted Paul’s appetite for a grander, more ambitious effort. Sometime during the second day’s work, it dawned on him: a big orchestral buildup. “
It was a crazy song
, anyway,” he rationalized. “We could go anywhere with [it].” As he kneaded it for a while, the idea leavened. He envisioned a magnificent instrumental interval, avant-garde in its approach, that produced a spiraling ascent of sound. Explaining it to John, Paul said: “
We’ll tell the orchestra
to start on whatever the lowest note on their instrument is, and to arrive at the highest note on their instrument. But to do it in their own time.” The effect would be “
something really tumultuous
… something extremely startling.” When he requested that George Martin book a symphony orchestra, however, the producer told him to forget it. The idea appealed to Martin. “
But ninety musicians
”—the standard symphony configuration—“would be… too expensive.” Martin already feared that the project was getting away from them. In the past, an evening session was called for seven o’clock
sharp,
with everyone ready to record. Now sessions operated on Beatles Time, which meant that while the staff assembled at seven, Ringo might arrive about 10:45, with the others trickling in before 11:30, in time to grab a cup of coffee or a smoke, maybe catch up with friends, before getting down to work. But—oh, the payoff! All anyone had to do was listen to
Rubber Soul
or
Revolver
as a reminder. Who could argue with that? So, after mulling it over, Martin suggested that
half
an orchestra might serve the same purpose. No one in his right mind would book forty-one musicians—from the prestigious London Philharmonic, no less—to play twenty-four bars of music, but book them he did. Nor did he bat an eye when the Beatles requested that everyone wear evening dress for the occasion.

In the meantime, they set to work on the title song, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” which Paul wrote, he claimed, “
with little or no input
from John.” With concentration and technical innovation, the
track was hustled into shape in a lively two-day marathon, along with a basic reading of “Good Morning, Good Morning,”
the theme of which John pinched
from a Kellogg’s Cornflakes commercial.

Each new triumph by the Beatles created an urgent need for fresh material. John and Paul continued to write, both together and apart, delivering “With a Little Help from My Friends” and “Lovely Rita” in the intervening days. Another song was inspired by a “blurry and watery” painting John’s four-year-old son, Julian, brought home from nursery school. “
The top was all dark
blue sky with some very rough-looking stars, [and] green grass along the bottom,” Julian recalled years later. Near the corner, he’d drawn a stick-figure girl—presumably his classmate Lucy O’Donnell, identified by her long blond hair. “I showed it to Dad and he said, ‘What’s that then?’ ” Julian blurted out the first thing that came into his mind: “That’s Lucy in the sky, you know, with diamonds.”

The moment Paul learned of it, over cups of steaming tea with John in the breakfast room at Kenwood, he flashed: “
Wow, fantastic title!
” Perfect for their next song, it was “
very trippy
” sounding, which meant they could ladle on the psychedelic imagery.
John had already begun playing
with a few lines inspired by the “Wool and Water” chapter of
Through the Looking Glass,
one of his and Paul’s favorite books. “Picture yourself on a boat, on the river…” You could go anywhere on the wings of a line like that! They immediately went upstairs and began writing, “
swapping psychedelic suggestions
,” Paul recalled, and “
trading words off each other
, as we always did.” He came up with “cellophane flowers” and “newspaper taxis”; John pitched in with “kaleidoscope eyes.” It came together very quickly. The result was sure to please George Martin. First, however, they had to finish “A Day in the Life,” which awaited a hot middle passage.

On February 10 the all-male orchestra, in full evening dress, assembled in Abbey Road’s Studio One, the cavernous, hangarlike hall near the entrance to the building, dotted with a hundred “ambiophonic” loudspeakers and accommodating up to a thousand musicians, where so many of EMI’s legendary symphonies had been recorded. The ghosts of Elgar, Caruso, Menuhin, Heifetz, Casals, Toscanini, Robeson, and Callas were banished to the rafters as the Beatles invaded sacred territory—not in tuxedos, as promised, but tricked out in a wildly flamboyant, neon-rainbow wardrobe and loaded with gag accessories that they distributed to the mortified musicians. The violinists were given red clown noses; their leader, the eminent Erich Gruenberg, fitted with a gorilla’s paw on his bow
hand. Balloons were attached to the bows of stringed instruments. The brass and woodwind section wore plastic spectacles, with fake noses and funny hats. Badges, bells, and beads were affixed where applicable. John giddily handed out plastic stick-on nipples and fake cigars. “
People were running around
with sparklers and blowing bubbles through little clay pipes,” George Martin recalled. Most of the classical musicians remained bewildered. Many were contemptuous, offended, brimming with hostility. To them, it was an undignified way to behave in the studio. Still, it was a payday, and a good one at that, stretching on and on to accommodate the Beatles’ flights of fantasy.