The Beatles Complete Discography

Yesterday I unexpectedly got paid right as I left work, so to celebrate, I went crazy and bought a pantload of cool stuff. I got me a couple of Sonic Youth CDs, V for Vendetta (which I still haven't watched), and a book called The Beatles Complete Discography by Jeff Russell. If you are a Beatles fan thirsting for knowledge about every song ever released by them, you should definitely check this sucka out. It goes album by album, song by song, listing who wrote it, who played what instrument, and any interesting stories behind the song or its recording.

Immediately I searched for what I think is probably my favourite song ever, I Am the Walrus. What an awesome bunch of info! Apparently the voices are the result of John plugging a radio into the recording console and tuning it into stations randomly. Even cooler is the fact how perfectly it worked out; if you listen to one of the last choruses, when John sings "I am the eggman," a radio voice says "Are you then, sir?" and when he says "They are the eggmen," a different radio voice says "A man may take you for what you are."

That was all coincidental! Insane!

And the chanting at the end, which I always thought was just people shouting, is apparently a boys choir singing "Oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumpah" and a girls choir singing "Everybody's got one."

In closing, it's a really neat book if you're a stickler for useless facts like I am.

Congrats! :D (Must spread it around.....)

Could you let me know which somg they did that they put chains in a metal wash tub and swished it around. I think it was from the "Yellow Submarine?" album.

Not a big Beatles fan but I was always intruiged to hear how that sound was used.

I read about that one time when they were doing an article on a producer of that album. Something to do with pioneering using Mics up close to amps....

Originally Posted by: jimmy_kwtxCongrats! :D (Must spread it around.....)

Could you let me know which somg they did that they put chains in a metal wash tub and swished it around. I think it was from the "Yellow Submarine?" album.

Not a big Beatles fan but I was always intruiged to hear how that sound was used.

I read about that one time when they were doing an article on a producer of that album. Something to do with pioneering using Mics up close to amps....

I think you're probably thinking of the song "Yellow Submarine" from the album Revolver. There was recently an article in Guitar World about Geoff Emerick and how he helped pioneer many recording techniques while working on it. Was that the article?

Yeah! Zachary, the articlw I was talking about. Does the book cover that? I 'm just curious to know.

Thanx

Originally Posted by: jimmy_kwtxYeah! Zachary, the articlw I was talking about. Does the book cover that? I 'm just curious to know.

Thanx

It sort of does. It says that many sound effects were used, and it says one of them was splashing water around in a big metal tub.

Chains are sort of like water, right? :p

Cool.

Yeah, who would a thunk chains + tub + swish (add some mic and reverb and whatever else) and wah-lah = Water.

Sound producers amaze me.

If you really want to delve into the Beatles, you need to get the bootleg masters as well. They have most of the earlier takes on them, like Take #1 of Help... (the guitar sounds horrible and it's just an instrumental)
Alternatate versions of some of the songs like 'Lucy' and slower versions of other songs. There's also a ton of them just leaving the tape running while they're talking about things...
ie, like in Help for instance, it stops in the middle of one of the takes and John Lennon shouts.. "STOP STOP STOP... string broke"
Little arguments and discussions about things.
There's a couple of versions of Hard Days Night where they can't get the words right and keep singing them in the wrong order.

I think the most fascinating this about the recordings though, are that they're straight out of the mixing board. There's no sweeting been done. No added reverb. Plus you can get an idea of how they utilized the four track by listening to the various takes. They'd start with an instrumental, then do a 'reduction mix' where they would bounce tracks down to free up tracks for vocals or more guitar. Last would be the vocal tracks.
Then you can hear the difference between what it sounds like before and after mixing and mastering.

If you couple it with the book that was written years ago about the recording session info, listing the days on which everything was done and track records... you can get a pretty good idea of how the band worked together.

Good tip, Schmange. The book covers a lot (if not all) of these alternate versions of songs and whatnot.

Man, what a band, huh?

Read 'The Beatles' by Bob Spitz (just out in soft cover) and it is the best Beatles biography that I've ever read. It's even handed and shows the band, warts and all, throughout their career together. Talks at length about how they worked in the studio.

Not like that f%^*(g hatchet job that Albert Goldman did on Lennon years ago.