- 1 week ago
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CreativityTranscript
00:01Maybe I play bass. I play bass on some, with that six-string Fender.
00:05I mean, it just sounds like him. It was definitely Paul playing piano, so it couldn't have been playing bass.
00:09Well, you should be able to tell, because...
00:11Shall we...
00:13You know, you just know how you would have done it.
00:16There are lots of false starts and breakdowns. That was take one.
00:20So, are you saying the bass is... it wouldn't have been overdub because it's on every take?
00:25It was live.
00:26Okay, well then, it must have been me or John playing it.
00:29Obviously. You can't remember.
00:31Could have been Ring.
00:32Well, look, we did have... we had a six-string bass.
00:36A right-handed bass.
00:38Yeah.
00:39So, for these kind of conditions.
00:41One of the great things about this studio and the way EMI was set up,
00:44was they were set up for Mrs. Mills or Daniel Barenboim or Russ Conway or Peter Sellers.
00:51So, they always had these millions of instruments, like they still got now.
00:54Grand pianos, odd little pianos...
00:56All the ones that you haven't got like yours.
00:59And I've... well, they've ended up at my studio now because they're all trying to get rid of them here.
01:03And, you know, I'll have...
01:04Neil and Mel would be over here.
01:06Behind these...
01:07I thought it was over here.
01:08See, this is where everybody disagrees.
01:10Well, they moved them around so much.
01:11We mainly were over there.
01:13And my bit on, um...
01:17Up the cable!
01:18Up the cable!
01:19Up the cable!
01:20Was through that door.
01:21I think he's talking about Yellow Submarine, I think.
01:24I thought it was natural echo.
01:26Just in that door there.
01:29Yep.
01:29At that time, there was a little board.
01:31The desk at the console was just about this big with four faders on it.
01:37And there was one speaker right in the middle.
01:41And, uh, for a mix, it'd be funny because everybody would get on a fader each and have full bass
01:48and full treble and one speaker.
01:51And that was it.
01:51When they invented stereo, I remember thinking, what do you want two speakers for?
01:57Because it ruined the sound from our point of view.
02:00You know, we had everything coming out of one speaker.
02:03Now we had to come out of two speakers.
02:05It all sounded, like, very naked.
02:08But then, finally, someone said, well, you can move things.
02:11Yeah.
02:11So, like, everything from then on got panned like magic and everything got moved.
02:15Yeah.
02:15But, you know, to get to the point where you do a stereo mix and put the drums and bass
02:20in the middle,
02:20you know.
02:21To the long time.
02:22It used to be over on the side.
02:24Because we always used to do that.
02:25Sticking on one side.
02:25I remember being at a party at Brian's house and talking to someone and saying,
02:29oh, this great bit, this on the drums, listen to this.
02:31And it wasn't on that speaker.
02:33So, hang on.
02:34Put it on again.
02:35We had to go over to the other speaker to hear the drums.
02:37You know.
02:37It's good.
02:38It's great.
02:40There's, like, no drums in that space.
02:42John got a spool of tape of the rough mix of the backing track to,
02:46I think it was, I'm Only Sleeping.
02:49And, you know, by the time he got home, he didn't realize,
02:53because the tape was tails out, and they just stuck it on a reel,
02:58and he put it on his tape machine and threaded the tail in forward and got it backwards.
03:04That's when he came in the next day and said, oh, yeah, backwards.
03:08And then we made him turn the tape over and play it backwards.
03:11And we all played, I think John and I, or Paul and I,
03:14played guitars, just, like, random notes on the guitars.
03:19And then we turned the tape back over to see what we had,
03:22and that was, like, the first time we had a backwards solo.
03:36Please don't spoil my day, I'm miles away,
03:43And after all, I'm always sleeping
03:50You know, it became easier to do experiments
03:54because we'd had a few hits.
03:56You know, that was the key.
03:57The key was that we'd had success.
04:00And then it was, oh, great, come in, lads.
04:02Nice to see you back again.
04:04And as we got more and more success,
04:06we were more and more able to, you know,
04:09try some far-out ideas.
04:12It'd also give us more time.
04:14And also then you'd have success with something
04:16that might have seemed like a far-out idea.
04:18And that had, you know, people would say,
04:20wow, this is great.
04:21And so when we'd come back again
04:22and George would be, you know, really quite keen to try,
04:27well, what other ideas have you got, you know?
04:29So it just became, you know, like a free house
04:33for, you know, whatever idea you wanted.
04:36We'd try it.
04:38Alan, can we have a Tomorrow Never Knows, please?
04:41Which take?
04:42All of them.
04:43Which take?
04:43All of them.
04:44All of them.
04:44First take.
04:45There's only three.
04:45The first take is really weird.
04:47Oh, well, play the rear take.
04:49Listen to this on, it's like the drums
04:51and a guitar that's going to go off speed.
04:54Um, let's hear it right now.
04:58There's only two, there's only two basic track takes,
05:03which is one and three.
05:12All right.
05:13That was a water stick.
05:15We should speed that up and see what it was.
05:18Listen to the drum horn.
05:19Oh, that was great.
05:23Totally different.
05:32It's a bike bike.
05:34There you go, too.
05:36I think I'm happy on this one.
05:41Look at that guitar, slow down the guitar.
05:44All right.
05:54So is that just on its own?
05:55That's its voice.
05:56That's good.
06:01With a bit of drums.
06:03And a bit of loops.
06:04Nothing on there.
06:05We haven't put the loops on this tape.
06:13He wanted his voice to sound like the Dalai Lama, chanting from a hilltop.
06:20And I said, well, it's a bit expensive going to Tibet, can we make do with it here?
06:25And I spoke to Jeff Rimerick and he had a good idea.
06:28He said, let's try putting his voice through a Leslie speaker and back again and re-recording it.
06:34And I don't think anyone had done that before.
06:35And that's the way we got his special effect on his voice there.
06:39And the other thing on that weird track was the tamboura drone and Ringo's very characteristic drumming.
06:46See, it's like doing a rumba.
06:54It's great, I like it.
06:58How is he doing that?
06:59What's that underwater sound?
07:00How is that drummer doing that, George?
07:02Oh, he had to be very brilliant, right?
07:04It's just brilliant.
07:08There's no tambour on it.
07:11What's that with the drums?
07:14It sounds like some kind of resin.
07:17Some residue.
07:21Anyway.
07:24Well, that's the one for me.
07:25You then change it up.
07:27Yeah.
07:28So that was the first take?
07:29That was the first take.
07:31John just had the song.
07:33Well, the song, I think, was very much influenced by, you know, in those days, the Indian music had come
07:39in to our lives.
07:41And the way Indian music just was all on one, in one key.
07:45It didn't modulate.
07:47His idea.
07:47But, you know, he wanted to try a tune like that, that didn't change chords.
07:54And also because of some of the other influences, he had that Timothy Leary book, which was supposedly, I think
08:05it was called a psychedelic experience.
08:06And he had some stuff that related to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and he wrote those words.
08:13And did he, that was all kind of monotone kind of thing.
08:17Lay down your mind, it is not.
08:19And also, you know, Paul and, you know, I mean, there was different things going on, different influences at the
08:26time.
08:27One of them being avant-garde, you know, stock hours.
08:30And so, I mean, it was very much experimental thing and all that was a number of experimental things that
08:38all came together on the one song.
08:43Oh, that was the break now.
08:44Ah, now we're talking.
08:45Now we're talking serious music now.
08:49What did you say?
08:50Well, now tamboolies in.
08:56So what have we got there?
08:58Well, this is the real one now.
09:00We've got the real rhythm on one.
09:01Yeah.
09:02Got the voice on three.
09:04On four.
09:07And on tracks turn three.
09:11You've got your various tape loops and your guitar and tamboolies.
09:23And on that one I brought in a bunch of tape loops and a little plastic bag that I'd done
09:28at home.
09:29And I just made a lot of little loops that I liked, you know, and brought them all in.
09:34Literally little pieces of loop tape, little plastic bag.
09:37And we got them all on about eight or so machines.
09:41With everyone holding a loop and a pencil or a bit of a glass and stuff.
09:45And got them running around on the machines and then fed them all into the desk.
09:48And made a little mix that you heard before.
09:51All those seagull noises and stuff.
09:53It's all sped up tapes and loops.
09:55So that was another little ingredient in that.
09:59That wasn't used, was it?
10:01Yeah.
10:03At that point.
10:09Bring Phil Collins in.
10:23That one's really good.
10:32I don't know if you remember what that loop was made of.
10:37It's hard, brother.
10:39When we made that, frankly, we could never reproduce it again.
10:43It'd be impossible to reproduce again.
10:44Because the way we made it was the actual mix.
10:47And all over this building, in different rooms, were tapes, tape machines, with loops on them.
10:54And people holding the loops at the right distance from them with a bit of pencil.
10:59Going all the time.
11:01Being fed to different faders on our control panel.
11:03Which we could bring up the sound like an organ at any time.
11:06So the mix we did then was a random thing at that time.
11:10Could never be done again.
11:23While I was listening to this.
11:26I was listening to this.
11:31voice is straight and that one is got the wobble on it, the effect on it, yeah.
11:39That's the best one. We are gathered here today.
11:45That's that piano down there.
11:52What are you? I don't know, it sounds like you.
11:56It could be me.
11:58Sooty, have us a funny.
12:02Well there you go.
12:04That's how we did it really.
12:06Hmm, what year it's been for our first time.
12:17Turn off your mind, relax and close down the street.
12:23It is not dying.
12:27It is not dying.
12:32It is not dying.
12:32It is not dying.
12:42It is shining.
12:45It is shining.
12:47It is shining.
12:48That you may see the meaning of within.
12:54It is shining.
12:57It is shining.
12:58It is shining.
13:03It is shining.
13:03It is shining.
13:34de heating up the sky.
13:40It is shining, it is meaning of.
13:43It is now a way
13:47That ignorance and hate flame of the day
13:54It is believing
13:57It is believing
14:02But listen to the color of your dreams
14:09It is not believing
14:18I'll play the game existence to the end
14:25Of the beginning
14:29Of the beginning
14:31Of the beginning
14:35Of the beginning
14:38Of the beginning
14:42Of the beginning
14:46Of the beginning
15:04Of the beginning