I spent a good 40 hours watching Get Back, the new Beatles documentary faithfully restored and presented by master storyteller Peter Jackson. Listening on my home surround system in the living room, not only is the film visually incredible with the AI-based colorization of the amazing outfits the lads wore, but the sound… man the sound is unmistakable. The impact that EMI and Abbey Road had on the progression of recording and pop music is vast. During the time the Beatles were recording at Abbey Road, the EMI audio scientists created hundreds of custom pieces of audio hardware for equalizing, compressing and saturating audio. Almost every day they were showing up at their session with a new amazing-sounding piece of hardware.
I called this piece “Distortion and Transcendence” because it’s partly about audio distortion and partly about emotional distortion and the way the Beatles utilized both to create some of the greatest music of all time. It is not a secret in the film that this documentary represents the last month in the existence of the Beatles as a band, and the tensions that all the members are feeling are on full display. George is the most obvious case, with simmering resentment at being bossed around and suppressed as a writer by Paul and John for years. Paul is obviously feeling the band falling apart, and is desperately trying to wrestle as much music as he can get out and as many performances as he can out of the band. The other lads are not feeling it. John is obsessed with his new wife, and is dabbling with heroin, and showing up late almost every day for rehearsal. John is more or less faxing it in part of the time, until Paul gets him going and they are screaming bloody murder at each other and otherwise fucking about. Ringo is obviously exhausted by all of this and often looks tired and worn out. Nonetheless, they transcend. They achieve something remarkable. They make a brand new album of songs when the original intention was to rehearse previous songs (for a yet-to-be-announced concert) at the end of the month. In this metaphysical and artificlal world of Twikingham Film studios, they are trying to make music despite the fact that initially there are no microphones, or recording gear. Many more bourgeois bands would refuse to play with no support, but the lads sit down a few feet away from each other on Day 1 and begin jamming. The extraordinary thing is that bit by bit, gear starts to arrive…
It starts initially with a young boy on set with a Nagra film recorder and a boom mic that’s constantly being flung about as the group moves to different parts of the room. It’s almost comedic, and the band makes full use of the absurdity of the moment. Within a few days a couple of mics arrive as does a PA system. It’s almost as if the gear are like weeds that start to spring up as the days of rehearsing and recording progress. In time, Paul and John lobby Sir George Martin to leverage his connections with the label to get an 8-track recorder and an EMI desk into the studio so Glyn Johns can begin documenting their efforts. From the perspective of any engineer or producer like myself, who has spent their life documenting art and making records, this film is an extraordinary document of not just the personal lives of these four artists and their families. It’s a time stamp of the turning point in the very sound of music. This equipment they were using, the Neumann tube microphones, the EMI console, the Vox PA system, the whole setup is as high-fi as it gets, even by today’s standards.
Highly recommended if you are interested in The Beatles’ recordings.
Recording The Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used To Create Their Classic Albums is a book by Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, published by Curvebender Publishing in September 2006. Written over the course of a decade, the book addresses the technical side of the Beatles’ sessions and was written with the assistance of many of the group’s former engineers and technicians, chief among them Peter K. Burkowitz, designer of the REDD mixing console.
For anyone who studies the sound of the Beatles records, the immediate sounds you are hearing in this film are unmistakable. Also, the fact that there’s no isolation — they’re singing through a shitty PA that’s constantly feeding back, and yet they still create magic, sitting 4-5 feet away from one another. The way that Ringo deadens his snare and toms with tea towels, George’s guitar sounds and effects, John’s way of playing with his voice until he finds the right sound for the song, and Paul’s mastery of not just the bass and guitar, but piano and voice as well, are inspiring. Paul McCartney may be the greatest vocalist of this generation. He is already the most prolific and deepest songwriter. While the other three guys are coming and going, Paul is relentlessly working out the kinks or a large number of possible songs for the album. There he is sitting at the piano for hours, rehearsing, running them like trump cards. “Let it Be,” “The Long and Winding Road,” “Two of Us,” as well as older songs he and John started but never recorded.
The Beatles’ contributions as musicians and singers are incredible, and of course, there is the distortion. The distortion of the sounds is part of the magic sauce of record-making
noun
noun: distortion; plural noun: distortions
Distortion is a hard thing to describe with words. You have to hear it to appreciate it, and of course in most cases, to the average listener, you don’t hear it at all. To the untrained ear, people mostly ignore it and focus on the talking or the music, on the radio, in a bar, or in a large venue. Distortion is a part of life.
Since the beginning of recorded sound, starting with Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, scientists were experimenting with ways to capture sound. The earliest systems, the wire recorder and the phonograph, were both using motion and pressure to capture sound with a cone, much like the logo of RCA Records, with the dog and his master’s voice. The musicians or singers would make a sound and the cone would amplify it and it would vibrate to a needle that would cut into the rotating wire or vinyl disk. They would literally be cutting a record. The most obvious observation when now listening to these old recordings is how much distortion there is; it’s almost so distorted you can hardly hear the music at all, yet millions of people were captivated by these early recording devices. It was very easy for them to make the association between the singer, and the recording of the singer as being the same thing. Even with the most advanced processors and chips and hardware available today, we still hear distortion all the time.
My favorite example of distortion is the on-hold music for Citibank, this saccharine, pseudo soft -rock song with a wilty sax player.
It’s been their theme song for a decade at least, and it’s always been distorted beyond all recognition. Trillions of dollars in transactions and shitty hold music. Definitely not a Grammy contender. Grammy is of course slang for gramophone, the first phono recorder, and playback device manufactured by RCA Records. You also hear modulation distortion all the time when getting too far from a radio station tower, or moving away from a few clicks from the center of the dial on your car radio. Get far away enough and the distortion overtakes the music and it’s just noise.
So, if this noise is so bothersome to some (audio experts like me), how come people don’t complain about it? Well, A. Distortion is a part of life and B. People love distortion. Listen to any Jack White record, or any major pop record these days. Regardless of the style or genre of music, there is a lot of distortion in the music (guitar amps, tube mics, tube amps, discreet amps ) or even more distortion in the processing of the sounds. This is because distortion is the ultimate spice combo for sound.
Like salt and seasoning on food,
distortion is seasoning for sound
Most music heads want to freak out when they hear anything distorted. Like when Jimi Hendrix feeds back his Marshall amp, or any great rock guitar player does, distortion does funny things to our nervous system, and like the drugs we like to take, we like taking in distortion as well. Jack White now has his own pressing plant and manufactures his own custom distortion pedals. Distortion is cool.
What happens when you distort sound? Well, if you examine sound through a scope, you can see what a pure sine wave looks like and what is begins to look like when you amplify or saturate it. This can be done in many ways. You can plug it into a guitar amp and crank it up. You can also process it in a number of ways, by passing it through one of many pieces of audio gear that make it sound wonderful. What you see on the scope as you crank up the juice is that spikes and square shapes start to appear in the otherwise pure sine wave. That is the sound collecting and gathering harmonics as it gets more saturated. Harmonics are a natural part of nature, you hear them everywhere, as screen doors creak in the wind, and wind makes higher frequencies when it blows faster. The same thing happens when you begin to distort a voice. The grain and crud of the voice become more apparent, and the voice sounds warmer and less clinical.
When people, people like John and Paul scream into the mic, it gets really distorted, and it sounds amazing. They were well familiar with blowing up a mic after years of experience making records. So the entire experience of watching them make this record, from almost no gear, to bringing in gear to the film studio, to ultimately transferring mid-rehearsal to Apple studio their new facility, is a study in distortion and recording. Everything is distorted, Ringo’s drums through the tube mics, the vocals, Billy Preston’s keyboards. Everything. Everything is lovingly compressed and distorted by the incredible gear Glyn Johns is wielding in the control room. The amazing thing about this particular doc is that of course watching the process they go through to create is fascinating, but to hear it in hi fidelity is the ultimate experience for a true music head like myself.
The next part of the story of this documentary is the thing that is emotionally the most inspiring to me. Making a record is one of the hardest things you can do. Not because it’s hard to get a great drum sound, or get a great vocal performance, or capture the intricacies of the sounds. That’s all hard, for sure. But what’s really hard, is getting out of your own way, and letting your baggage not get in the way of creating something of greatness. The thing that is most inspiring about this film is seeing these four people, with the support of a very small staff, deal with all the emotional baggage that they obviously had with themselves as well with each other; and despite all that, find a way to love one another and create something that transcends their own mortality. Two of the Beatles are no longer with us. In time Paul and Ringo will pass away. But the love and the humor and passion that they share with one another despite their differences and insecurities is one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen in my life. I have spent thousands of days of my life in various studio situations with all kinds of emotional challenges. Ultimately, music, like sports, is a mind game. The goal for the artists, as well as the engineers and producers, is to do something great and best your previous record, even though by any standard it seems impossible.
Why do people bother to achieve? It’s hard to say, but all people who we admire share one ideal: That they do it and succeed with it despite people’s lack of belief or even their own lack of belief. The Beatles, all of them are undeniable geniuses in their own right. But the way in which they interact with each other is an amazing thing to see and hear. Most of the time they don’t even count in the songs, one just starts paying and the others fall in instinctively. Lyrically, to see John and Paul riffing on the right way to sing a line, or which words to use is a thing of beauty. They also employ chaos theory, often launching into games where they sing the whole song through their teeth, or with a silly Scottish accent. Of course, another great way to make something even better is to add another party. In this case, phenomenal keyboardist and singer Billy Preston, who brings the grease and funk and musicality. They never sounded better than with Billy’s additions. At one point Billy is reading the local tabloid while laying down the funkiest part with his right hand. I can only imagine that while they appear to be fucking about, they are in actuality stitching together the ultimate version of the line or words. Getting away from it in your mind is a pathway to discovery. These guys were the masters of getting out of their own way.
It takes a village for sure to make records, and George Martin and Glyn Johns don’t say much, but occasionally they come with the butters. The moment when Glyn and George Martin present Paul with the idea to perform on the roof of Apple is captured in ultra slow motion. You see the recognition, then the unmistakable smile and excitement that Paul has found the perfect scenario for their last concert in history. Also Glyn guides Paul in real time thorough the refrain of “Let it Be,” minutes before Paul teaches the sequence to the rest of the band. It doesn’t get any better than that. Then there’s Mal, the band’s trusty roadie, making sure to get down all the permutations of the lyrics with John and Paul, documenting everything on paper, lugging all the gear around the room, and ultimately negotiating with the angry officers downstairs, as the lads are making history on the roof. This film is, in my humble opinion, the greatest music documentary I have ever seen. The way in which the cameramen quietly captured one of the greatest collaborations in history is truly a thing to behold, and an incredible listen as well.