Bang The Drum All Day: Abbey Road

Abbey Road has special significance for me, as it was where I met my wife. We shared a flat at Neville Court, the red brick mansion block directly across from the famous recording studios.

That was back in the early 1990s. We would often see tourists ‘doing the crossing’ as we left for work, but nothing like the crowds you get there today.

And while I lived right across the road, it wasn’t until 2022 that I got to see inside Abbey Road Studios.

It was the day the Queen died, 8 September 2022 and I was staying at my mother's place while on a visit to the UK.

I have a friend who’s a sound engineer and does occasional sessions at Abbey Road. I'd asked him if there was ever an opportunity to come and see inside the studio, to let me know. He called me up that evening and just as I'm on the phone to him, my mum comes in and tells me "she's gone".

The SSL 96-channel console in Studio 3

I felt a bit bad leaving my mum to grieve for the old Queen on her own, but she understood this was a unique opportunity for me.

An hour later, I entered the courtyard of Abbey Road Studios and made my way up the steps to the studio reception. My mate Simon came to greet me and took me first of all to Studio Three, or 'Number 3' as AR insiders say.

This is the smaller (relatively) performing space where, most famously, Pink Floyd recorded their classic albums including Dark Side Of The Moon, as seen in this clip from 1972.

Although the Beatles are most closely associated with Number 2 studio, they recorded several of their classic songs in Number 3, including Eleanor Rigby. Penny Lane, Let It Be and, from the Abbey Road album, Come Together, Something, I Want You (She’s So Heavy), You Never Give Me Your Money and Here Comes the Sun.

Elgar on the podium of Number 1,
George Bernard Shaw on the stairs

Back in 1966, Studio Three also hosted the famous tape-looping session for the Revolver album track Tomorrow Never Knows. I wrote about it here. There is also footage of them in Studio 3 used in the promo videos for Lady Madonna and Hey Bulldog.

Moving on, we went to Studio 1, the orchestral chamber where Sir Edward Elgar made many of his most famous recordings. It's a cavernous room.

Elgar actually conducted the first-ever recording session at Abbey Road (then known as EMI Studios) in 1931, leading the London Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Pomp and Circumstance, familiar to anyone who has watched the Last Night Of The Proms, as it includes Land of Hope and Glory.

Gilmour recording the Shine On riff in Number 1

Although Pink Floyd recorded mostly in Studio 3, for the track Shine On You Crazy Diamond, the band and engineers wanted to gain maximum ambience for the song's iconic guitar figure. So, the men in white coats placed David Gilmour's amps in Studio 1. I wrote about that here.

At the height of 1967's Summer Of Love, a few days after the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles recorded backing tracks at Olympic Studios for a new song by John, All You Need Is Love. This was premiered on 25 June in a television show, Our World, the first live global television link, broadcast via satellite and seen by an audience of over 400 million in 25 countries.

All You Need Is Love, filmed in Number 1

Filmed in Studio One at Abbey Road, the Beatles were accompanied by a thirteen-piece orchestra and surrounded by friends and acquaintances seated on the floor, including Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Keith Moon.

Engineering the session and the live link was Geoff Emerick, who recalled the experience as "horrendous".

"To attempt to record what he did, even without a link up, was ridiculous." George Martin had the band record a basic track for them to play along to on the live feed. Nonetheless, the vocals, bass guitar, George's lead solo, the drums and the orchestra were all done live.

Studio One today

The pre-taped rhythm track went onto track one of the four-track tape. On to track two went the bass, lead guitar and drums; track three the orchestra and track four the vocals.

While all this was going on, George Martin and Geoff Emerick did an instantaneous remix that was fed directly to the BBC and then to the world.

The market for new orchestral works stagnated somewhat in the 1970s and Studio One was utilised so little that it became an indoor sports venue for the musicians.

Its fortunes were revived in the 1980s with the growth of orchestral recordings for films. Raiders of the Lost Ark being the first major film soundtrack recorded in Studio 1.

Number 2, from the stairs to the control room

Studio 3 has been updated and modernised over the years, but the larger recording rooms have retained many of their period features, in large part because of the historical significance attached to the music that has been made there.

Number Two, the most renowned recording space, perhaps in the world, is similarly intact from its heyday, when The Beatles created many of their greatest songs.

Sixty years ago, they would record on four-track machines, often bouncing down four tracks onto one and sometimes using two four-track machines in sync. Today in Number Two, Abbey Road has a 60-track desk, while Number Three has a 96-track console.

Amongst the vintage instruments still on the studio floor is the old Steinway Vertegrand upright piano that Paul McCartney would have used for Lady Madonna (actually recorded in Number 3) and the filming of Hey Jude.

Lab coats were standard
for technical staff

The piano has seen better days and has some keys missing, but has been kept entirely because of its Beatle associations.

In the 1950s, Abbey Road was a very traditional classical music and light entertainment studio. The men in white coats kept everything tickety-boo and the recording engineers wouldn't dream of seeing the volume meters edging into the red.

A new era began in the late 1950s, when Studio 2 was remodeled; the control room was moved upstairs and the now-famous staircase was installed descending onto the studio floor.

At that point, no one would have foreseen the pioneering musical explorations that would follow in the Sixties. The Beatles pushed at the boundaries of acceptable studio practice, encouraging others like The Pink Floyd, to express themselves fully, using psychedelics and the avant-garde as their inspiration. As a new generation of engineers came through the ranks, people like Geoff Emerick, Ken Scott and Alan Parsons, Abbey Road became a rock and roll studio, and the Beatles were the ground-breakers.

The 60-channel Neve console
upstairs in Studio 2

Given free-rein at Abbey Road, and having quit touring by 1966 to concentrate on studio work, the Beatles were way ahead of other groups at the time, in terms of composition and studio innovation.

While Tomorrow Never Knows, the final track on 1966's Revolver, had been a major leap in how bands could use primitive studio trickery, the final track on the 1967 follow-up album still stands as one of the most successful and iconic musical experiments.

Not only was A Day In The Life compositionally unconventional, joining two distinct songs into one cycle, it has a number of peaks and troughs, culminating in a final chaotic crescendo. The middle section is particularly inspired, with fairly obvious allusions to marijuana and LSD: "found my way upstairs and had a smoke; and somebody spoke and I went into a dream..."

John listening to a Sgt. Pepper play-back

The dream sequence that follows, with John singing the euphoric melody line, drenched in reverb is, I would contend, the high point of progressive popular music in the 1960s.

The orchestral session for A Day In The Life confirms their influence by the avant-garde composers. They left 15 bars at the end of the song blank, telling the orchestra to start on their lowest note and be at their highest by the end of the 15 bars.

Paul recalls, "It was interesting, because the trumpet players - always fond of a drink - didn't care, so they'd be up there at the note ahead of everyone. The strings all watched each other like sheep 'Are you going up?' 'Yes', 'So Am I'. 'A little more?' Yes. All very delicate and cosy. You listen to those trumpets. They're just freaking out."

Paul with the orchestra in Number One

It was the largest number of musicians ever heard on a Beatles track. According to Derek Taylor, the big orchestral session was "a riot of festive props, false noses, upside down glasses and imitation bald heads". Erich Gruenberg, the lead violinist, wore a gorilla's paw on his bowing hand.

The recording of the orchestra for A Day In The Life was engineered by Geoff Emerick. He said, "It was only by careful fader manipulation that I was able to get the crescendo of the orchestra at the right time.

"I was gradually bringing it up, and then slightly fading it back in without the listener being able to discern this was happening. Then I'd have about 4 dB's in hand at the end. It wouldn't have worked if I'd just shoved the level up to start with."

Mark Lewisohn's book, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, reveals how, at the end of the orchestra's tremendous crescendo, everyone in the studio broke into a spontaneous barrage of applause.

This youtube clip includes rough footage of the orchestral sessions for A Day In The Life, in the typically psychedelic style of the times, with candid shots of the various band members and friends.

Yours truly in Studio 2

Recording engineers will tell you the key to a successful session is the correct use of microphones. Abbey Road retains one of the greatest collections of vintage and modern microphones in the world; all still fitted with their original valves and regularly maintained.

Another unique aspect of the Studio One facility was the 'ambiophonics' speaker system, whereby 100 speakers were fitted symmetrically to all four walls, artificially tailoring the acoustics by feeding signals delayed at different intervals.

The final 'eternal chord' on A Day In The Life came from all four Beatles and George Martin in the studio playing three pianos. All of them hit the chords simultaneously, as hard as possible, with the engineer pushing the volume input faders down on the moment of impact. Then, as the sound gradually diminished, the faders were pushed slowly up to the top. It took 45 seconds and it was done three or four times, piling sound upon sound.

George Martin said of the Day In The Life sessions, "One part of me thought, we're being a bit self-indulgent here. The other part of me said, It's bloody marvellous".

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