My visit to Abbey Road Studios

Abbey Road has a 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. 

<= Yes, I lived here. That was back in the early 1990s. We would sometimes see tourists ‘doing the crossing’ as we left for work, but nothing like the crowds you get there today.

And though 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. 

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. 

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. 

The 60-channel Neve console
upstairs in Studio 2

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.

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

John had already recorded his dream sequence vocal that follows, and since they were recording on the same track, Paul was under pressure to follow his guide vocal exactly, or risk erasing part of John's bit. 

The dream sequence that follows, with John singing the euphoric melody line (ahhh, ah-ah-ah, etc) drenched in reverb is, I would contend, the high point of progressive popular music in the 1960s; a breakout moment for a generation held back by parental conformity and conservatism. It's exactly why Sgt Pepper was so revered at the time and for years afterwards, though nowadays its immense influence has tended to be forgotten.

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

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".

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL. THANKS

You see that little green light in the window
 on the left? That's where I used to live

Also on this blog:

1966 - The Beatles escape the madness of the road to createRevolver

LIFE magazine reports on 'The New Far-out Beatles', 1967

 Sgt. Pepper Is The Beatles - Who Knew?

How Sgt Pepper disappeared from those lists of classicalbums

At Home With the Lennons, 1967

 A Night With John Lennon - The Fab Faux at Radio City MusicHall

1966 - The Beatles escape the madness of the road to create Revolver

The Beatles in '66

"You clink a couple of glasses together, or take bleeps from the radio, then you loop the tape to repeat the noises at intervals."

By 1966, the Beatles' music was starting to reflect their indulgence in marijuana and LSD. The extra time the band would have in the studio led to a much greater level of experimentation. The first fruits of this psychedelic vision appeared on Revolver in August 1966. It has come to be seen as their high point, musically. 

The band had begun recording sessions in the Spring of 1966, at a time when they were still playing live. They played their final show on August 29 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, concluding that they were stagnating as a band because they couldn't be heard above the screaming.

In his interview for the 20th anniversary of Rolling Stone magazine, George Harrison said he had wanted to stop touring in 1965.

The NME's reappraisal in 1976

"I was getting very nervous. They kept planning these ticker-tape parades and I was saying I absolutely do not want to do that. I didn't like the idea of being too popular."

On one occasion, he said the Beatles landed in Houston. "There were thousands of kids - and four policemen. The kids were actually running along the runway. The pilot brought the plane to a stop and within minutes they were all over the outside of the plane, knocking on the windows and all over the wings. It was ridiculous."

The retrospective review of Revolver by the NME's Steve Clarke in 1976 (pictured here - click on it to read the clipping) reflects a growing appreciation of it as "their most listenable and durable work".

Revolver was still largely a Lennon and McCartney show, but George was tangibly more involved at this point, contributing three songs including the opening track 'Taxman' - "a tight, spare rocker," said the NME. Clarke notes how the band had evolved as players, with Paul's bass lines being "vibrant and imaginative" and the guitars harder and louder.

In the mid 60s, the majority of vinyl albums were still released principally in mono. Stereo was emerging but for bands like The Beatles it was still an afterthought. There were mono and stereo versions of Revolver released and the mixes were often very different between the two formats. 

For example, on Taxman, the mono version gives more prominence to the bass guitar and John's rhythm guitar has more attack. A cowbell appears prominently in mono but is buried in the stereo version. 

While John's songs reflected his increasingly cerebral preoccupations, Paul's work on Revolver showed a classic songwriter in the making. Songs such as Here, There and Everywhere, For No One and Eleanor Rigby would become standards covered by many other artists.

Eleanor Rigby is such a unique but assured piece of work, really one of their best compositions - probably more Paul than John but once again proof of their potency as a writing partnership. 

The psychedelia is turned up a notch for John's 'I'm Only Sleeping', with its dreamy feel the result of vari-speeding of the vocals and rhythm track, and some 'backwards' guitar (actually written out backwards and played as a melodic run by George).

The Fabs pay the price for standing up Imelda

World tours interrupted the sessions. On one leg of the tour, in the Philippines, the band failed to attend a reception arranged for them at the Presidential Palace by Imelda Marcos. "I'm very pleased to say that we never went to see those awful Marcoses," said George. 

"They sent people out there to beat us up. We couldn't even get a car ride to the airport. After half the people with us were beaten up, we finally got on the plane. Then they wouldn't let it take off. They announced that Brian Epstein and our road manager Mal Evans would have to get off the plane. 

"We sat there for what seemed like eternity. Finally they got back and they let the plane go. But they took all the money we earned at the concerts from us."

George and sitar master Ravi Shankar

On their return from Manila, The Beatles made their first brief visit to India, where George pursued his interest in the sitar, first used on Rubber Soul's Norwegian Wood. This resulted in the Indian raga-influenced track 'Love You To'. 

It is the wide variety of styles and the sheer quality of the songs that is so remarkable about Revolver. Even Yellow Submarine was "perfectly in tune with Ringo's persona," said Clarke. "It's simplicity was engaging, rather than dumb."

Yellow Submarine certainly captured the imagination of a younger audience. I started junior school in the Autumn of 1966 and one of my abiding memories is sitting next to the window in my classroom and hearing a young pre-schooler in his back garden singing "We all live in a Yellow Submarine" over and over again. 

The American version was significantly shorter

Three tracks from the Revolver sessions - I'm Only Sleeping, And Your Bird Can Sing and Dr. Robert were omitted from the North American release of Revolver, having been used on a US release 'Yesterday..And Today'. This definitely spoils the flow of the album for those of us who were used to the UK original release. 

Yellow Submarine aside, there was a maturity about the songwriting and the subject matter. The extra time in the studio allowed the band to work on arrangements and to get the bass and drums sounding more solid. Most importantly, it gave them the freedom to experiment, which culminated in the album's final statement, Tomorrow Never Knows.

Ringo created an iconic drum track

This was where the various influences - psychedelia, Indian raga, electronic music, came together. It starts with a drone and Ringo's drum pattern, which is absolutely essential to the atmosphere and feel of the song. The seagull-like noise is a distorted and sped up guitar. John said he wanted the vocals to sound like he was singing from a Himalayan mountain top.

There is all manner of sound effects, sped up and run backwards - primitive stuff by today's standards, but an act of true artistic creation in the context of the very basic analogue recording techniques they had at their disposal.

The willingness to not only try new ideas, but work out a way of getting the required sounds, is credited to Geoff Emerick, then just 20 years old and newly installed as The Beatles engineer, working under producer George Martin's direction. 

According to Mark Lewinsohn's book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, "Geoff walked in green, but because he knew no rules, tried different techniques. The chemistry of George Martin and Geoff was perfect. With another producer and engineer, things would have turned out quite differently."

The Beatles all had their own home tape machines and Emerick recalled that Paul in particular would come into studio 3 at Abbey Road with little reels of tape saying 'listen to this'.

"We did a live mix of all the loops," remembered George Martin. "All over the studios we had people spooling them onto machines with pencils, while Geoff did the balancing. There were many other hands controlling the panning". 

This was a performance in itself. "I laid all the loops onto the multi-track recorder and played the faders like a modern-day synthesiser," said Emerick.

The solution to John's request to sound like the Dalai Lama on top of a mountain was to feed his vocal through a Leslie speaker. "It meant breaking into the circuitry," said Emerick. "I remember the surprise on our faces when the voice came out of the speaker. After that, they wanted everything shoved through the Leslie!"

The lyrics left no doubt as to the direction The Beatles were headed.

But listen to the colour of your dream
It is not living
It is not living

In the 1970s, after their break-up, the Beatles were still held to be at the pinnacle of pop music. The 1975 list of the 100 greatest albums, voted on by the writers of the NME, had Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band  at number one, Blonde on Blonde at two, the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds at three and Revolver at four. 

Sometime in the 1980s, this hierarchy changed and Revolver eclipsed Sgt. Pepper, to judge from lists compiled of the greatest all-time records. 

In 1985, hipsters had hijacked the NME listings, placing John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band album at number 9, two places above Revolver. (Yeah, right. I mean, come on). And Sgt. Pepper? Nowhere to be seen in the '85 top 100.

But by 1993, a degree of sanity had been restored to the NME writers' list, with Revolver up to Number 2 behind Pet Sounds. Sgt. Pepper was back in at 33.

It's all down to personal taste, of course, but it's hard to disagree with the view that Revolver is their high point, when you consider the scale of their musical maturity in 1966.

However, this new mature and experimental sound was something many Beatles fans found less appealing. This was a long way from "She Loves You, yeah yeah yeah!" though it would be a few more months before their loyalty was severely tested.

The following year, during the making of Sgt. Pepper, a Life Magazine profile noted that the group "are stepping far ahead of their audience," but the possibility of losing support "does not bother them in the least."

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL THANKS

Elsewhere on this blog:

My visit to Abbey Road Studios

LIFE magazine reports on 'The New Far-out Beatles', 1967

Sgt. Pepper Is The Beatles - Who Knew?
 
At Home With the Lennons, 1967

A Night With John Lennon - The Fab Faux at Radio City Music Hall

Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan's artistic peak in the 1960s 

LIFE reports on 'The New Far-out Beatles' - July 1967

I recently acquired a stack of LIFE magazines from the 1960s. They are a fascinating window on the world as seen by reporters and photo journalists of the time. 

The stories range from graphic coverage of the Vietnam war to sumptuous colour spreads of Sophia Loren and husband Carlo Ponti at their palatial home in Italy. There are special reports on The Warren Commission's findings on the assassination of President Kennedy and a study of the reasons for Marilyn Monroe's suicide. 

Amongst the stories about life in Britain in the 1960s is a piece from July 1967 about The Beatles' new psychedelic look and sound. The cover announces 'The New Far-out Beatles' and the introduction says, "They're grown men now and creating extraordinary musical sounds."

Click to enlarge

The writer, Thomas Thompson, notes that the group has moved such a long way from the music that made them popular, they risk alienating their fans: "They are stepping far ahead of their audience,' but the possibility of losing support "does not bother them in the least."

One evening, at EMI studios on Abbey Road in London's St. John's Wood, Paul and John are explaining a new song to producer George Martin. They have written it that day and want to get it down on tape. The melody is to be called 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds'.

"They go through it half a dozen times while Martin nods, quickly familiarising himself with the composition and making notes. I begin to understand the remarkable process of the Beatle music. It begins absolutely from scratch. The Beatles, who can neither write nor read music, are composing even as they record."

The writer profiles the four Beatles with descriptions that fit the popular characterisations. George, while not actually called The Quiet One, is described as the least social of the four, with a particular interest in Eastern spiritualism. Ringo is seen as the "least complex" member and the one with the least musical input.

"Of the four, 26 year old John's life is probably the most complicated. An awesome world of literature, art, philosophy and thought has opened up to him. He reads copiously - everything from Bertrand Russell to Paul Tillich to Allen Ginsberg, and he writes poetry that only he can understand." 

John was fond of creating poems inspired by the nonsense verse of Edward Lear. My brother and I received a Beatles Fan Club flexi-disc for Christmas in 1968. It contains examples of Lennon's nonsense verse. I can still recite them today.

"Paul, 24, the unmarried Beatle, is also the only one who lives in London. He is swept up in London's so-called swinging world, goes to dinner parties and discotheques, and talks about art and football. He is very much aware of the world's troubles and has his own ideas of what it will take to straighten everything out.

"If the politicians would take LSD, there wouldn't be any more war, or poverty or famine."

The album that resulted from these recording sessions, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, had been released the previous month, June 1967 and was immediately hailed as a new creative peak, not just for The Beatles, but pop music in general.

Its influence on the generation of musicians that came through in the 60s was immeasurable. That is why many people still consider it to be their best album. Not only for the songs themselves, but for the unique and groundbreaking way they were recorded.

Pink Floyd's Roger Waters said, "Sgt. Pepper freed a whole generation of young English men and women, given permission to write songs about real things, and having the courage to accept your feelings."

George Martin's view of their creative genius was that "they're always coming up with something new they've just learned; something I wouldn't dream of. They never cease to amaze me."

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL THANKS

Elsewhere on this blog:

My Visit To Abbey Road Studios

The Beatles Escape The Madness to Create Revolver

Sgt. Pepper Is The Beatles - Who Knew?

At Home With the Lennons, 1967

A Night With John Lennon - The Fab Faux at Radio City Music Hall

2-Tone and possibly my best gig ever

Queen's 1976 Free Concert in Hyde Park

Memories of the Reading Festival, 1975

Five Days of High Drama at the Isle of Wight, 1970

From Pinner to LA - Elton's Big Breakthrough, 1970

My Woodstock 50th Anniversary Diary

A Wizard, A True Star - my all-time favourite album

Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan's Artistic Peak in the 1960s

 Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns

March 1978 - The Rutles Are Coming!

A postcard dropped on the doormat in March 1978, sent from the press office at Warner Brothers (WEA actually) where a mate of mine worked.

The postcard was heralding the television premiere on Easter Monday of All You Need Is Cash, the story of legendary British beat group The Rutles.

The Prefab Four

Note the postmark advert for Elvis Costello's second album

The Prefab Four, as they were known, were the brainchild of Monty Python's Eric Idle, with songs (not entirely) originally composed by Neil Innes of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, who had collaborated on music for the Monty Python movies. His contribution to Holy Grail, for example, included the famous Tale of Sir Robin.

The Rutles' career arc was oddly familiar - from early days in Northwest England, to worldwide fame - Rutlemania! - the expansion of their musical horizon after consumption of exotic teas - and the embracing of eastern religion.

The TV special, shown at Easter time on BBC2 and on American TV the same week, included 
appearances by George Harrison, Mick and Bianca Jagger, Paul Simon, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Bill Murray and Gilda Radner. The Saturday Night Live actors had become fans of the Rutles when Idle and Innes appeared on SNL in 1977.

For All You Need Is Cash, The Rutles characters, apart from Idle, were played by real-life musicians. 

Innes played singer and guitarist Ron Nasty, Idle was singer and bass player Dirk McQuickly.  

Ricky Fataar (a drummer in real life with the Beach Boys) played guitarist Stig O'Hara. 

John Halsey (drummer in the band Patto, whose sessions include Lou Reed's Transformer album) played drummer Barrington Womble, otherwise known as Barry Wom.

Guitarist Ollie Halsall, also from the band Patto, who was one of the studio musicians on the Rutles recording sessions, appears in the Rutles film as Leppo, the fifth Rutle "a friend of Nasty's from art college, who mainly used to stand at the back".

The Prefab Four became the most popular group in the whole world, loved for their cheeky banter as much as for their music.

 Here's the original trailer for The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash

Of course, The Rutles were a very closely observed pastiche of The Beatles. All You Need Is Cash is narrated by an earnest Alan Whicker-type documentary presenter and highlights the key moments of their career in the 1960s, familiar to anyone with a reasonable knowledge of The Fabs and with helpful commentary from Jagger and others:

Jagger: Why did the Rutles break up? Women. Just women. Getting in the way. Cherchez la femme, you know.
Narrator: Do you think they'll ever get back together again?
Jagger: I hope not.

The show features some wicked caricatures of Rutle associates, such as Gwen Taylor in a Nazi costume playing the Yoko-like Chastity.

While the Rutles film now looks rather quaint and of its time, the music composed by Neil Innes still has universal appeal, because it is so fiendishly close to the source material. 

The Rutles - Ouch!
The Rutles - With A Girl Like You
The Rutles - Get Up And Go

Too close for some: While George Harrison was happy to provide some funding for the project and to appear in the film, Paul and John didn't see the funny side of having their music pastiched in this way.

The initial reaction to All You Need Is Cash from UK audiences was appreciative without being ecstatic. The Prefab Four's legend grew, though, with repeat TV showings. Perhaps it was a case, as had happened with The Beatles, that people needed to be told that this was actually a spoof.

And so, in May 1978, I received another postcard from WEA. The BBC were giving The Rutles another go, with a showing on BBC 1 at 10:15pm on May 27th.

The postcard featured the covers of various Rutles albums, With The Rutles, Tragical History Tour, Sgt. Rutters Only Darts Club Band and Let It Rot.

On the back of the postcard was a sample of "genuine Rutle trouser fabric", authenticated by the former Rutles manager, Leggy Mountbatten, now living in Australia.

Genuine Rutle trouser fabric

Archie Macaw, Record Producer: Well, one day this rather odd chap hopped into the office. He'd been to see virtually everyone in the business and been shown the door. He asked to see MY door, but I wouldn't show it to him. Instead, he showed me the photographs and tapes of the Rutles. They were pretty rough, but they had something.

Narrator: What was it?

Macaw: I think it was the trousers.

 
Following the release of The Rutles album in the 1978, ATV Music, the then-owner of the Beatles publishing rights, sued Innes for copyright infringement. Innes was always on a sticky wicket legally because The Rutles were unmistakeably a Beatles rip-off, however affectionate.

Lennon and McCartney both felt that, at least with some of the songs such as Get Up And Go, that Innes had sailed too close to the originals. He was forced to settle out of court for 50% of the royalties on the 14 songs included on the Rutles album.

In 2019 Neil Innes was still playing The Rutles' music live, but he died suddenly on 30th December. He is fondly remembered on social media for his work with The Bonzos on TV shows like Do Not Adjust Your Set and Rutland Weekend Television - even The Old Grey Whistle Test.  
Proof that his legend will live long after other living legends have died.

Neil Innes talks about Rutland Weekend Television and the genesis of The Rutles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxxyG9jJhm0

Ron Nasty and Barry Wom with The Rutles live in London, 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoOwx3j4b_I

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL THANKS

See also on this site:

My Visit To Abbey Road Studios

The Beatles escape the madness of the road to create Revolver

Sgt. Pepper Is The Beatles - Who Knew?

At Home With The Lennons, 1967

A Night With John Lennon - The Fab Faux at Radio City Music Hall