Derek Collins

In October 1968, Derek Collins played saxophone on The Beatles’ “Savoy Truffle“, along with five other horn players.

The session men were playing really well – there’s nothing like a good brass section letting rip – and it sounded fantastic. But having got this really nice sound George turned to Ken Scott and said ‘Right, I want to distort it’. So I had to plug-up two high-gain amplifiers which overloaded and deliberately introduced a lot of distortion, completely tearing the sound to pieces and making it dirty. The musicians came up to the control room to listen to a playback and George said to them ‘Before you listen I’ve got to apologise for what I’ve done to your beautiful sound. Please forgive me – but it’s the way I want it!’ I don’t think they particularly enjoyed hearing their magnificent sound screwed up quite so much but they realised that this was what George wanted, and that it was their job to provide it.

Brian Gibson – Technical engineer – From “The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions” by Mark Lewisohn, 1988

Recording sessions Derek Collins participated in

Albums, EPs & singles which Derek Collins contributed to

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.