Jamming

On this day, The Beatles spent an extensive seven hours jamming with instruments from 11 pm to 6:15 am. However, only 16 minutes of the jamming were recorded. During the session, two electric guitars were played, one of which had a vibrato effect. Additionally, a harmonium and drums were also utilized during the session.

The Beatles recorded another one of these jam sessions on June 1, 1967, which also happened to coincide with the release of their album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

The Beatles turned up at the studio unusually late one night — near midnight — and spent some seven hours in a stoned haze, jamming endlessly… and pointlessly. In search of a new kind of high, Lennon had brought a big strobe light in, so at one point they turned out the lights and started running around as if they were in an old film. That lasted for about five minutes, after which everyone started complaining of a headache. All four of them were completely out of it — tripping on acid, probably — and it was the first Beatles session I”d ever attended where absolutely nothing was accomplished. Perhaps the first seeds of what was to become the instrumental track “Flying” were planted that night, but for the most part, it was just them being silly, much to the annoyance of George Martin, who was constantly bumming cigarettes off me, a sure sign of his frustration. He tried to point out to John, Paul, and George that their guitars weren’t even in tune, but, giggling like children, they brushed him off, saying, “That’s okay, we’re just doing a demo.”

That in itself was a strange thing to say, since we knew all too well that anything the Beatles recorded might become part of a finished product, which was the reason we constantly rolled tape and rarely erased anything. But they were so stoned that night, we couldn’t communicate with them at all. Richard Lush and I understood by this point that jamming was now the process by which they got inspiration and created new songs, but George Martin, who was not used to working this way, just didn’t get it. Seven hours of playing aimlessly with out-of-tune guitars was not the way he would be running a session, but they were clearly in control now — they did as they liked. Making matters worse, George couldn’t turn around and tell them off because he was scared of being fired. The Beatles were independent clients of his, so he had to tread carefully; certainly they were one artist he did not want to lose.

Geoff Emerick – From “Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles“, 2006

Session activities

1. Jam

   Recording

Staff

Musicians

Production staff

Going further

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