Recording "Cry Baby Cry", "Helter Skelter"

On this day, The Beatles resumed their work on John Lennon’s “Cry Baby Cry,” which had started on July 16, by adding more overdubs to take 12. George Martin contributed another harmonium overdub, John Lennon recorded an additional lead vocal track, Paul McCartney provided background vocals, and George Harrison contributed electric guitar flourishes. John and Paul incorporated whistling as well. Various tape loops and sound effects were also incorporated.

“Cry Baby Cry” was deemed complete at the end of this session, which ran from 2:30 pm to 9:30 pm. Some final overdubs were added two months later, on September 17, 1968.

In the second session of the day, from 10:30 am to 3:30 pm, The Beatles began recording Paul McCartney’s “Helter Skelter,” initially a slow blues jam. They recorded three takes, with Paul McCartney on electric guitar and lead vocals, George Harrison on electric guitar, John Lennon on bass, and Ringo Starr on drums.

Take 1 was 10 minutes and 40 seconds, take 2 was 12 minutes and 35 seconds, and take 3 spanned 27 minutes and 11 seconds!!

They recorded the long versions of Helter Skelter with live tape echo. Echo would normally be added at remix stage otherwise it can’t be altered, but this time they wanted it live. One of the versions developed into a jam which went into and then back out of a somewhat bizarre version of Blue Moon. The problem was, although we were recording them at 15 ips [inches per second] – which meant that we’d get roughly half an hour of time on the tape – the machine we were running for the tape echo was going at 30 ips, in other words 15 minutes… The Beatles were jamming away, completely oblivious to the world and we didn’t know what to do because they all had foldback in their headphones so that they could hear the echo. We knew that if we stopped it they would notice.

In the end we decided that the best thing to do was stop the tape echo machine and rewind it. So at one point the echo suddenly stopped and you could hear ‘bllllrrrrippppp’ as it was spooled back. This prompted Paul to put in some kind of clever vocal improvisation based around the chattering sound!

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

[This live tape echo] is an effect created by having a second machine recording with its fader open. When the tape reaches the playback head after the audio has been recorded onto it by the record-head, the reproduction of the audio is delayed. How much delay depends on how far apart the heads are and the speed of the tape. In this session, the four-track machine was running at 15 inches-per-second, while the machine for tape-reverb ran at 30 ips. This created a fairly short delay on Paul’s voice. The tape delay used at Sun Records in the 1950’s, heard on early Elvis Presley records, was usually longer because it came from a tape running at 7.5 ips.

From “The Beatles” Super Deluxe edition book (2018)

Take 2 was released in a truncated form on the “Anthology 3” album in 1996 and in its complete form on the “The Beatles” boxset in 2018.

A couple of months before recording the White Album version of Helter Skelter, the Beatles taped three extended performances of this new Paul McCartney number, which – because of their length and unreleased status – have assumed legendary standing. Take 2, which runs in excess of 12 minutes, has been respectfully pruned to under five here, preserving the essential elements of what was, fundamentally, an impromptu jam. Following balance engineer Ken Scott’s “Take 2” announcement the band immediately begins the slow, insistent groove on top of which Paul adds his compelling vocal; the mix is mono to compensate for the track configuration on the original tape: all the instruments appeared on one track, the vocal was isolated on a second and the two remaining tracks were vacant.

From the Anthology 3 liner notes

The Beatles transformed “Helter Skelter” into the precursor of the heavy metal genre heard on “The Beatles” album, over the course of two days, on September 9 and September 10.

Session activities

1. Cry Baby Cry

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • SI onto take 12

2. Helter Skelter

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • Take 1

3. Helter Skelter

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • Take 2

   AlbumOfficially released on The Beatles (50th anniversary boxset)

4. Helter Skelter

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • Take 3

Staff

Musicians on "Helter Skelter"

Musicians on "Cry Baby Cry"

Production staff

Going further

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