Recording "I Am The Walrus", "The Fool On The Hill", mixing "The Fool On The Hill"

On September 5 and 6, 1967, The Beatles recorded the backing track for “I Am The Walrus“. On this day, they continued the overdubbing process in two separate sessions. Paul McCartney also added backing vocals to “The Fool On The Hill” at the tail end of the second session.

The first session took place from 2:30 to 5:30 at Abbey Studio One, during which George Martin’s orchestral score was recorded by 16 session musicians. The musicians included eight violinists (Sidney Sax, Jack Rothstein, Ralph Elman, Andrew McGee, Jack Greene, Louis Stevens, John Jezzard, and Jack Richards), four cellists (Lionel Ross, Eldon Fox, Bram Martin, and Terry Weil), one clarinettist (Gordon Lewin), and three horn players (Neil Sanders, Tony Tunstall, and Morris Miller).

The orchestra was recorded and overdubbed simultaneously with a reduction mix of Take 17. It took the musicians seven attempts (numbered 18 to 24) to complete the session, with Take 20 being the best. However, the last four takes were only edit pieces and did not last the entire length of the song.

The second session took place from 7 pm to 3:30 am at Studio Two. To free up two tracks, a reduction mix of Take 20 was made and named Take 25.

During this session, George Martin conducted the Mike Sammes Singers, which consisted of eight male and eight female vocalists, including Peggie Allen, Wendy Horan, Pat Whitmore, Jill Utting, June Day, Sylvia King, Irene King, G Mallen, Fred Lucas, Mike Redway, John O’Neill, F Dachtler, Allan Grant, D Griffiths, J Smith, and J Fraser.

The singers recorded their parts onto one track of Take 25, which already contained the previously recorded orchestral score and the Beatles’ basic track. With the addition of the vocals, the song took on its characteristic and complex arrangement, with intricate layers of sound.

When John brought along ‘I Am The Walrus’, later in 1967, I said, ‘I see what you’re trying to get out: it’s very bizarre, but it’s great. Let’s organize it.’ John went along with that. I wrote out a score for cellos, wrote out all the parts for the singers, right down to the ‘ha ha has’ and the ‘hee hee hees’ which John had suggested, sung by the Mike Sammes Singers.

George Martin – From “With A Little Help From My Friends: The Making of Sgt. Pepper“, 1995

I think in a way, for instance something like ‘I Am The Walrus’, someone like John probably doesn’t get enough credit, because those sessions, those preparatory sessions, were very important because they set the style and often gave very accurate briefs of what we wanted. For instance, all of John’s “Everybody’s got one” and “Ho ho ho, hee hee hee, ha ha ha” [from ‘I Am The Walrus], all that stuff was from John at a session with George Martin, a preparation session. We’d be around at John’s house or George’s house, and he’d say, ‘I want to go, ‘Ha ha ha’’. So, George would write that all that in the score, and John would sort of say, ‘Well, it could go like that or like that’, but we couldn’t write so we needed George to translate our thoughts.

Paul McCartney – From interview with Clash Magazine, September 2009

The idea of using voices was a good one. We got in The Mike Sammes Singers, very commercial people and so alien to John that it wasn’t true. But in the score I simply orchestrated the laughs and noises, the whooooooah kind of thing. John was delighted with it.

George Martin – From beatlesebooks.com

John worked with George Martin on the orchestration and did some very exciting things with The Mike Sammes Singers, the likes of which they’ve never done before or since, like getting them to chant, ‘Everybody’s got one, everybody’s got one…,’ which they loved. It was a session to be remembered. Most of the time they got asked to do ‘Sing Something Simple’ and all the old songs, but John got them doing all sorts of swoops and phonetic noises. It was a fascinating session. That was John’s baby, great one, a really good one.

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

I had this whole choir saying ‘Everybody’s got one, everybody’s got one.’ But when you get thirty people, male and female, on top of thirty cellos and on top of the Beatles’ rock ‘n’ roll rhythm section, you can’t hear what they’re saying.

John Lennon, 1980 – From “All We Are Saying” by David Sheff, 1981

The next session I remember was my first orchestral date three days later and it happened to be for “I Am the Walrus,” a song I would later mix as well. The basic track and vocal had already been recorded by Ernie, so the session I worked on added the orchestra, the choir, and maybe a few other things that I can’t remember because, once again, I was thrown into the fire and scared to death.

Ken Scott – From “Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust“, 2012

In a 2015 interview, Ray Thomas of The Moody Blues relates how fellow bandmate Mike Pinder and himself also took part in this vocal overdub:

We were very friendly at the time with the Beatles. I mean, this is going back to the original band… we lived in one big house all together in North Hampton, and that was fantastic. We rented this house for a year and it was just a year-long party. The Beatles used to come over and there’s all these girls hanging around outside, and they used to come across our neighbor’s back gardens, climbing the fences to get in without the fans seeing them. They came over and they played us Sgt. Pepper. They really admired our band and of course we admired them, and so they came over and said, “What do you think?” – because they wanted our opinion on it. In those days, there wasn’t any backbiting with bands. There was so much creativity going on. We used to sit down and listen to somebody else and say, “Bloody hell, that’s fantastic. Why didn’t we think of that?”…stuff like that. Anyway, Mike and I went into Abbey Road after that, and we played on “I Am The Walrus” and “Fool on the Hill.” And it was my idea to put all those harmonicas on. There was George and John, me and Mike around the microphone. Paul was in the control room at the desk, and we put these harmonicas down and did some vocal backing on “Walrus.”

Ray Thomas – From Discussions Magazine Music Blog: An EXCLUSIVE interview with THE MOODY BLUES’ Ray Thomas! (archive.org), January 2015

With the recording completed, the mixing process for “I Am The Walrus” commenced on September 28, the very next day.

“The Fool On The Hill” was recorded over two days, on September 25 and 26, 1967. Towards the end of this session, Paul McCartney recorded some backing vocals that were strategically placed to double his lead vocals in certain parts of the song.

Following this, the engineering team created a mono mix (RM2) from Take 6. The final touches on the song were added on October 20, 1967, when three flute parts were included, completing the work on “The Fool On The Hill.“

Session activities

1. I Am The Walrus

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Tape copying • Tape reduction take 17 into take 18

2. I Am The Walrus

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Tape copying • Tape reduction take 17 into take 19

3. I Am The Walrus

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Tape copying • Tape reduction take 17 into take 20

4. I Am The Walrus

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Tape copying • Tape reduction take 17 into take 21

5. I Am The Walrus

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Tape copying • Tape reduction take 17 into take 22

6. I Am The Walrus

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Tape copying • Tape reduction take 17 into take 23

7. I Am The Walrus

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Tape copying • Tape reduction take 17 into take 24

8. I Am The Walrus

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • SI onto take 18

9. I Am The Walrus

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Recording • SI onto take 19

10. I Am The Walrus

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Recording • SI onto take 20

11. I Am The Walrus

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Recording • SI onto take 21

12. I Am The Walrus

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Recording • SI onto take 22

13. I Am The Walrus

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Recording • SI onto take 23

14. I Am The Walrus

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Recording • SI onto take 24

15. I Am The Walrus

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Tape copying • Tape reduction take 20 into take 25

16. I Am The Walrus

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Recording • SI onto take 25

17. The Fool On The Hill

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Recording • SI onto take 6

18. The Fool On The Hill

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Mixing • Mono mixing - Remix 2 from take 6

Staff

Musicians on "The Fool On The Hill"

Musicians on "I Am The Walrus"

Production staff

Going further

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