Mal's Diary
Beatles Book Monthly
Issue 68 (March 1969)
Written by Mal Evans
Going back, I will start on January 2, start of Twickenham
fortnight.
Kevin Harrington and I set up all the equipment in the huge
bare Stage One at the film studios. And
they started filming us right there from the beginning. There
was no scenery or anything, just the standard white background with lots of
different colour lights playing on it as the setting. So that apart from capturing good sound there
would b good things for the camera to see.
At half eight that morning, between bites of breakfast, I
telephoned round all four fellows to remind them it was getting up time and
they were due at Twickenham by eleven. On
that first day, Paul was last to arrive – half an hour after noon! Having come by underground, then local train,
then taxi from Hampton Court Station. He’d
meant to do the entire journey by public transport but, knowing he was late, he
chickened out and caught a cab rather than wait at the bus stop.
During the weeks which followed he often used trains and
buses to and from what amounted to routine hours five-day working week!
Toast, cornflakes and tea were ready for each arrival on the
open space of Stage One every morning.
Beatles prefer to get where ever they’re going for the day and THEN
start the day’s eating!
Kevin and I brought over all the food from the Studios
canteen. For lunch they started off by
using some new flats which have been built for film actors and actresses so
that they can make themselves at home between takes without leaving the studio
area. That didn’t work because the food
was cold by the time we served it so we block-booked a couple of big tables in
the canteen and added a bottle or two of good wine to whatever was on the day’s
menu! Of course, we all know that
canteen well. We’d worked there on “A
Hard Day’s Night,” “Help!” and more recently on the “Hey Jude” TV film clips
which were done on the same stage. So all the crews are old mates too.
During the first week at Twickenham it was Elvis’ birthday. The following day at lunch I reminded everyone
that Elvis had just turned 34. Where
upon John stood up and toasted Elvis and the rest of us joined in.
One of the first new numbers the fellows got together was an
up-tempo item of Paul’s called “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. If that title sounds familiar it’s because I mentioned
it here in November as one of several numbers which were almost but not quite recorded
before we finished “The Beatles” album sessions. By the way, I play anvil on the finished
version!
On Thursday, January 16, we finished at Twickenham and moved
all our gear back into town. On Monday
January 20, we used the new Apple Studios in the West End for the first time. Actually, Alex Mardas hadn’t put in our own
studio equipment so EMI brought in an eight track tape machine and console as a
temporary measure. Alex started putting
all the new equipment into the studio in the first week of February so that our
most recent batch of sessions have made use of all his amazing gadgets!
The engineer for all these sessions at Apple has been Glyn
Johns, a name you may well know for he’d got a great reputation and we were
pleased we could get him. He’s done a
lot of stuff with The Stones at the Olympic Studios, produced the Steve Miller
Band and so forth. In fact, he’s more of
a producer than an engineer although, of course, we had our own producer,
recording manager George Martin on hand for that side of things.
First new number to be completed at Apple was something
called “All I Want is You.” Another was “Teddy
Boy” and, as I mentioned earlier, there was “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” from the
end of last year.
Although they’d had all the rehearsal time they needed at
Twickenham and all their material was written and ready to be recorded, the
fellows spent hours each day “limbering up.”
Now that there aren’t regular concerts to keep them in musical and vocal
trims, so to speak, they have fantastic jam sessions to get the singing and
playing flowing free before they start putting things on tape. They just go wild and roar into “Lawdy Miss
Clawdy” or any of the 10 year old skiffle hits.
Some day we really must release a record of just such a jam session and
let you hear what goes on before The Beatles tape their hits! You should have heard the treatment they gave
to “Maggie May!”
George had a pair of interesting presents to bring into the
studio for the first sessions. One was a
splendid rosewood Telecaster guitar from Fender of America. The other was a Leslie Speaker from Eric
Clapton. It’s a speaker with two
revolving horns and a revolving drum.
You can put a guitar or organ through it and with an organ it gives a
terrific swirling sound.
The same Thursday morning George decided to buy himself a
third present and asked me to round up a complete collection of LP records by The
Miracles for him.
Unlike previous times, The Beatles haven’t been using
session musicians during the new series.
The new idea is to bring in regulars instead, regulars from Apple-signed
groups or particular individual musicians who will work with them frequently
whenever they want an extra guitarist or an extra organist.
One very important guy in this line is Billy Preston, formerly
organist with Little Richard and a mate of the fellows since Hamburg days. Billy was signed up as an Apple artist on
January 31. Although he’s an American he’s
worked quite a bit in Britain, was here with the Ray Charles Orchestra not too
long ago and had his own colour telly show on BBC-2 a few Fridays back. So Billy has been a Fifth Beatle at most of
the recent sessions. Watch out for his
solo debut on Apple in March or April.
Billy writes most of his own stuff, sings, dances and plays both organ
and electric piano. George will be
producing Billy’s first Apple single.
Billy’s first session with The Beatles was on Wednesday, January 22 when he played electric pian.
During the first half of February Billy went back home to
America for a brief tour of Texas but there weren’t many sessions while he was
away and Billy was back in time for the latest recording over the past ten
days.
Meanwhile the cameras have kept on rolling at every single recording
session so that there is colour film, candid sounds and shots of every stage of
the album’s production.
One particular day’s work at the end of January caused quite
a stir. To get something a bit
different, an open-air sound, we shifted the session from the basement studio
to the roof of 3 Savile Row! With a
scaffolding platform for all the gear.
You could hear the singing and playing right out across Regent Street and
according to one unofficial spokesman for Savile Row police station, the local
constabulary’s switchboard was jammed with dozens of calls from puzzled and/or
cross neighbours of Apple’s within minutes!
We’d have loved to get a helicopter shot to show both the
fellows on the roof and the crowd in the street but the law won’t let you fly
one over London and it was too late to borrow a balloon!
The roof idea came after we’d taken a breath of fresh air on
the roof after lunch the previous Sunday.
Anyway it’s certainly the first time The Beatles have recorded an album
track on the roof in the middle of London!
While that was going on – at lunchtime on a Wednesday – we had
film interviewers chatting to passers-by down below in the street. Some of these comments just HAVE to fit into
the film when it’s all put together!
Around here I have to finish for this month because space has
run out on me.
You can tell from that photo Lindsay-Hogg was struggling up that wall. Mal Evans is determined to get up there. Lindsay-Hogg is in a peering up there position. What you see in the film is Evans and McCartney up top hauling him up, so he must have had unseemly difficulty for a director with a big cigar in his mouth. Funny.
ReplyDeleteAlways wondered if Jefferson Airplane's gig on a NYC building rooftop 1 month earlier inspired them. Grace Slick also wondered if theyd get busted by police.
ReplyDelete