Producing The Beatles

Beatle author Ken Womack and Ranking the Beatles host Jonathan Pretus join me to discuss the tech that made the Beatles’ new single “Now and Then” possible. And from John's haunting vocal to Giles Martin's stirring string arrangement, we peel back the layers of the production and consider Paul's nearly 30 year mission to complete John's demo.

A little extra mini-episode examining George Martin’s orchestration for “Live and Let Die,” with a recreation of part of the arrangement.

In our penultimate Season 1 bonus episode, we examine another solo recording, this time Paul McCartney’s thrilling theme song for the 1973 James Bond film, Live and Let Die. I’m joined by Allan Kozinn, co-author of The McCartney Legacy Volume 1, who takes us through all the details of the writing and recording process. We also learn how Paul debuted the song before the film’s release, we walk through George Martin’s Grammy-winning arrangement, and we consider Martin’s droll story about the film’s producer, as well as what Martin left out of that story.

In the second episode looking at the making of All Things Must Pass, we explore the recording of the largest production on the album. We hear from participants at the sessions, listen to outtakes and isolations, peek into Mal Evans’ diaries, and sample a reconstruction of the song’s epic orchestral score.

Today, the first of two episodes exploring the production of George Harrison’s first solo album, All Things Must Pass, with new research and interviews drawn from the book Ken Womack and I wrote on the making of the album. In this episode, we cover the intricate and painstaking production of “My Sweet Lord.” We explode the myth of Phil Spector’s contributions, speak to a number of people who were there, and get an exclusive sneak preview of the contents of Mal Evans’ diary entries about these sessions, courtesy Ken Womack.

In the first bonus episode for Season 1, we step outside of our regular format and take a peek into solo Beatles territory, with a look at the recording of John Lennon’s song “Love” from his first post-Beatles solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. We trace the song’s development all the way from home demo to finished recording, sampling the session tapes and discovering the role both Yoko and Phil Spector played in reaching the final take.

Recording Strawberry Fields Forever was a complicated, layered process, famously requiring the cutting together of two different takes in two different keys and tempos. Today we put our magnifying glass on the second of those takes, take 26, with special attention given to George Martin’s dramatic score for three cellos and four trumpets. We go into the recording studio with seven musicians to re-record Martin’s complete score, and cellist Karen Ray returns to help us deconstruct the arrangement and understand what Martin was doing with this composition.

In examining the making of the third version of Revolution (after Revolution 1 and Revolution 9), we talk to musician and composer Casey McAllister to consider the origins of the recording’s intro; author and producer Jerry Hammack fills us in on how The Beatles got that memorable guitar sound; and former New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn shows us how all three versions of Revolution taken together tell a particular kind of story.

Sparked by the air of social upheaval in 1968, John's song "Revolution" spawned three very different recordings: Revolution 1, Revolution 9, and Revolution (the single version). Today, in the first of a two part episode, we look at how Revolution 1 gave birth to Revolution 9, and discover the mesmerizing missing link between the two. Former New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn helps us deconstruct Revolution 9, and to make sense of why John created such a challenging recording in the first place.

With Apple’s announcement that Peter Jackson will be reworking the Let It Be footage, we go back to the actual sessions to examine this period from George Martin’s perspective. Martin and The Beatles advanced the use of the recording studio in a variety of creative ways, but what would happen if they took away their method of building a recording with layers of intricate overdubs and played everything live? On the Get Back/Let It Be project, the Beatles did just that, setting aside the recording process they had developed with their producer over the previous six years. But without “production,” what was Martin’s role in this project, and how much was he actually there? And who actually produced these sessions?