Over-produced. Over-appreciated.
By Des Burkinshaw
The Beatles have a (deserved) reputation for being the band that made the recording studio the principal tool of rock music.
Of course, there were great studio rock and pops wizards before them, not least Phil Spector and Joe Meek. Their major contributions, I suggest, were to change the way music was recorded. In Meek’s case, by using unusual spaces for echo, crafting his own compressors etc. And doing it all from home, which has become the 2024 model for almost all music, bar the highest of high ends. Spector’s revolution was in the arrangements. Let’s have 3 different pianos playing in sync, 2 basses, 4 guitars in unison.
However, despite these advances, both of their staggering outputs are still recognisably classic pop songs.
More importantly historically in terms of the radical overhaul of music structure, there were the music concrète experiments of Pierre Schaeffer and associates in France, starting in 1948. Schaeffer’s studio produced highly innovative work, including Karlheinz Stockhausen’s first major electronic work, Konkrete Etüde in 1952.
Ten years later in 1958, the UK joined in the experimentation, with the founding of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Principally creating sound effects and soundtracks for the BBC, the composers included a diverse range of visionaries, including Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, David Cain, John Baker, and Paddy Kingsland (among others).
There is also, though not many make it, a good argument that Spike Milligan, both with his BBC Radio producers and The Goons’ record producer, one George Martin, also radically changed the soundscapes the British listened to and doted on. Listen to the sound effects work on Right Said Fred by Bernard Cribbins, it has more in common with Yellow Submarine than you might think. Not surprising perhaps – same producer, same studio, same sound effects cupboard.
In the UK, rock and pop music was slow to catch up with all these pioneers. The truly experimental Beatles’ material doesn’t begin until Revolver in 1966, a full 8 years after the founding of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and 4 years after the release of Right Said Fred. The major sonic development on Revolver was the extensive use of tape loops and tape-based manipulation e.g. running tape backwards or playing with speed and pitch. Have a listen to outtakes of Rain. The backing track was played fast and then the tape slowed down, ready for the vocal overdubs which were done at normal speed. This gives the music a swampy, drawn-out feel that radically alters the atmosphere of the song.
People often talk about Ringo’s innovative, EDM-style drum pattern on Tomorrow Never Knows, crafted with the help of Paul. But if you listen hard, you can hear it’s not a full performance at all - it’s a tape loop of a few bars which play throughout. However, the tambourine was a full performance, and provides enough variation to give the illusion that Ringo was bashing skins all the way through. The Beatles sampled themselves a good 20 years before everyone else did.
McCartney was an early fan of Stockhausen, music concrète and the BBC artists, but all the Beatles had reel-to-reel machines which they experimented on at home.
In a giant what-if? McCartney approached the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s Delia Derbyshire over a possible collaboration.
Paul told Q magazine: “I even found out where Miss Derbyshire lived and went round to visit her. We went into the hut at the bottom of her garden. It was full of tape machines and funny instruments. My plan in meeting her was to do an electronic backing for my song Yesterday. We’d already recorded it with a string quartet, but I wanted to give the arrangement electronic backing.”
Years later, Jimi Hendrix asked McCartney to join him on bass in a collaboration with Miles Davis. I love Paul but have no idea how or why he failed to connect with these two opportunities. They would have saved him an awful lot of time in the 70s and 80s when he seemed to be in a permanent battle to reclaim credit for his experimental contributions to The Beatles’ sonic signatures.
You’ve no doubt read a hundred musicians talking about how Revolver and Pepper changed the way they approached music. These days, most people argue that Revolver is the more radical of the two, principally because of those tape loops. I think that’s fair. Pepper is experimental in arrangement – exhibit one: the orchestra on A Day in the Life, but it’s not necessarily as ground-breaking in engineering terms. Added to that, you’ve probably noticed a lot of pop historians (who for some reason, all come from chug-chug-chug Punk/Indie backgrounds so hate anything conceptual or expansive) blame the popularisation of the concept album on Pepper. But there were plenty of concept albums before that – Songs for Swingin’ Lovers by Frank Sinatra, anyone? Let alone Zappa’s early work.
However, while Joe Dart from Vulfpeck is a brilliant and technically better bassist than Paul McCartney (I adore them both and there’s no question who has the wilder chops), McCartney was the one who got to influence millions of bassists in their choice of instrument and playing style. People who say life is not a popularity contest are not living on the same planet as me. The weight of your impact is impacted by your reach.
Ask any Social Media strategist.
Pepper was for many years the bestselling album of all time, in an era when people bought expensive physical product, rather than streaming for fractions of a penny. Pepper influenced everyone at the time, even when the influence was negative. Contrarians are essential to progress. A 1967 band that said, “The last thing our next album will be is some over-produced gloop like Sgt Pepper,” were influenced by it just as much as every other band who used Pepper as a template for whimsy and music hall. Painting by shadows, etc. You didn’t have to vote for Donald Trump to have him change your world as president.
So, the Beatles. Over-produced? It’s a charge that has been levelled many times. But really: were they?
Pepper was the most expensive album ever made to that point and took a whole five months to make. For UK readers’ comparison, in 2024 that’s the gap between the Manchester Co-op Arena cancelling its opening night, and today, the opening of the Reading and Leeds festival. No time at all.
Truth is, it was all done superfast. Let’s look at a couple of artists’ studio release schedules from the 00s on.
Coldplay: 2000, 2002, 2005, 2008 etc
Adele: 2008, 2011, 2015, 2021
Radiohead: 1993, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2003 etc
Katy Perry: 2001, 2008, 2010, 2013, 2017, 2020, 2024
The Beatles work-rate is the stuff of legend. It’s not commonly commented on, but technically they once released 3 albums and 2 singles (Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out/Paperback Writer/Rain) in one 12-month period.
August 6, 1965 – Help!
December 3, 1965 – Rubber Soul
August 5, 1966 – Revolver
They also squeezed in the 1965 Shea Stadium shows. These were not only recorded but had to be re-recorded for the subsequent documentary. Then there was the 1965 Christmas record, and many other tour dates besides. It is a ridiculous amount of work.
Is it possible to be over-produced working in that timeframe?
I would argue it is very clear that, if anything, they were under-produced and there are several clues to this.
Firstly, just listen out for all those flubs. The whole Beatles’ output is full of mistakes. Personal favourite? Paul singing “Well I’m gonna mange your mind” in the stereo version of I’ll Get You. Question: can you point to similar flubs in Taylor Swift, Prince, Peter Gabriel or the Pet Shop Boys?
Secondly, in many shots of The Beatles at work, you can see the first draft of the lyrics in front of them. They were often just making it up as they went along, lack of familiarity accounting for many of those mistakes.
Look at the video for Hey Bulldog. Paul is holding his lyric sheet while recording. The point? The song had just been written – they hadn’t played it in yet. The tape and cameras were rolling before they got to learn their parts. This was the same throughout their career. Improvising and learning quickly – in George’s case, out of necessity before Paul jumped in and said, “I’ll do it!”
Every musician will recognise how different playing something for the first time is compared to playing it at the end of a tour.
Watch Paul in the video for both Let it Be and Long and Winding Road. Though supposedly performing for a promo, he keeps looking at the lyrics. He doesn’t know them well enough yet. I guarantee you cannot name any major band who has recorded their pop promos visibly still checking the lyrics. Not then, not now.
But also listen to the piano part in Let it Be. He slams on the keys – he doesn’t arpeggiate the notes, just makes sure all the keys come down hard at the same time. He’s bashing his way through. Now pick any live performance of this song from 2000 on. It never has the same energy. Why? Because he’s playing it in his sleep. It’s more loose, more dreamy, more rehearsed. But is it more powerful?
Those Beatle records kickass simply because the band were never quite ready to record just yet. But time has been kind, and we now get the benefit of that nervous energy, the sound of a band concentrating.
I record music most weeks and I have all the time in the world to get my parts right. Then I can correct any small pitch or timing fluffs. I love what I produce, but even when I consciously try to copy that Beatles’ process, it never sounds even half as exciting.
Overproduced? I’d argue they were hanging on by the seat of their pants, but created a body of work without equal.
The Beatles: under-rehearsed, under-produced, and - as a result - under-appreciated.