Customer Reviews

Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles

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When it comes to books about The Beatles, they usually fall in one of two categories: "memoirs" and "archives" (including timelines, analysis, photos, recording info, etc). Now Geoff Emerick has joined the throe of Beatles authors by publishing his account that actually falls in between the memoir/archive genre. His new book "HERE THERE AND EVERYWHERE-My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles" is no "cash in", but a valuable insight to the workings of the group. While there are no real "Beatles revelations" contained other than those that true Beatle aficionados already know, such as the working title of the "White Album", John's accidental acid trip on the rooftop of EMI etc), the true value of this book is the first hand observances of the Beatles in their most important environment: the recording studio!

Some people are lucky enough to realize their "calling" early in life - and Geoff Emerick was one of those lucky few. An early love of music caused a natural fascination with the mechanics behind recording. His experiments with tape recording and his persistence led him to a job at EMI! While Geoff Emerick wasn't the Beatles recording engineer during their early years at EMI (he started as an assistant engineer), his employment there did grant him occasional views of The Beatles at work during the time of 1962-1966 when Norman Smith was their engineer. However, when Smith left to become a producer (going on to produce Pink Floyd's first two albums at EMI) it was Emerick who was promoted to the position of Beatles' engineer. So, Emerick was there during the true renaissance of the Beatles studio years: Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, (part of) The White Album, and Abbey Road.

What about Let It Be, you ask? Well, it is well documented how bad tensions were during the recording of The White Album, prompting Ringo Starr to be the first Beatle to quit the group at the time. Further evidence of the bad feelings during this album can be seen in the departure of Emerick - he also quit halfway through the recording (but unlike Ringo, didn't come back for the album). So, he missed the whole Let It Be fiasco, until being asked to return for Abbey Road. He went on to design the Beatles personal recording studio, which sadly wasn't finished in time for The Beatles to actually use!

As witness to one of the Beatles first recording sessions ("How Do You Do It?"), Emerick paints a fascinating picture of the individual dynamics and personalities of each Beatle in the recording studio. Paul was the easiest to get along with, a true workaholic in the studio who, curiously enough was pegged as "the leader" by Emerick during the early sessions. John was often impatient, but curiously enough - it was always a new Lennon song that was first recorded for each new album session! Later, John's impatience actually paid off when they discovered they were one song short for completion of Revolver - they quickly finished John's "She Said She Said". Other tales include a funny story of the "fan siege" during the recording of "She Loves You" in which fans were running loose at EMI - which gave Emerick a first-hand view of Beatlemania and he comments that this "atmosphere" seemed to lend to the electricity of the recording. George Harrison was probably the least 'at ease' in the recording studio and had problems nailing his solos, such as his solo on "A Hard Day's Night". Ringo was basically quiet in the studio.

I read as quickly as possible to get to the Revolver/Sgt. Pepper recording sessions, and Emerick's descriptions did not disappoint! I was in Beatles heaven hearing how each song was recorded and the whole spirit of invention that went into Beatles' records - not just by the Beatles themselves, but by Emerick's ingenious solutions to the seemingly impossible requests of the Beatles, especially John. It was Emerick who came up with a solution for Lennon, who wanted his voice to sound like the "Dahlai Lama chanting from a mountaintop" on "Tomorrow Never Knows". His solution? Using a Leslie speaker(Which rotates) to achieve the proper effect on John's voice. Also, in regards to Revolver, I wasn't aware that the tape trick (cutting up random bits of tape and putting them back together) that George Martin used on "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" was first used on "Yellow Submarine"!

Of course, Sgt. Pepper was the pinnacle of the Beatles collective studio experimentation and it is amazing to hear the casual attitude the Beatles had during the sessions - it being the very first time that they weren't under any time restraints. George Harrison's lack of participation in this groundbreaking album is discussed. Fresh from his trip to India, George just wasn't interested, especially with Paul taking a lot of the lead guitar breaks and his first contribution to Pepper ("Only a Northern Song") being kindly put aside. The mysterious, still unreleased Beatles song, "Carnival of Light" (recorded during a five-hour session that also included vocal overdubs for the then-unreleased "Penny Lane") is discussed.

It is amazing how the Beatles went from the happy, creative Pepper sessions to the dreary White Album sessions in just one year! While Emerick left EMI for Apple, he avoided the bad scenes of the White Album and Let It Be, to concentrate on building the Beatles recording studio. However, he did get to attend one Phil Spector Let It Be session and his observations are contained within the book. Finally, the Beatles swan song, Abbey Road is detailed, from John's sometimes lack of interest (and Yoko's bed being brought into the studio!) to George's emergence as a studio talent.

Geoff Emerick went on to win a total of 3 Grammy awards for his Beatles work. While most of the book concentrates on The Beatles, he does mention some of his other projects, such as Paul McCartney's Band on the Run, as well as his work with The Zombies and Elvis Costello. Finally, he comes full circle with his involvement with the "Threetles" reunion sessions for the Beatles Anthology.

"HERE THERE AND EVERYWHERE-My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles" is truly a Beatles' book that delivers! A descriptive story of the Beatles in the recording studio has been sorely missed...until now.
Ronnie

Other recent books about the Beatles,like Spitz's biography or Bramwell's gossip collection, had tended to be more about group politics than about the one thing that made the Beatles great: their music. In his book, Here There and Everywhere, Geoff Emerick, along with music journalist Howard Massey, correct this trend, presenting Beatles fans with a memoir of how the Beatles, along with the production team of George Martin and Geoff Emerick pushed the boundries of recording during act of creating the greatest music of the 20th century.

Beginning as an extremely young boy, Emerick learns the ropes of recording according to EMI policies, which he shows are anti-intunitive and throttling. Using their financial clout, the Beatles override all sense about the technology, allowing Emerick to experiment in various dire ways, trying (and mostly suceeding) to please the Princes of Pop. He is plainspoken about the musical deficiencies of the band, showing Paul McCartney to be the consummate music within the group. The rise of George Harrison from the fumbling guitarist who had his solos rerecorded by the ever more invented McCartney, to the writer of his later hits is one of the more interesting pieces of the book. Happily, Emerick is light on the Lennon/Ono debacle, although perforce by his observation of the recording studio during the White Album and Abbey Road session, we see how Lennon's new obsession ruined the band. Interestingly, the only verge into rancor is directed towards Ringo, who unforgivingly to Emerick, ruined the new Apple recording studios. Et tu, Rings?

Having now read many many books on the Beatles, I can say that Emerick's memoir is among the best. Compare this book, if you will, with George Martin's two slight memoirs, and you may find yourself agreeing with me, especially if you want to know about the music, as opposed to the mayhem.

In the early 1960s Geoff Emerick landed the dream job music fans would have killed for; assistant recording engineer at EMI Studio working with George Martin. It was a dream job because one of the first groups Emerick worked with was the Beatles. The next seven years of musical magic and misery Emerick spent in the control room are wonderfully chronicled in this book.

Though Emerick was a Beatles insider, he wasn't the 'Fifth Beatle' and makes no claim to that title in this book. Rather he was a young, impressionable teenager who worked with the Beatles for thousands of hours and occasionally helped them in realizing the musical vision they heard in their heads.

What was most enjoyable about Emerick's book was his recounting of the group's musical development, the friendship and chemistry between John, Paul, George and Ringo and especially those magical moments when a song came together. Later on, when the group started to self-destruct, the magical moments were much fewer but even then, as for instance when recording 'Abbey Road,' making the music would melt away the animosity.

Emerick was never a confidant or even a friend of any of the Beatles. He was an employee working in the control booth and the Beatles were down in the studio and the twain didn't meet that much. Some may object to his opinions about the four but, given his vantage point, those opinions are perfectly valid. Having read lots of Beatle books, I didn't come across any smoking guns in Emerick's book. Could John be short-tempered and nasty? Sure. Could he be a wonderfully funny and compassionate man? Yup. Was Paul the most approachable Beatle? Well, duh! And on and on.

What I find most impressive about the Beatles in the studio was this fact. Despite being virtual prisoners in the drab, soul-deadening EMI studios, they still managed - with some help from their friends - to create some of the most inventive, joyous pop music the world has ever seen!

I enjoyed Emerick's book immensely. It's an eminently readable, affectionate, warts-and-all record of the high spots, low points, craziness and tedium and you are there! Thanks, Geoff!

Geoff Emerick was the recording engineer behind such seminal works as Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. He was also privy to most of the innerworkings of the Beatles' recording sessions even if he wasn't the chief engineer on all their albums. Through careful observations of the Beatles' compositional styles and perceptive insights into the dynamics of their personalities, Emerick brings a welcome clarity to the subject of how the Beatles worked in the studio and how their vision of rock evolved. The early days are evoked with particular charm, especially the memories of recording "She Loves You" at the same time that frantic fans were invading EMI studios. Emerick's comments on the raw energy of "She Loves You" versus the more contained power of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," are more than worth the price for any serious Beatles historian. Interesting, detailed, and very readable. A gem in the ongoing treatises upon Beatle-ology.

Donald Gallinger is author of the novel, The Master Planets

Like most people, I enjoy the Beatles music but I am not really a fan. I didn't expect this book to engage me as much as it did. I read it in a day!

The book is well written and easy to read, which I think is the contribution of co-author Howard Massey. Massey has written another great book entitled, "Behind the Glass," which is a collection of interviews with top record producers describing how they create hit records. I highly recommend that book as well.

This book is not technical and is really written to appeal to anyone with an interest in the 60s, the Beatles or the music industry. There are "cameo appearances" in the book by some other great artists of the times, including Judy Garland and top classical musicians that recorded at EMI studios.

Some of the other reviews criticize Emerick for his favoritism of McCartney and knocks on the other Beatles. My attitude is that this book is about Geoff Emerick more than anything else. This is a recollection of his personal experiences with the Beatles and is written from his point of view. The fact that his impressions of the four Beatles as individual people don't always coincide with the mythology that has developed aboutt them over the years is interesting and understandable. It makes complete sense to me that Emerick, as a professional recording engineer/producer, would favor McCartney. While I strongly prefer Lennon's music over McCartney's, the fact is that McCartney was the best overall musician of the Beatles. Ask anyone who has seeen McCartney live lately, he effortlessly moves between bass, guitar and piano, and plays them all equally well. Since Emerick worked everyday with some of the world's greatest musicians (he worked with some pretty famous people other than the Beatles), he must have been impressed by Paul's talent.

Emerick also claims that McCartney was the one Beatle that took the strongest interest in the process of recording. Since Emerick is a professional recording engineer, it makes sense that he would bond with McCartney. Let's face it, if one of the Beatles took a strong interest in what you do for a living, you would think they were the greatest Beatle too!

I rate it five stars. It is well written and gives a fresh perspecitve to the Beatles.

I like the insight that Geoff brings to the actual recording of many of the Beatle's albums. However, he makes George out to be a hack musician and not much of human being to boot. He also gives himself enough credit to perhaps make you wonder why EMI never built a statue of him in front of the Abbey Road studio. I think the book is overall a good read for any Beatle enthusiast, but Geoff would have done himself so much more good to not make George Harrison, Ringo, and often George Martin look average. ...of course he has an undying love for Sir Paul!

I totally enjoyed this book from first page to last. In fact, I devoured it in just a few days and couldn't put it down the whole time I was reading it, which I think is the sign of a really great book.

Geoff Emerick was the Beatles sound engineer from 1966 onwards, but he actually started working with them in 1962, when he was just a kid of 15. His stories of how the group made records at EMI studios (this is before it was called Abbey Road) are totally engrossing. I never realized before how much hard work and effort it took from everyone involved, or exactly what the role of the engineer was. But it also sounds like everyone had great fun while they were creating those amazing records, and some of the anecdotes Emerick tells are hilarious, like the microphone-wrapped-in-a-condom story, or the time that John Lennon wanted to be swung from a rope while he was singing.

I don't agree with what some people are saying about Emerick being too easy on Paul McCartney, or too hard on George Harrison. Probably the best thing about this book is that he talks at length about the personalities of all four Beatles, warts and all, and in every case he describes the good with the bad. After all, this is someone who actually worked with the group for many years, so if he says that Paul was the easiest to get along with (and also the one who was most interested in the recording process) then I have to believe him, just as I can easily believe that George Harrison had a sour, sarcastic demeanor when he was a young man. Of the four, it was only George who looked back on his Beatles years with bitterness and complaints, and he was the first one to want to stop playing live for the fans. Emerick's early negative opinion of Harrison is, however, balanced by an increasingly positive view as George discovers Indian music and not only becomes a better guitar player but develops a more mellow personality.

I never knew that Ringo was so quiet and didn't talk much, but maybe that was the real Richard Starkey, not the one we got to see on camera. He still comes across as basically a nice guy, and you can tell how much Emerick admired his drumming abilities, even if Paul did have to sometimes show him what parts to play. But most of all, I loved the stories in this book about John Lennon because he had such a deep, complex personality. He may have been a genius, but Geoff Emerick also reveals him to us as a human being. A very funny, smart human being, but also one with faults (like impatience, a bad temper and extreme mood swings). This is very much in line with what others close to the group (including his ex-wife Cynthia) have said about John, that he had both a nasty side and a kind side.

Provocative, insightful, and well-written, I expect this is a book I will read and reread over and over again. It's not only a powerful story about the most influential group of musicians in our time, it's an important contribution to the chronicling of popular culture. Excellent job, Mr. Emerick!

Finally, a Beatles book from an insider who has no agenda, no axe to grind! In case you don't know who Geoff Emerick was, he was the man responsible for the sound of the Beatles from 1966 onwards, from their Revolver album to Sgt. Pepper (called by many the two greatest rock albums of all time) to their final record, Abbey Road. I knew that he had done those records with the group, helping shape their new psychedelic image, but what I didn't know was that he had also worked with them on many of their earliest records, too, things like I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You. And he was only 15 at the time!
What an incredible story, and it's told really well too, and with admirable honesty. There's no dirt dishing here, like so many other Beatles books, but there is a refreshingly candid look at the personalities involved. George Martin didn't do everything he claimed he did, and John wasn't really the leader of the band, not in the studio, anyway -- Paul was. Ringo was as good a drummer as we always thought he was, but he was also very quiet and tended to say little, though when he did come up with a comment, it was usually a gem. Emerick's portrait of George Harrison is perhaps the most interesting one. Harrison apparently wasn't all that great a guitarist in the early days, at least not when the red Recording light came on (don't forget, he was only 18 when Emerick first heard him play), but he got better and better as the years went on, and it's fascinating to see the way he grows in stature in Emerick's eyes as the band get further along in their musical development. By the end, you can tell that Emerick has almost as much admiration for him as he does for the "musician's musician" Paul and the ever-mercurial but phenomenally talented John.
I had a blast reading this book, and it got me to get out all my old Beatles records and give them a spin one more time... only this time, knowing the stories behind the making of them, I heard all those classic recordings with new ears.
A great read, and a lot of fun. Highly recommended!

"People don't realize, it but George had a great sense of humor," Emerick recalled. "He was also such a gifted musician. On "Taxman," from the Revolver album, I can remember him writing the guitar parts backwards to get the effect. He could do anything. At first, John and Paul didn't realize how well he could write songs. But then they saw what he could do."
This is not a quote from the book. It is, however, a quote from Geoff Emerick after he heard a cut from the then unreleased Brainwashed album.
Don't expect anything like this in Here There and Everwhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles. If anything, George Harrison comes off as a no-talent, mean spirited spoiled brat who, apparently, didn't much care for Mr. Emerick.
The bulk of the book is an unabashed tribute to Paul McCartney, whom he apparently not only liked but idolized. John and Ringo don't fare much better than George, so...unless you've never heard anything else about the recording sessions and think the recollections from the vantage point of a 16 year old is definitive, I can't recommend this book. If you like any of the other Beatles and don't have an altar to Paul in your home, it will be disappointing.
I actually do like Paul, but the shots taken at the other three in this "memoir" are tough to take. Ken Scott, one of the other engineers who went on to produce many other artists (including George Harrison) has publicly disagreed with much of what is written in this book.
So, in spite of glowing reports, and especially if you think George Harrison was a superb musician and not some knee jerk wannabe...well, you know...don't buy it.
Now, I'm going to amend my earlier thoughts on this and say that it does have some interesting stories about various recording sessions. The account of Yoko in bed during the Abbey Road sessions is still hard to imagine, but the description of the final guitar solo blow out at the end of the medley raises the unfulfilled hope that it might have all worked out in "the end".
So, depending on your susceptibility to the bias, consider the book an interesting read, but still not what I, personally, had hoped for.
Good luck on your decision.

Here, There and Everywhere is a fascinating read for those of us who are insatiable about the details of the Beatles recording sessions - following the ideas and

paths that lead to the music we know so well being created. For the most part I was glued to the pages as it's written from a unique perspective, from an individual

who actually contributed to the music and who'se sonic stamp is indelibly fixed upon it for ever.

Certain procedures to achieve ideas I already knew about as I'm sure many of us did, but there was such insight into others that I read with thirsty glee. The

anecdotes about the Day in the Life and Strawberry Fields sessions were particularly captivating for me as was the consistent search for the gateway to more bass

on vinyl.

What disappointed me was Mr Emerick's tedious prostation before Paul at the expense of everyone else including George Martin. I love Paul's work but Geoff's

dismisal of everyone else and elevating McCartney to the sole saviour and focal point of the Beatles through out their recording idea eventually annoys more than it

enlightens. I'm always prepared to learn something new and this goes for Beatles history too, but Geoff writes it in such a way that only Paul stands tall with a

beacon in his upraised hand like the Statue of Liberty, leading the way for all the lesser mortals who somehow manage to stumble their way behind his vision and

commitment.

The other annoying element is that Geoff Emerick is such a shameless self-aggrandizer, often he writes as if he was the hero of the moment. Maybe he was, but the

impression I got from the read was that often the main elements in the music recorded by the Beatles were Paul and his buddy Geoff. It was painful to persistantly

read how George Harrison was a miserable inept human being; Ringo, pointless; John, a flake and a technical Neanderthal; and George Martin a conniving power

thirsty, focus grabbing self aggrandizer himself!

It is surely Mr Emerick's right as the co author to write the book as he chooses, but it does cause discomfort to read at times, especially knowing that his verbatim

quotes from 40 odd years ago cannot in any sense be considered accurate. It adds fiction to the mix, I felt this as I was reading it which cheapened the historical

elements.

I mostly enjoyed the book for what I learnt about the music, the way it was recorded, the techniques, but came away feeling uneasy about Geoff Emerick the person.

I guess in a similar way he found fault with the Beatles (to a much lesser extent, Paul) I find fault with him.