"John Lennon said he wanted to sound like the Dalai Lama singing on top of a mountain 25 miles away"

AT the age of just 15 Geoff Emerick stepped inside of Abbey Road studios for the first time. 

Nervous and eager to impress, on his second day at EMI he witnessed musical history as in Studio Three the newly finalised line-up of The Beatles were recording for the first time.

While working under assistant engineer Richard Langham, who was in turn assisting Norman Smith, the teenage Emerick was present for the early sessions which would become the historic band’s debut single Love Me Do.

“At the time no one knew what they would become,” says Emerick, recalling the first time he saw the Fab Four. “I started a day prior to them coming and they wanted to do Love Me Do and I wanted to learn more about the job, so I stayed late.

“Traditionally it was quite a corporate protocol in the studio but there was a level of fun with The Beatles, that is why George Martin latched onto them and the relationship started.”

After that first day Emerick went onto work on numerous early recordings of The Beatles’ while honing his engineering craft, working with artists such as Judy Garland and The Hollies.

Some four years later, aged 19, he took over from Smith as The Beatles lead recording engineer and helmed the sessions for Revolver, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the White Album and Abbey Road.

Normally engineers were in their 30s or 40s, so for Emerick to be promoted at such a young age was unprecedented.

But as EMI were left in the lurch with the departure of Smith, his relationship with the band paid dues and he was promoted, much to the shock of his colleagues.

“When The Beatles came in to start the Revolver sessions they were after something different,” he says. “They were fed up with the wishy washy drum sound and John Lennon’s first request on the first recording of Tomorrow Never Knows was he wanted to sound like the Dalai Lama singing on top of a mountain 25 miles away.

“There was no software or plug-ins in those days so the saving grace was when we were looking through the control room and there was this revolving speaker, we thought maybe that would gave him what he wants, which it did – that won John over.

“I was so young and I was so nervous, the only way to do the things they wanted was to abuse, overload and overdrive the equipment.” 

After a successful first day in Studio Two as their lead engineer, Emerick stayed with the band until their final fateful fracture and was instrumental in producing the spectacular soundscapes which defined the band’s later and more psychedelic work. 

It was his willingness to innovate, experiment and break rules in the studio which endeared him to the band, rarely saying the sound they wanted could not be done.

He picked up two Grammy Awards for his work along the way for Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road.

“Everyone said it was serendipity, I started at the right time, got on well with Norman, got on well with them. Who knows really?” he says.

Now 50 years on since that day in Studio Two, he is using his experiences to help produce a live re-staging of The Beatles' career in the halls of Abbey Road Studio Two inspired by his memoir Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles, penned alongside music journalist Howard Massey.

Set in a faithful reproduction of the studio, The Sessions' mission statement is to produce spectacular and historically accurate versions of The Beatles songs which are as sonically authentic to the original recordings as possible.

Emerick says it was The Beatles' ambitions in the studio which ultimately drove them away from the the live show. 

The scope of their studio sound on their later albums outstripped the technology available to them throughout the sixties, leading live productions to sound hollow compared to their later records.

This is something which The Sessions attempts to do on its nationwide arena tour – faithful recreating The Beatles' studio sound live through use of multiple Georges, Johns, and Pauls to recreate the layered harmonies.

“Once they finished Revolver they went out on tour and tired to replicate it,” says Emerick. “But there was just no way of doing it live on stage, so when it came to do Sgt Pepper they simply said they were never going to tour again.

They said ‘we are going to concentrate on making records without trying to reproduce them’.

“Straight after Sgt Pepper there was Magical Mystery Tour and then we started the White Album.

“They had been to India and they came back not as the people I knew, there was a lot of anger in them.

“They turned all the guitar amps up loud and I was getting problems as well, so after about 10 songs I could not handle it and quit.”

Eventually Emerick was talked back into returning for Abbey Road, which is technically The Beatles' final record chronologically as it was recorded after the Twickenham Film Studio studio sessions for Get Back, which morphed into Let It Be.

He had remained on good terms with the band despite his departure and McCartney invited him to quit EMI and come work for the band’s newly established Apple label, where he helped build their first recording studio.

Emerick was not the only one who was driven away by the band’s bubbling frustrations – George Harrison famously walked away from the band for 12 days during the Twickenham sessions.

“When they asked him to come back and do another album he said ‘I will do it, but only in the way we used to,’” says Emerick. “That is what happened with Abbey Road but the camaraderie was just not there anymore.

“There are pictures taken from the album cover shoot [with them] walking towards the studio. But in all fairness I think they had been there for such a time and realised it was time to leave, that is why they are walking away across the crossing.

“I did not realise at the time the split was coming, but it was almost built in that Abbey Road was going to be the last album. Other people did, but I never had an inkling.”

Emerick recalls even the steadying hand of George Martin could not save the band and he paid tribute to the 'Fifth Beatle' who died earlier this year.

“He was like a father figure,” he says. “Paul used to say that as well. I was so saddened when we heard he had died and we used to have a great time together.

“He could always calm down a session if it was not going well.”

After Beatlemania came crashing down he continued his career working with Paul McCarney, working on Band on the Run, and also went to record with artists such as Elvis Costello, Big Country, Art Garfunkel, Kate Bush and Jeff Beck.

Across his career he he has won four Grammys in total, and oversaw the re-recording of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with artists such as Oasis, The Killers, Travis and Razorlight.

But with the advent of new technology and digital techniques Emerick, who still is a working engineer, considers much of the craft behind those early recordings as a lost a art.

He said many people working in studios now lack the “artistic input” and “heart of soul” as sound is defined simply by levels on a computer screen.

Even though it is approaching nearly 46 years to day McCartney announced he was quitting the band on April 10, 1970, The Sessions is set to pack arenas up and down the country.

“When my book came out I was doing signings and I had people coming up to me and telling me they got engaged or met with one of The Beatles songs playing in the background,” says Emerick. 

“People’s lives are built around these songs, when you talk about them they tear up. The Beatles were a phenomenon which will never happen again.”

‘The best Beatles imitators in world’

MORE than 40 people will take to the stage for The Sessions as they bid to recreate the sound of the The Beatles.

Seven vocalists, two Johns, two Pauls, one Ringo, and two Georges, will perform with seven musicians, eight studio technicians and a twenty one piece orchestra to try to recapture The Beatles massive soundscape .

The musicians will perform inside a reproduction of Abbey Road’s Studio Two performing each of their albums recorded their as a suite

Creative consultant Geoff Emerick is just one of the minds behind the production, working along with executive producer Stig Edgren, creator of The Elvis Presley, and director Kim Gavin, the creative director of the 2015 Rugby World Cup opening ceremony and the London Olympics closing ceremony. 

There is design from Howard Lindeman, behind Rihanna’s Grammys performance, and lighting design by Luc LaFortune from Cirque Du Soleli.

The stage set has been produced by Stufish, the entertainment architects behind live shows for The Rolling Stones, AC/DC and U2.

Earlier this week the show had a charity preview in the Fab Four’s home city of Liverpool before making its world premiere tonight at the Royal Albert Hall before it comes to the Brighton Centre. 

Jef Hanlon, the Show’s Producer said: “All instrumentation, arrangements and vocals will be performed identically to the original recordings – there will even be seven singers to recreate the multi-tracked vocals pioneered by The Beatles. 

“This show does not seek to be a look-a-like show, but rather a sound-a-like, with the singers being the best Beatles imitators in the world.”

THE SESSIONS - Brighton Centre, King’s Road, Wednesday, April 6
Doors 7pm, tickets from £40.