 |
| Look at this great photo of John and Paul. It's only tangentially related to this blog post, but I stumbled on it last night and I just really like it and wanted to use it. -------------------------------------------- |
But in the book he is unsparing about people who were rude or cold to him, especially George Harrison.
Emerick:
George Harrison was always kind of a mystery to me. Although he was kind and generous with many of my EMI colleagues throughout the years, he and I just didn't have good chemistry together. He struck me as a dour, humorless man who complained a lot, and he always seemed suspicious of everyone outside of the Beatles' inner circle. He didn't interact or converse with me very much, even when we were working on one of his songs. He didn't know anything about technicalities, either—he'd just focus on the musical aspects, and discuss them with the others, or with George Martin. He might say to me, "Can you change the guitar sound a bit, Geoff?" but it wouldn't go much further than that.
I've noted what a buzzkill Harrison was.
So George and Geoff did not have a good rapport, but on top of that, Emerick was supremely unimpressed by Harrison's musicianship, writing:
Paul sometimes actually seemed a bit embarrassed by Harrison's musical limitations; certainly there were many instances of eye-rolling when poor George was wrestling unsuccessfully with a solo or lead part. I imagine in those circumstances that Paul was frustrated, probably thinking that he could have mastered the part faster and played it better.
To be fair, Harrison faced an uphill battle against the massive talents of Lennon and McCartney. For one thing, he was the youngest band member and was therefore frequently treated like a kid brother, not to be taken seriously. For another, he didn't have a songwriting partner to bounce ideas off of. I always felt that at a relatively early point, Harrison simply realized that he was never going to be a Lennon or a McCartney, which might explain why he turned to Indian music—it was his own outlet, something completely separate from the others. On occasion, Lennon would lend him a hand with a lyric or chord change, but then John would quickly become distracted or bored. I never saw Paul extend himself to George that way. His attitude toward his younger bandmate seemed to be, "You shouldn't be asking me for help; you should be doing it yourself." Perhaps it was the creative and personal tension between the two that led Harrison to keep me at arm's length, because it was obvious that I had a close relationship with Paul.
And according to Emerick, it wasn't only himself and Paul who were unimpressed:
I noticed a definite maturing in George Harrison during the course of the Revolver sessions. Up until that point, he had played a largely subordinate role in the band—after all, it was Lennon and McCartney's songs that had been the hits. But he ended up recording three original songs on this album—Im not sure why he was given so much space, but it's possible that he had put pressure on Brian Epstein to put pressure on George Martin.
All those discussions would have been held privately, outside of the studio, but there were definite economic considerations involved, because royalty income was directly tied to how many songs a writer got on each album. Paul and John weren't especially derisive of George's abilities as a songwriter or his explorations into Eastern music—at least, not in my presence—but George Martin always seemed a bit concerned about both the quality of Harrison's compositions and the amount of time being spent on them, which tended to make Harrison a bit self-conscious. With the benefit of hindsight, George Martin has expressed regret in some of his interviews about the short shrift that Harrison sometimes received, though it is somewhat understandable in light of Lennon and McCartney's phenomenal songwriting abilities. It's little wonder that George was often overshadowed. I thought that George's strongest song on Revolver was "Taxman," and George Martin must have agreed, since he decided to put it first on the album-the all-important spot generally reserved for the best song, since the idea is to try to capture the listener immediately. Harrison didn't like paying tax, and the Inland Revenue had been after him once or twice, so he wrote a song about it, with a really clever lyric ("My advice to those who die / Declare the pennies on your eyes"). There was a bit of tension on that session, though, because George had a great deal of trouble playing the solo—in fact, he couldn't even do a proper job of it when we slowed the tape down to half speed.
I was recently listening to Revolver and was wondering myself why there were three Harrison songs on it, none of which are any good, in my opinion, including "Taxman." The only good song Harrison wrote before the magnificent "It's All To Much" was "I Need You" from the Help album. You can hear during the end credits of Help, Harrison's yelling out "I Need You by George Harrison" when his credit comes up on screen, and he was right to be proud about that song. Although to be fair, part of what I love about it is the reverb on the guitar especially towards the end, and the backing vocals. I wrote about the Help album and my love of "I Need You" way back in 2012. I almost forgot I wrote about Help, but I guess that's what happens when you have a blog for almost twenty years.
"Taxman" is considered great by many, but I can't stand it. First because the lyrics sound like they were written by a libertarian. I mean, boo-hoo, obscenely rich musician has to pay high taxes. And second, because the melody is no good. The guitar solos are very good but guess what - George, the band's lead guitarist, doesn't even play them!
Emerick again:
After a couple of hours of watching him struggle, both Paul and George Martin started becoming quite frustrated—this was, after all, a Harrison song and therefore not something anyone was prepared to spend a whole lot of time on. So George Martin went into the studio and, as diplomatically as possible, announced that he wanted Paul to have a go at the solo instead. I could see from the look on Harrison's face that he didn't like the idea one bit, but he reluctantly agreed and then proceeded to disappear for a couple of hours. He sometimes did that-had a bit of a sulk on his own, then eventually came back. Whatever private conversations he would have with John or Paul upon his return occurred in the corridor, where none of us could hear.
Sometimes Ringo would be part of the conference, but more often he would stay in the studio with Neil and Mal until the storm had blown over. Paul's solo was stunning in its ferocity-his guitar playing had a fire and energy that his younger bandmate's rarely matched —and was accomplished in just a take or two. It was so good, in fact, that George Martin had me fly it in again during the song's fadeout.
Emerick also confirmed what I came to think of Yoko Ono while watching Get Back a few years ago - she basically approached the world as if she was royalty. I wrote:
Amanda Hess compares Ono's behavior to a performance piece, but there's a more likely, if prosaic explanation: Ono was from a family of wealthy Japanese aristocrats. The Beatles were working-class musicians. In the world that Yoko came from, you didn't worry about the feelings of the people you outranked. Why should she care if she was irritating the fuck out of everybody?
And the next year I mentioned I had read what a classmate had to say about her:
A classmate offered a different perspective: “She never felt happy unless she was treated like a queen.”
And in Emerick's description, she's even wearing a tiara. Lennon and Ono had been in a car crash and while Ono was recuperating, Lennon had a bed brought into the recording studio during the making of Abbey Road. If only this had been caught on video and seen by all those Ono partisans like Amanda Hess.
Also, Lennon's habit of referring to Ono as "Mother" is extremely creepy.
"I'm afraid that Mother is still not too well, though," he said, suitably chastened. Even during the White Album sessions John had started referring to Yoko that way, which I always found a bit creepy.Yoko started to say something, but before she could get a word out, the door burst open again and four men in brown coats began wheeling in a large, heavy object. For a moment, I thought it was a piano coming in from one of the other studios, but it soon dawned on me that these were proper deliverymen: the brown coats they were wearing had the word "Harrods" inscribed on the back. The object being delivered was, in fact, a bed.Jaws dropping, we all watched as it was brought into the studio and carefully positioned by the stairs, across from the tea-and-toast setup. More brown coats appeared with sheets and pillows and somberly made the bed up. Then, without saying a word, Yoko climbed in, carefully arranging the covers around her.I'd spent nearly seven years of my life in recording studios, and I thought l'd seen it all...but this took the cake. George Martin, John Kurlander, Phil, and I exchanged wary looks; out of the corner of my eye I could see that Paul, Ringo, and George Harrison were as gobsmacked as we were. Lennon walked over to the bed."Are you okay?" he asked solicitously.Yoko mumbled an affirmative. Lennon turned to us."Can you put a microphone up over here so we can hear her on the headphones?" he asked. Dumbfounded, I nodded to John Kurlander and he began setting up a boom stand, suspending the microphone above the supine Mrs. Lennon's face.For the next several weeks, Yoko lived in that bed. Her wardrobe consisted of a series of flimsy nightgowns, accessorized with a regal tiara, carefully positioned to hide the scar on her forehead from the accident. As she gained her strength, so too did she gain her confidence, slowly but surely starting to annoy the other Beatles and George Martin with her comments. She spoke in a really tiny voice, and she always referred to the Beatles in a peculiar, impersonal third-party way: "Beatles will do this, Beatles will do that," never failing to leave off the "The." That used to really irritate Paul. On occasion, he'd even try correcting her: "Actually, it's the Beatles, luv," but she persistently ignored him.
I stand by what I said in response to Get Back - Yoko Ono didn't break up the Beatles, but Lennon used her as one of his methods to break up the Beatles.
Emerick again:
We were working on the backing track to "The End"-the song designed to conclude the album's long medley-when the four Beatles trooped upstairs to listen to some playbacks. Yoko stayed behind, stretched out languorously in the bed, wearing the usual flimsy nightgown and tiara.
As we were listening, I noticed that something down in the studio had caught George Harrison's attention. After a moment or two he began staring bug-eyed out the control room window. Curious, I looked over his shoulder. Yoko had gotten out of bed and was slowly padding across the studio floor, finally coming to a stop at Harrison's Leslie cabinet, which had a packet of McVitie's Digestive Biscuits on top. Idly, she began opening the packet and delicately removed a single biscuit. Just as the morsel reached her mouth, Harrison could contain himself no longer.
"THAT BITCH!!!"
Everyone looked aghast, but we all knew exactly who he was talking about.
"She's just taken one of my biscuits!" Harrison explained. He wasn't the least bit sheepish, either. As far as he was concerned, those biscuits were his property, and no one was allowed to go near them. Lennon began shouting back at him, but there was little he could say to defend his wife (who, oblivious, was happily munching away in the studio), because he shared exactly the same attitude toward food.
Actually, I think the argument was not so much about the biscuits, but about the bed, which they had all come to deeply resent. What Harrison was really saying was "if Yoko is well enough to get out of bed and steal one of my biscuits, she doesn't need to be in the bloody bed in the first place." It almost didn't matter what the argument was about. By this stage, whenever the four of them were together it was like a tinderbox, and anything could set them off...even something as dumb as a digestive biscuit.