Would Hey Jude have been even better if it were recorded at EMI instead of Trident Studios?

I like everything the way it is.

 

Are you talking about the interview extras with the Threetles & Martin listening to and discussing tracks. Because the bass that "caught Paul by surprise" there was YNGMYM and the issue was who was playing bass while Paul was playing piano. They all (aside from Martin) assumed it was overdubbed by Paul, but Martin insisted that was impossible since every discarded take had both piano & bass to which George H replied "He was keen!" (Good one, George)

In reality it was George on bass as Lennon was either still on holiday with Yoko, or still in hospital with Yoko with injuries sustained in a car accident while on holiday.

The reality is no one who plays professional rhythm guitar should be anywhere near as bad as John is on bass. He should at least be able to hit the root notes of the chords in accurate musical time, but on some of the tunes that exist on film where we know for a fact its John on bass, he has difficulty even managing that.

 

Surprised nobody seems able to hear George's electric guitar particularly noticeable at the end of the middle eights.
Hey Jude is far from the only Beatles A side not recorded in part or wholly in EMI Abbey Road:
Can't Buy Me Love (main track at Pathe Marconi), Help! (vocals at CTS), Get Back, Let it Be, Long and Winding Road (all at Apple) to name another five.

 

Neither; John is on lead guitar on that track.

 

Actually I just checked the Recording Sessions book and you're right. Not only is John credited for "distorted guitar", George is credited with "chiming guitar" and no-one is credited with bass (on the backing track)

I know I had the circumstance right, but the song wrong. So which song am I thinking of "Golden Slumbers"?

Its a piano/bass/drums backing track from Abbey Road.

PS - it probably was Golden Slumbers (and Carry That Weight - recorded as one) according to the recording sessions book. John was absent and the Threetles recorded 15 takes with George on bass.

 

No, the track they were listening was Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight, on which George played bass.
On Hey Jude, Paul overdubbed the bass (Fender Jazz) on 1 August 1968.
Here's photos from that day at Trident from my page: The Beatles Recording

 

I always have to laugh when someone appears to have no sense of humour.

 

That but about "tape loop" is bogus, there's different vocals going on the whole time to the end with slight alterations and such. If he means that they created a backing track loop on which they overdubbed everything else, that's also wrong because the bass playing is also different all through the very end. In fact, at the very very very end there are several melodic bass licks that you can't hear in the original version because the volume of the track is practically almost zero. However, you can check them out re-inserted by Giles Martin right in the middle (~3:07) of LOVE mix of Hey Jude.

Really? It always sounded like George playing Fender VI to me.

 

HJ's gotta be one of Macca's simplest bass parts, then — especially in the "studio years."
I'm guessing he made a conscious decision not to "feature" on bass, same as he did on "Free as a Bird" many years later.

 

The single is a classic. So amazing sounding when it came out in 1968.
I can't think of it sounding better.

 

That was humor? You sure fooled me.

 

Agreed!

 

Technically, they did. In 1961 in Hamburg with Bert Kaempfert they recorded enough to fill a whole album. And in Paris three years later they recorded most of Can't Buy Me Love, the whole Sie Liebt Dich and vocals for Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand (not mentioning the Indian musicians in The Inner Light, recored in Bombay).

 

Agreed, and bass and drums in that song just rock!

 

You can really hear it's had an overall high end eq boost but that doesn't spoil my enjoyment of a great record

 

Goooood.

 

To be honest Trident actually was a better sounding studio than EMI back in the day. I have albums recorded at Trident (in the 70s) that are up there for top sound quality. Hardly surprising The Beatles would use it. I actually think Baby Your a Rich Man and Hey Jude are among the best sounding Beatles recordings of that period ( 67/68). Remember Ken Scott later moved to Trident from EMI.


"While Abbey Road Studios still only used four-track at the time, Trident's Ampex eight-track machine drew the Beatles on 31 July 1968 to record their single "Hey Jude". Paul McCartney later said about recording the track at Trident: "Words cannot describe the pleasure of listening back to the final mix of 'Hey Jude' on four giant Tannoy speakers which dwarfed everything else in the room ..."[1][page needed] The White Album tracks "Dear Prudence", "Honey Pie", "Savoy Truffle" and "Martha My Dear" were also recorded there, and on 22 February 1969, the Beatles first recorded "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" for the album Abbey Road. John Lennon and Yoko Ono later returned with the Plastic Ono Band to record "Cold Turkey" featuring Eric Clapton on lead guitar.

Many Apple Records artists used Trident Studios, including Badfinger, Billy Preston, Mary Hopkin, and James Taylor. Part of George Harrison's triple album All Things Must Pass, containing the hit "My Sweet Lord", and Ringo Starr's "It Don't Come Easy", were also recorded there. Harry Nilsson recorded "Without You" at Trident, and portions of several of his 1970s albums."

 

No. I believe that's where Nilsson recorded Nilsson Schmilsson. Very Beatle-y, if you ask me.

 

But they recorded enough to fill a whole "Tony Sheridan" album, not a whole "Beatles" album. At most I guess you could say they recorded enough for a whole "Tony Sheridan & The Beat Brothers" album.

The Inner Light is a bit of a stretch as well since no Beatle plays on it. The only Beatle contribution to the recording is the vocals - recorded at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London.

Plus the only things specifically meant to be recorded in Paris were the 2 German language songs. Can't Buy Me Love was an afterthought after they had completed the German songs they were scheduled to record fast enough to have leftover scheduled time left in the studio, and opted to use it rather than pack up and leave the studio early. "We're already here and set up - we may as well make use of the extra time"

IIRC Martin said they had be dragged kicking and screaming to the studio from their Paris hotel rooms to go to the studio to make those German language recordings, as they saw no point to them, and Martin said when telling the story that in retrospect - he agreed.

 

I seriously doubt that. Knowing Paul's work ethic, that seems highly doubtful. According to Emerick's book "Here, There, and Everywhere," Paul would slave away at the bass parts which would almost always be recorded last so he could work out the basslines for them to be as good as they could be.

But sometimes, there's nothing more effective than root note playing, especially when the emphasis is on repeated chords. You could make a case that AC/DC for instance wouldn't sound as thunderous if they had melodic playing. Perhaps Paul was going for something different on that track.

Or perhaps he just didn't have the time. I remember reading an interview where he insinuated his drop in bassline creativity during most of his Wings era was due to him needing to tackle pretty much everything including management of most Wings-related red tape and such which was all too time-consuming to spend his days in the studios dreaming up of basslines. Now, whether one wishes to believe this is up to them, but there might be a kernel of truth there and perhaps this is reflected as well in the making of Hey Jude which was a rather chaotic time for the lads.

 

Well, I'm in no way questioning his work ethic.

I'm saying he made a conscious decision that HJ would be better served by a "less is more" bass part — the correct decision, IMHO.

 

Well, I said "technically" (and The Inner Light remark explictly mentioning that those were Indian musicians is in brackets, introduced by words "not mentioning"). I am sure we agree in facts of the matter.

I risked that I could sound like a banal smartass mostly to say something nice to the German member of the forum by mentioning a fact he most probably already knows - namely i) The Beatles recorded in his country, ii) they recorded two songs in his mother tongue (ok, now he'll come to tell us, his mother was not German ).

 

Pardon me if this aspect has been covered. I've always found that HJ sounds "congested" and have been thinking for a while, perhaps wrongly, that it might be due to its duration for a 7'' vinyl single. (Or maybe it's just because it's a mono fold-down...)

Is there a SOTA duration limit to cut a 7'' single, say of rock music?

 

On the Sgt Pepper album specifically. Emerick said that he and his assistant engineer would stay in the studio with Paul after everyone else left and spend hours overdubbing the bass, punching in any bits they felt could be improved - even if just ever so slightly.

That was basically "a phase" that Paul was in for Pepper. Also in the book, he said he felt that Paul returned somewhat to that intense concentration on his bass playing (though still not to the ridiculous intensity of staying up til dawn in the studio punching in any passage no matter how short over and over again in search of perfection) while recording the "Band On The Run" album which he engineered.

....and later of course there was the bass on "Silly Love Songs"....

 

Funny.. I was just watching this with my wife this morning.