He talked recently with U.S. News reporter Alex Kingsbury about recording the Fab Four and his new book, "Here, There and Everywhere".

Tell me about how you came to work in the music business.

 Well, as a very young kid, probably at the age of six, I fell in love with music. I just wanted to be involved with music. I just loved music. When I was at school I insist…well, I didn’t insist. I kept asking the careers officer that I wanted to be in the recording business. I didn’t know exactly what that entailed.

 The youth employment officer, as he was known then, the careers officer. I’d already written to Abbey Road to see if there were any vacancies. And it was he who’d got a phone call from another careers officer, I think, in another part of London, who said there was a vacancy opening up at Abbey Road. But the reply to my letters to Abbey Road was that there were no vacancies.

 When you started there, you started as an assistant recording engineer. You didn’t go into the library or anything. You were just an assistant engineer, which was quite an important job because you were in charge of operating the recording machines. Because then, when I started, multi track had just started to come to the forefront. And a lot of the recordings were still mono and stereo. So, it was quite an important job, because if you pressed the wrong button you’d wipe something.

How did you first meet the Beatles?

 They were just a band, down from Liverpool and they were called the Beatles. Richard Langham as showing me the ropes around Abbey Road and what the job entailed. The very first time I saw them, they were in two days after the day that I started one evening, doing the very first one. Love Me Do, I think it was.

 Course, I was assistant engineer on some of the sessions. And the most memorable one, of course, was She Loves You, which is still one of my favorite records actually because of the energy on it.

 The fans were hanging around outside the gate on that session. There were a lot of them anyway. And they eventually broke into the studio. I got there early and they (The Beatles) were having their pictures taken behind the echo chamber of No. 2, which was slightly outside. The girls just broke in. There were hundreds of them outside. They were hiding in cupboards and all sorts of stuff. They’d got into the studio and (Beatles roadies) Mal (Evans) and Neil (Aspinal) were trying to keep them out. It was absolute chaos.

One of them was actually tackled?

 Oh, yeah. Well, sort of. She went for Ringo I think and Mal or Neil got hold of her and took her out.  The police and everything were in there. It was great-- Keystone Cops. 

 The energy that came. I think it was basically because of what had happened that day and it’s just got so much energy in that record. They had a great time recording it, from what I can remember. It was one of those situations where everything just fell into place.

 To start with,  they were funny and they used to loon around I guess. Crack jokes. And, of course, when we got into the Revolver sessions, they were different people from what I’d remembered.  They were a bit more serious.

 Which of the Beatles was the most tech savvy?

 None of them really. I guess if any of them, Paul possibly, because Paul had a Brenell at home. And so did John, I believe. And so did George. I think they all ended up with Brenell tape recorders. But technically, they weren’t. They just didn’t know what went on, to be honest with you. I mean, they were just into their music.

 They’d hear ideas, let’s put it that way. They’d hear ideas in their heads, or sounds or whatever, and it was up to us to find a way of achieving what they were hearing.

One of those innovations you talk about it recording Paperback writer.

 Yeah, that was the first. I think Paul came in and he heard, I don’t know what record it would have been. He’d heard a record and thought ‘I want that kind of bass sound on it.’ And so, my theory there was, to try and utilize a loudspeaker as a microphone. The theory being that what a loud speaker could put out, a loud speaker could take back in. The only way to hear that is with a 7-inch vinyl mono reversion, because it really thumps out.  

In those days, if you would have been there. You would have heard how different and how great it sounded compared with other records. You know?

 Once we’d done something on one record, we try to achieve another way of doing something on the next record. So we very rarely utilized the same techniques on the next record unless we were desperate for the sound. You know?

 Because of mastering, I was hearing American records coming over and, of course it was, the bass that I fell in love with. I had all these other songs in my head and thought of different ways to achieve them.  I had to experiment as best I could. There were rules and regulations, of course, at Abbey Road. And I broke some of those rules.

Explain that a little bit. Why were there so many rules about what engineers could do, and who could press what button and so forth?

 Well, we were working for a corporation and one of the rules was, someone though that the air pressure from the bass drum was going to damage the bass drum microphone, so you weren’t supposed to put the bass drum microphone nearer than 18 inches from the bass drum. And I didn’t want that sound, so I actually got a letter somewhere giving me permission to move the mic closer into the bass drum. They were asking for things and what could I do but break the rules, you know?

When you were recording Yellow Submarine, for example, there was a crowd of people in the studio.

 We just had a good time over dubbing all those screams and it was a party-like atmosphere in the echo chamber at the back of No.2. I remember John running around with a hand mic. And they were running in there and shouting a screaming. And the sound effects cupboard was open and all the different clunking chains and things came out. Just good fun, it was like a party going on down there.  

 Often I just see myself sitting or standing up in the control room of number two and seeing them recording the tracks. It’s funny, you know?

One of the songs you did record on the White Album was Blackbird. That’s a great story and one of my favorite songs, maybe you can tell that story.

 It was outside the No. 2 echo chamber, where you get to the back of the studio, and Paul sat outside doing it. I think it was late afternoon. Basically we did it outside in the open. We did a few takes in the studio and I think the master tape came from the one outside. And there was a couple of little birds chirping. But a lot of the bird noises that are on it were sound effects that were put in afterwards, which I didn’t do because I think I’d left by that time. From what I remember it was just a nice late afternoon and Paul wanted to get out of that studio, which could be a bit depressing at times. And I remember him recording it outside.

What do you think was your most important contribution to the Beatles?

 God, I don’t know. Everyone says, ‘oh wow, drums sounds, bass sound.’ I don’t know, guitar sounds. One I most like is Day in the Life. Yeah.

 I remember when John came in with it. I think he was just there with his acoustic and as soon as he started to sing it we all had shivers down our backs. It was just amazing to hear it. And then he was stuck for the middle part – ‘woke up, got out of bed’ which it now is—which was another song that Paul had. So, we used that Paul song to go into the middle part. And we took the treble EQ off, at the beginning of that, to make it a bit muzzy so that it was as though someone had just woken up and got out of bed.

 After that, the orchestra comes in and I was meant to be pulling the levels back. It was really inaudible and then suddenly it gave me a another 2.5 DBs at the end to really push the levels right up and crank it up.

Do you have a particular favorite Beatles song?

 I guess Here, There and Everywhere is still a nice one. I think it’s one of Paul’s favorites too. It’s just endless, there’s never one favorite. But the one that always sticks in my mind is when we did Day in the Life and John first sang it, you know, with that tape echo on his voice, which he loved. It helped him sort of get through songs sometimes, because he didn’t like to hear his voice sometimes.

You mentioned that several times in the book. How do you try to convince someone that they sound alright?

 We just didn’t. It’s as simple as that. The guy’s got this voice and for whatever reason, who knows......