"...sdaeh rieht edih dna nur yeht semoc niar eht fI"
LookingGlass
*backwards* RAIN story.
...quote...
"I asked George Martin about this during an interview about his book
"Playback" in 2003. Here is the relevant section of the interview:
AK: In the book you talk a lot about your early experiments, say with
Sidney Torch doing half-speed experiments.
GM: (laughs) Yes, that was madness.
AK: I was wondering how these things occurred to you: were you
listening to avant-garde electronic music and got ideas from that, or
did you just like playing with equipment and …
GM: Well, I was aware of avant-garde music, but it wasn’t an
obsession. No, it all stemmed from the fact that when I joined EMI in
1950, it was light years away from today. We didn’t use tape. Because
shellac at 78 revolutions a minute discs were the only thing. And I
started as a classical producer, and part of my job was cutting up
music in order to fit shellac discs. I was terribly frustrated by
this, particularly when the boss of our company said he wasn’t going
to make long-playing records. Crazy. He was a madman. Um… [laughs]
it’s unbelieveable isn’t it?
AK: Well, EMI has a long history of that. As you know.
GM: Oh well. The interesting thing was, at that stage, the criterion
by which everything was judged in the recording field was faithfulness
to the original. If you made a record that was so good that you
couldn’t tell the difference between that and the actual live
performance that was the acme. In other words, the most accurate
photograph you could take. And I questioned that. I thought, okay,
we’re all going around taking photographs of an existing event.
Gradually my thoughts developed: we don’t have to make a photograph.
We can paint. We don’t have to do something on record that can be done
live. We can do something different. So that’s really what prompted me
to do all these things, to get Sidney Torch to do the half-speed
thing. I thought the idea of trombones screaming away up in the
trumpet register, with glissandi, would be terribly exciting. That was
what was driving me, I was trying to do something you couldn’t do
normally.
Then when I started doing the comedy records, that was the beginning
of the sound pictures thing, creating an image – you see, nowadays,
people don’t think of aural images because we’re so incredibly
conditioned by television, computer screens. And children have to see
something to appreciate it. You cannot sell a record without a video
image. But in those days, there was no television, or very little,
virtually nothing at all. And everybody listened to radio, and they
listened to records, and when they listened to records they could
imagine what was going on. So that you could create a sound picture,
and people would sit like this [he leans back, eyes closed] and they
could see the scene in their eyes, and they could chuckle at what was
going on. And you would create it by means of – if there was a couple
walking in the park, a little crunch of gravel, birds in the
background, a faint hum of traffic in the background. And you would
create a scene. I found that interesting.
AK: And there were things like Strauss tone poems, where it’s all in
the music.
GM: I suppose. Yeah. I loved doing that. And that was the basis of the
so-called comedy records. I never made a record with a joke in it.
Because jokes don’t last. The records I made were situations which
people would enjoy listening to and being involved in and being amused
by.
AK: So later on, when the Beatles wanted to experiment with sound, was
this something you pushed them towards, because you could now do your
Sidney Torch experiments, or was it…
GM: I think Pepper was the beginning of it, really..
AK: Or even Revolver.
GM: Even… Pepper wasn’t, Revolver was really the beginning, with
Tomorrow Never Knows. Or even before then. I remember, the first time
I used backwards sounds at all with the Beatles was on Rain, at the
very end. And John had no idea what I was doing. We’d done the track.
We left a thing on the end which was -- going to put a guitar solo or
something, and they left Geoff Emerick and me in the studio. And I’d
thought about this, and I’d heard – John’s voice we’d overdubbed, so I
lifted his voice off the track, so I lifted his voice off the track,
and turned it back to front, and listened to it throughout. And there
was one phrase that intrigued me and I thought it would probably work.
And I tried it at the end. I’d slid it around a bit in relation to the
rhythm, until I found a good spot for it, and it seemed to work very
well. When John came back, I played it. I said, “John have a listen to
this, see what you think.” And he said, “what the **** is that?” I
said, “it’s you.” He said “No.” I said “yeah, honestly, it is you. But
it’s you backwards.” And he thought, hey! And from that moment they
wanted to do everything backwards, they wanted guitars backwards and
drums backwards, and everything, and it became a bore.
AK: But then John claimed later on that he invented the backwards
thing.
GM: Yeah, he invented everything. [laughs] That’s okay. John was the
least technical of all of them."
Has this been discussed before? The two stories conflict with each
other...though Martin stating that John was the "least technical" does
support the possibility that John accidentally played the tape
backwards.
Donz5
Could you please source your cites?
Bernie Woodham
> other...though Martin stating that John was the "least technical" does
> support the possibility that John accidentally played the tape
> backwards.
>
>
Well, I stated what I thought it the other thread:
When I first heard this on 45rpm I knew that was John's voice. I find
it hard to believe he wouldn't recognize it himself.
Bernie Woodham
> *backwards* RAIN story.
>
> .
Here's more from Wiki's McCartney bio:
"After the recording of "Yesterday" in 1965, McCartney contacted the
BBC Radiophonic Workshop in Maida Vale, London, to see if they could
record an electronic version of the song, but never followed it up.
When visiting John Dunbar's flat in London, McCartney would take along
tapes he had compiled at Jane Asher's house. The tapes were mixes of
various songs, musical pieces and comments made by McCartney that he
had Dick James make into a demo record for him. Heavily influenced by
John Cage, he made tape loops by recording voices, guitars and bongoes
on a Brenell tape recorder, and splicing the various loops together.
He reversed the tapes, sped them up, and slowed them down to create
the effects he wanted, some of which were later used on Beatles'
recordings, such as "Tomorrow Never Knows". McCartney referred to the
tapes as "electronic symphonies"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_McCartney#Electronic_music
With the relationship LenMac had, it's hard to believe that Lennon
would not also have begun experimenting the same way. Especially since
Lennon is the one who gets credit for recognizing the value of amp
feedback.
That Martin would talk about electronic alterations and not mention
any of the above, to me at least, draws suspicion on what he says.
cefalu 93
it is for me, and how lucky YOU GUYS ARE to have the time to
read all this very interesting stuff !
Yes folks, I'm living in the one of the most technically
developed countries on the planet, but, hard to believe,
there are no cable lines in my town to run a speedy computer !
So here I am, "one town over", spending $ 3 an hour,
(could be worse ...Chicago cafe' was $ 6 an hour in 2003 ! )
just to be online !
Ok ...sorry ...I just wanted to, as the late Steve Allen would say,
"vent my spleen" !
And no ...I don't want to print stuff and read it at home,
cuz when I do get home I am busy playing my new X-Box 360, or,
these days , watching the Sopranos, seasons 1 to 6 1/2 !
Ok, I'll stop whining .
Carry on .
All these posts are very interesting !
But my time here at the cybercafe' is up ! !
Hasta La Pasta !
tony .
LookingGlass
The source for the quote is from an interview Kozinn had with George
Martin in 2003 (as stated at the top of the quote). I picked this
quote off of the Steve Hoffman forum site. That's all I know. As
Kozinn is posting there, I am assuming it is legit or Kozinn would
have objected.
LookingGlass
Post #616 in the "It's Official! The Beatles Remasters Thread (Part
18)" at the Hoffman site.
Donz5
Thanks -- but it'd be nice to have a link so that folks can go
directly to it, don'tcha think? :)
Donz5
LookingGlass
>
> > Thanks -- but it'd be nice to have a link so that folks can go
> > directly to it, don'tcha think? :)
>
> Kinda like this:
>
> http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=192796&page=31
You want fries with that?
LookingGlass
>
> - Show quoted text -
Here is a link to the interview Kozinn did with Martin in 2003 that is
referenced above. I must assume that the *copy and paste* of the
"Rain" quote from the Steve Hoffman forum is taken from Kozinn's notes
of that 2003 interview, as the quote does NOT appear in the officially
released NY Times printed article. Kozinn was generous to share those
notes at the Hoffman site.
blackburst
> *backwards* RAIN story.
Kinda like this:
cefalu 93
> > developed countries on the planet, but, hard to believe,
> > there are no cable lines in my town to run a speedy computer !
>
*********************************************************************
If you are really curious Pale, e-mail me, cefa...@gmail.com .
tony .