Geoff Emerick interview/Sgt. Pepper story

[Fab4ever]

Hey thanks so much for the kind words, XLR. I'm a longtime journalist and home studio owner, but I have very little experience in radio-style productions. I was going for a sort of NPR style. I too loved Emerick's memories of those good times, especially the vocal overdub sessions you mentioned as well as Paul laying down bass after everyone else had left. I *still* get chills knowing that there are only a few people on this Earth who really know how it went down.

 

[XLR]

I was going for a sort of NPR style.

You beat NPR by a mile. I've got to laugh because when I saw NPR mentioned in your post my first thought was that during your interview I can't recall you saying "sort of" one time, and that was classy. To me, NPR is the sort of national sort of public sort of radio, haha. Sorry for the sort of rant!

 

[Nakatira]

This is pure gold, thanks for sharing

 

[CoolCat]

Interesting interview, thanks for posting it.

Geoff mentioned they were using Altec 604E which wasn't mentioned in the book, that was a detail of interest.
He did make a comment in the book, how spectacular the speakers sounded when he first hired into EMI. I was always under the assumption these were crappy old mono speakers, 1940's left over, but obviously that was a wrong perception of a black and white picture. The cabinets weren't made to look appeasing to the eye, more like a science laboratory piece.

Tube mixing board, Nueman mics, and the room.... ALTEC 604E's...or 605 like this picture is stamped...either way, pretty nice sounding speakers I assume. very costly on ebay!

I still think the bass on Sgt. Pepper is amazingly done, so melodic , musical. Bass was put on last and made the loudest.

He mentions a c12 mic on the bass, I assume its a Telefunken... $8500 microphone! yikes
Geoff mentions U47 a lot in the book, I looked it up, 1947 Neumann introduced his design, soon replacing the RCA 44/77's...etc..a "grounding breaking" microphone apparently.

and the wall pad absorbers on the walls of Abbey Road were "stuffed with seaweed", he mentioned in the book that's odd isn't it?