The Beatles - Paperback Writer

[srblue5]

What's with the dour faces in the video? I think I read something about that somewhere but don't remember now.

I wonder if it has something to do with the substance(s) that inspired Lennon to accidentally thread the tape of “Rain” in reverse, which in turn led to the backwards vocals on the song’s fade-out.

“Ringo, where are your drums?”
“(Giggles uncontrollably)”
“(Sigh) Ok, fine, just wear sunglasses and try your best to look normal.”

 

[rze99]

Great pop rock tune they were really going some in that period.

I tried to recreate that kind of guitar tone in a demo just for fun.... using my vintage AC30 and Casino.

 

[Chiogtr4x]

Is the suspended G/C chord ( whatever it's called) on the turnaround ( w/bass arpeggio line). on "Rain", the same 'mystery chord' played at the intro to "Hard Day's Night" ?
Sounds like it

 

[Mike M]

Great podcast here on the Beatles and 1966 as well

Episode 145: “Tomorrow Never Knows” by the Beatles

This week’s episode looks at “Tomorrow Never Knows”, the making of Revolver by the Beatles, and the influence of Timothy Leary on the burgeoning psychedelic movement. Click the full post to read li…

500songs.com

 

[archetype]

Paperback Writer was and remains innovative rock. Rain is fabulous, durable, and translatable into other genres. One of my favorite versions is Spud Puppies doing it as a faster bluegrass song. Hey Bulldog is another rocker I like.

 

[acoustic rob]

Paperback Writer and Rain didn’t make it onto Revolver so they released a few months before album came out (May - then August ‘66 for album). It’s stunning the level of quality/creativity these guys were putting out then - only to turn around and land Sgt. Pepper only ten months later (June ‘67).

And don't forget that Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane came out in between the two albums!

It boggles the mind. Talk about work ethic.

A friend of mine pointed out that the Beatles changed popular music twice--first in '63-'64 when they kicked off the British Invasion, and then again in '66-'67 with their psychedelic songs like Rain, Tomorrow Never Knows, Strawberry Fields Forever, and A Day in the Life. And they did it in less than five years!

 

[canteytoque]

I wonder if it has something to do with the substance(s)...

Mmm, I don’t know about that. I mean, it’s not in good taste to talk about what and whom they were doing, but I think they’d been smoking pot for just a few years and were still trying to prevent George Martin from finding out, so I don’t think they’d do a whole video shoot, all the way through, under that influence. If you mean LSD, the story about the dentist “friend” (there should be a special place in Hell for pranksters like that) was from around that time, but not all of them approved of acid. Although they apparently came around just a few years later. I saw an interview, I think with Paul in a video I posted recently with Carl Perkins, in which someone (Paul?) pointed to the gatefold image of Sgt. Pepper’s and said that at least two of them were high as kites when the photo was taken. I think most of us “knew” that (the irises). My guess is that the dour faces in the Paperback Writer video have to do with them being more and more fed up with contractual obligations and other aspects of the business of being professional musicians. My two cents.

And they did it in less than five years!

And their entire arc covers 10 years or less, counting from shortly before Ringo to shortly after their separation. Zeppelin lasted only a little longer and had already lost a lot toward the end. Again, my two cents.

 

[Michael Smith]

Is the suspended G/C chord ( whatever it's called) on the turnaround ( w/bass arpeggio line). on "Rain", the same 'mystery chord' played at the intro to "Hard Day's Night" ?
Sounds like it

I'm pretty sure the intro chord on A Hard Day's Night is an F add 9.

 

[bowman]

I was doing my paper route when I first heard that 45 on my transistor radio. It was common practice for DJs to play both sides of Beatles records in those days, unlike other artists who only got the A side on air. I was already a music addict, listened to everything, and I had that radio on every day from the time I got out of school until I went to sleep at night. The thing that really got me about that record - aside from the stunning originality - was how loud the bass was! It was the first time you could really hear what was Paul was doing, and it was fabulous. In those days no one had any idea that he also played guitar. I was 14 then, but even older kids I knew who were already in bands thought that George played all the leads. It was years later before we found out that George usually took a long time to put his parts together, and sometimes Paul couldn’t wait for him and would just do it himself on the spot, and it was killer every time. His level of ability and creativity was just incredible.

 

[rze99]

I was doing my paper route when I first heard that 45 on my transistor radio. It was common practice for DJs to play both sides of Beatles records in those days, unlike other artists who only got the A side on air. I was already a music addict, listened to everything, and I had that radio on every day from the time I got out of school until I went to sleep at night. The thing that really got me about that record - aside from the stunning originality - was how loud the bass was! It was the first time you could really hear what was Paul was doing, and it was fabulous. In those days no one had any idea that he also played guitar. I was 14 then, but even older kids I knew who were already in bands thought that George played all the leads. It was years later before we found out that George usually took a long time to put his parts together, and sometimes Paul couldn’t wait for him and would just do it himself on the spot, and it was killer every time. His level of ability and creativity was just incredible.

Creativity AND work ethic.
And Talent.
And charm.
And good looks.

And longevity.

 

[Mike M]

Of course almost EVERTHING they tried (whimsical, offbeat, weird), unlike other bands, always seemed to work out:

1. Let's have instruments backwards (I'm Only Sleeping)
2. Let's incorporate random "buzzing" I just accidently discovered. (I feel Fine)
3. Let's incorporate an instrument I just found (Norwegian Wood)
4. Let's fly in random tape loops we just made (Tomorrow Never knows)
5. Let's slow down the band (Rain)
6. Let's speed up the vocals (When I'm 64)
7. Let's change the speed and key of the track in the middle (Strawberry Fields)
8. Let's put an orchestral "orgasm" in the middle of a song (Day in the Life)
9. Let's sing nursery rhymes as the backing vocal ("Frère Jacques" in Paperback Writer)
10. Let's sing a fake French song (Michelle)
11. Let's sing a fake Greek song, with risqué backing vocals (Girl, "tit tit tit")
12. Let's sing a child's song (Yellow Submarine)

They are the only thing in my life that approaches mythical status.

 

[abcdefghijklmnop]

The editing, production and sonic quality is so tight on this track. No Pro Tools, just 4 track Studers. I read that they did the echo effect in real time and in the 1990s when it came time for the Beatles Anthology to be produced, George Martin and team no longer had the capability with old tape machines to do the same effect, so they did it digitally. But its not the same.

Im a big proponent of analog tape and what can be done with it creatively. Yes it can be a "hassle" but if you know what you are doing, its wonderful. I had a massive MCI JH-24 for many years, and currently I have a 4 track Otari MTR-12 1/2". It just has that sound.

 

[abcdefghijklmnop]

I was doing my paper route when I first heard that 45 on my transistor radio. It was common practice for DJs to play both sides of Beatles records in those days, unlike other artists who only got the A side on air. I was already a music addict, listened to everything, and I had that radio on every day from the time I got out of school until I went to sleep at night. The thing that really got me about that record - aside from the stunning originality - was how loud the bass was! It was the first time you could really hear what was Paul was doing, and it was fabulous. In those days no one had any idea that he also played guitar. I was 14 then, but even older kids I knew who were already in bands thought that George played all the leads. It was years later before we found out that George usually took a long time to put his parts together, and sometimes Paul couldn’t wait for him and would just do it himself on the spot, and it was killer every time. His level of ability and creativity was just incredible.

On April 13th, 1966, their fifth recording date for what became the “Revolver” album, The Beatles entered EMI Studio Three at 8 pm, their second session that day, to concentrate on what would become the A-side of their next single. The earlier session on this day (2:30 to 6:30 pm) saw George’s song “Love You To” to completion, which allowed an hour-and-a-half break to switch gears entirely in preparation for a more pop oriented track.

Richard Lush made his Beatles session debut on this day as 2nd engineer, a role he was destined to repeat with frequency during their recording career. Eighteen-year-old Lush remembers: “I was pretty nervous…I knew that Beatles sessions were private. One was rarely allowed to open the door and peek in, and I certainly took a while before they knew me as Richard. Until then it was ‘Who is that boy sitting in the corner hearing all of our music?’ But everything worked out in the end.”

The primary engineer for this session, the equally young Geoff Emerick, recalls much specific details regarding this session in his book “Here, There And Everywhere.” Emerick relates: “Paul strolled into the studio, marched straight over to the piano and confidently proclaimed, ‘Gather round, lads, and have a listen to our next single.’ John gave Paul a sideways glance of disapproval – he never liked losing – but nevertheless joined Ringo and the two Georges for a private concert. Paul pounded out a catchy melody, instantly hummable, filled with memorable hooks. I couldn’t make out the lyric entirely, but it seemed to involve book writing. Each time he would come to the chorus, Paul would stop playing and gesture to John and George Harrison, pointing out the high harmony part he planned on assigning each. By the time he finished the first run-through, it was obvious to everyone in the room that this was an instant hit.”

Right from the start, Paul wanted a new technique devised concerning the sound of the bass guitar on this song. “Even before he got down to the brass tacks of teaching the others their parts,” Emerick continues, “Paul turned to me. ‘Geoff,’ he began, ‘I need you to put your thinking cap on. This song is really calling out for that deep Motown bass sound we’ve been talking about, so I want you to pull out all the stops this time. All right, then?’”

“I nodded an affirmative. Paul had long been complaining that the bass on Beatles records wasn’t as loud or as full as the bass on the American records he so loved. He and I would often get together in the mastering room to listen intently to the low end of some new import he had gotten from the States, most often a Motown track. Even though we had DI (Direct Inject) boxes available, I rarely used them to record Paul’s bass…Instead, I followed the standard EMI directive of placing a microphone in front of his bass amplifier. The bass sounds we were getting were decent – partly because Paul had switched from his signature Hofner violin ‘Beatle’ bass to a beefier Rickenbacker – but still not as good as what we were hearing on those American records.” For the record, as explained in Mark Lewisohn’s book “The Beatles Recording Sessions,” engineer “Jerry Boys has a clear recollection of John Lennon demanding to know why the bass on a certain Wilson Pickett record far exceeded any Beatles disc.” Therefore, John and Paul both were very vocal about wanting a heightened bass quality to their records.

Emerick contoninues, "Fortunately, as Paul and John turned to George Harrison and began showing him the chords to ‘Paperback Writer,’ inspiration struck. It occurred to me that since microphones are in fact simply loudspeakers wired in reverse…why not try using a loudspeaker as a microphone? Logically, it seemed that whatever can push bass signal out can also take it in – and that a large loudspeaker should be able to respond to low frequencies better than a small microphone. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.” However, as other data indicates, this experiment was left off for the next day.

“’Paperback Writer’ is son of ‘Day Tripper’ – meaning a rock’n’roll song with a guitar lick on a fuzzy, loud guitar,” stated John Lennon in 1980. However, who played the “fuzzy, loud guitar”? “Well, what happened was that we fell in love all over again with my Epiphone Casino,” McCartney explained in the November 2005 Guitar Player magazine, “which I played on a lot of Beatles records – the ‘Paperback Writer’ riff, the solo on ‘Taxman,’ and so on. It always feeds back nicely.”

Upon listening to the first attempt of the two rhythm tracks recorded on this day, the vibrantly booming bass guitar is not present, this obviously being overdubbed onto the complete second take of the song. Instead we hear Ringo on drums (tapping out a beat on the hi-hat during what would be the a cappella vocal sections of the song, John playing rhythm on his newly acquired Gretsch “Chet Atkins” 6120 electric guitar (also quietly strumming guitar chords during the same sections), the “fuzzy” lead guitar and a subtle, almost indecipherable, bass guitar. Given Paul’s quote above, it appears it indeed was Paul playing lead guitar which leaves the bass guitar work to George Harrison, since this rhythm track did not have any overdubs at this time. Adding to this conclusion are photos of the session on this day which shows George playing another new instrument to The Beatles line-up, a Burns Nu-Sonic bass guitar. John’s Gretsch electric guitar was apparently never used again by the group after this day. George, however, appears to have used this short-scale Burns bass guitar a couple more times during the “Revolver” sessions.

With a good amount of overdubs needed to complete the song, including all of the vocals, the session was complete for the day (or should I say, next day) at 2:30 am. Six-and-a-half-hours being needed to get just the rhythm track may seem excessive but, as Geoff Emerick recounts, “The Beatles had done no rehearsing beforehand; there had been no preproduction whatsoever. What an incredible experience it was to see each of the songs develop and blossom within the confines of those four walls!”

The next day, April 14th, 1966, the group filed back into EMI Studio Three to perform all of the overdubs necessary to complete the recording of “Paperback Writer.” Five hours were used to accomplish these tasks, from 2:30 to 7:30 pm with Phil McDonald back in his usual role as 2nd engineer.

Now was the appropriate time to experiment with creating the beefier bass guitar sound Paul asked for the previous day. “I broached my plan, gingerly, to Phil McDonald,” remembers Geoff Emerick, “His response was somewhat predictable: ‘You’re daft; you’ve completely gone around the twist.’ Ignoring him, I took a walk down the hall and talked it over with Ken Townsend, our maintenance engineer. He thought my idea had some merit. ‘Sounds plausible,’ he said. ‘Let’s wire a speaker up that way and try it.”

“Over the next few hours, while the boys rehearsed with George Martin, Ken and I conducted a few experiments. To my delight, the idea of using a speaker as a microphone seemed to work pretty well. Even though it didn’t deliver a lot of signal and was kind of muffled, I was able to achieve a good bass sound by placing it up against the grille of a bass amplifier, speaker to speaker, and then routing the signal through a complicated setup of compressors and filters – including one huge experimental unit that I secretly borrowed from the office of Mr. Cook, the manager of the maintenance department.”

“With renewed confidence, I returned to the studio to try it out for real. Paul…looked at me in a funny way as I set up the big, bulky loudspeaker in front of his amp instead of the usual microphone, but he didn’t say anything, and neither did George Martin…They returned their attention to the rehearsals, giving me the opportunity to cautiously raise the fader carrying the bass signal.”

Paul then overdubbed his distinctive bass guitar performance for the song using his Rickenbacker 4001S. Emerick continues: “Paul’s distinctively fluid bass line…consisted mostly of notes played high up on the lowest strings, which helped round out the tone further still. It sounded absolutely huge, so much so that I became somewhat concerned that it might actually make the needle jump out of the groove when it was finally cut to vinyl. But Paul loved the sound.”

The other overdubs performed on this day consist of Paul’s powerful lead vocals (double-tracked), Ringo on tambourine, and three sets of harmony vocals from John and George, some of which was sung in falsetto. Most noteworthy of these harmonies is the title line of the nursery rhyme “Frere Jacques” as heard in the third and fourth verse. “It was Paul’s idea that John and George should rekindle childhood memories with this unusual backing vocal,” says the book “The Beatles Recording Sessions.” “You can’t really hear the words,” George Martin explains, “because they are so soft. I must confess, I didn’t spot this little diversion on the number, but George (Harrison) reassured me that it was just one of those weird things that happened for the sake of it. There was no connection whatever between the famous Brother Jack and the knack of writing paperbacks.”

“According to studio documentation,” states Andy Babiuk’s book “Beatles Gear,” “another new sound tried out for ‘Paperback Writer’ came from a ‘jangle box’ put through a Leslie rotating speaker. The jangle box was also known as the ‘tack piano,’ and was Abbey road’s modified Steinway upright piano. The instrument’s hammers were brushed with cellulose, which then dried hard, and some of its strings were re-tuned. The result was a percussive jangling piano sound.” This overdub, with Paul on piano no doubt, was apparently deemed unsuitable for the song and left out of all mixes created for “Paperback Writer.”

Source: http://www.beatlesebooks.com/paperback-writer

 

[Chiogtr4x]

I'm pretty sure the intro chord on A Hard Day's Night is an F add 9.

I don't know what the chord is actually called ( sorry, more an ' educated ear guy'),
I'm just hearing the same notes in the chord form, between the two songs. Kind of an F chord crashing into a G chord- so that G note ( in an F chord) is the 9th- I think

 

[Michael Smith]

I don't know what the chord is actually called ( sorry, more an ' educated ear guy'),
I'm just hearing the same notes in the chord form, between the two songs. Kind of an F chord crashing into a G chord- so that G note ( in an F chord) is the 9th- I think

I'm re-watching Mike Pachelli's video on A Hard Day's Night. John and George played two different (but similar) chords for that opening chord. John played the F add 9 with a F bass note (played with his thumb on the low E string). George played a G11 sus 4, which are the same notes on the 4 high strings as John played, but used his thumb on the 3rd frets of the low E and A strings.

So what you are hearing is what the 2 guitars played together. Good ear! And yes, the G note on the high E string makes it an add 9.

 

[Vocalion]

What's with the dour faces in the video? I think I read something about that somewhere but don't remember now.

One possible reason that Paul wasn't his usual grinning self was that he'd chipped one of his front teeth in a bicycle accident and had yet to have it repaired at the time the Paperback Writer and Rain videos were filmed. Another possible reason is that Michael Lindsay-Hogg suggested that they be more "serious." I'd bet on the latter.

 

[FendrGuitPlayr]

Interesting songfacts about it:

https://www.songfacts.com/facts/the-beatles/paperback-writer

 

[Slip Kid]

“Paperback Writer” and “Rain” are two of my all time favorite Beatle songs.

And the “Paperback Writer” riff shows up in an early version of “Got to Get You Into My Life”.

 

[deus56]

A cool little fact about the Revolver album. Joe Walsh owns the original album cover artwork. What a piece of history to have!!!!!!!!!!

 

[abcdefghijklmnop]

“Paperback Writer” and “Rain” are two of my all time favorite Beatle songs.

And the “Paperback Writer” riff shows up in an early version of “Got to Get You Into My Life”.

Very cool find. It almost sounds like a mashup. Got to get you in to my paperback writer.