June 6, 2012 is the 50th anniversary of the Beatles first visit to Abbey Road Studios. The group, consisting of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best, arrived at what was then called EMI Studios on June 6, 1962, for a commercial test (an evaluation of a signed artist). Two days earlier, the band had signed a recording contract with “The Parlophone Company Limited of Hayes in the County of Middlesex.” The group was paid Musicians Union rates for the June 6 session, indicating that the Beatles were in fact EMI recording artists by the time they arrived at Abbey Road.
Engineers attending the session in Studio Two remember the poor shape of the group’s equipment, particularly Paul’s bass amp, which was deemed unusable due to its rattling and rumbling. Engineers Norman Smith and Ken Townsend improvised and created a bass rig by soldering an input jack to a preamp and combining it with an amp and a large Tannoy speaker taken from Echo Chamber No. 1. A string was tied around John’s amplifier to prevent it from rattling. After resolving these problems, the Abbey Road staff was ready to record the group.
Four songs were recorded that day, three Lennon/McCartney originals – Love Me Do, P.S. I Love You, and Ask Me Why and Besame Mucho, which they had heard on a Coasters record.
This information was written for us by Fest For Beatles Fans guest author Bruce Spizer, who sends out a weekly email with Beatles information and trivia questions. His website is www.beatle.net . You can join his email list by clicking the following link: Click Here to Join
There is some pretty good songs they did at Abby rode 🙂
See George Marin’s book With a Little Help From My Friends, page 32-33.
“I would never, ever have offered a contract to Brian Epstein for a group I had not met, or heard live. Yet most versions of events state that the first Beatles audition – and thus our first meeting – did not take place until 6 June. But this, according to the contract, was two days after I had signed the group for three years! . . . My memory is of a recording audition in No. 3 studio, at EMI Abbey Road (the upstairs studio), in March 1962. This memory is backed up by my wife, Judy Lockhart Smith.
Yes I sure did like their recording at Abbey road also …