George Harrison Said American Recording Studios Were Always Ahead of The Beatles Technologically, but They Didn’t Really Care
According to George Harrison, American recording studios were superior to anything The Beatles used throughout the 1960s. However, the Fab Four didn’t exactly care that they were working with outdated equipment. They were still able to make hits.
George Harrison thought The Beatles’ early sound was ‘puny’
During a 1987 interview with Guitar Player, George said he thought The Beatles’ early sound was “puny.”
“But those early sounds, I hated them,” George said. “I remember midway through the ’60s there’d be all these American groups we’d bump into, and they’d say, ‘Hey, man, how did you get that sound?’ And I realized somewhere down the line, I was playing these Gretsch guitars through these Vox amps, and in retrospect they sounded so puny.
“It was before we had the unwound third string, that syndrome, and because it was always done in a rush and you didn’t have a chance to do a second take, we just hadn’t developed sounds on our side of the water.
“I mean, listening to James Burton playing them solos on the Rick Nelson records, and then we’d come up with this stuff–it was so feeble.”
So, The Beatles were doing groundbreaking things without even knowing it half the time. Eventually, despite being innovative, other bands began influencing The Beatles unlike ever before.
George claimed American recording studios were more advanced than anything The Beatles were using
The Beatles’ started emulating their influences more than ever on The White Album. Although, those influences had American recording studios, which were more advanced than the ones The Beatles were using. However, they were fine with that.
“We started out like this little group in mono; we just played a couple of takes, and that was it,” George said. “And the engineers who worked in Abbey Road had been doing Peter Sellers records or skiffle. Nobody had had any experience like in America. America was always ahead, and we always looked to America for the sounds and the groovy players.
“We felt just like a lucky little group–we knew we had something good to offer, but we were quite modest. The situation we were in was this old equipment, but we were happy with it in those days; we were just happy to be in the studio.
“And as things developed, we probably got a 4-track when America was all getting their 8-tracks, going to 16. Then we got an 8-track when they were all into 24. We were always that far behind, but this is the thing that puts me against a lot of the music now.
“Everybody’s got 48 channels and MIDI’d and MAXI’d and 89,000 pedals on their guitars and everything and yet, it’s still not as good as ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ by Elvis Presley or ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ by Carl Perkins.”
The recording studio was where The Beatles experimented
Their recording studio might’ve been antiquated, but The Beatles were still able to be experimental and innovative. It’s where all their hits came from. They were happy to have anywhere to record their music.
During an interview with MuchMusic, George explained that on songs like “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!” The Beatles had to physically cut tape, splice it, and hold it all together with a pencil to get everything to play together and get the desired effects.
Surely, those American bands were jealous of those songs, no matter what kind of technology they had at their disposal.
