George attempted to salvage “Not Guilty” today by rerecording his guitar part using an unusual setup. According to engineer Brian Gibson,
George asked us to put his guitar amplifier at one end of one of the echo chambers, with a microphone at the other end to pick up the output. He sat playing the guitar in the studio control room with a line plugged through to the chamber.
What’s odd about “Not Guilty” is that even though George worked very hard to complete it, ultimately even he seemed rather indifferent to its fate, as if all he really wanted to do was deliver the message to John and Paul.
The group session ended around 10 P.M., after which Paul stuck around to work on his song “Mother Nature’s Son.” He recorded 25 takes, though there was not a huge amount of difference between, say, take 2:
And take 24, which formed the basis of the finished album track. None of the other Beatles appeared on “Mother Nature’s Son,” though percussion and brass would be overdubbed later.
It is telling, perhaps, that most of Paul’s successful White Album tracks — among which I count this one — involved only him. The spare arrangements suited his melodies and enabled him to avoid dealing with uncooperative bandmates.
“Mother Nature’s Son,” you may recall, was written back in Rishikesh, inspired by the same Maharishi Mahesh Yogi lecture that prompted John to write “Child of Nature.” Though I am pro-“MNS,” it still rankles a little bit that “Child” — which would have made a great companion piece — was never even attempted during the White Album sessions. Because I like to pimp “Child of Nature” whenever I can, here it is again: