After spending the week on the bus filming Magical Mystery Tour, did The Beatles take the day off? No, they took their momentum into the studio.
Paul had a bee in his bonnet about “Your Mother Should Know.” He was unsatisfied, apparently, with the results of the sessions on August 22nd and 23rd. So today they went back and started over from scratch.
The new arrangement was very different — slower, for one thing, with the most prominent instruments Ringo’s snare and a droning harmonium played by Paul. You can hear it on Anthology 2, which is of course an indicator that it ended up on the shelf. It was the earlier, more straightforward arrangement that appeared on the MMT LP.
Too bad, if you ask me. The Anthology 2 version is a lot more interesting, and would would have fit much better between “Blue Jay Way” (which was mixed today, BTW) and “I Am the Walrus.” As it is “Your Mother” is one of the few weak points on a surprisingly strong and often-overlooked album.
There was a personnel change in the studio today: Geoff Emerick, who was feeling burned out, had left for an extended vacation. Taking his place was Ken Scott, the future producer of Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust. I mention it just so I can shoehorn in another Bowie reference; that makes 11 so far.
What was David up to at this time, anyway? Kevin Cann’s Any Day Now tells us that a Bowie composition called “Silver Tree Top School for Boys” had just been released as a single by a group called the Slender Plenty. As with everything else he had done up to this time, it failed to make him a superstar.
Also this weekend, the Chelsea News published an interview in which Bowie explained why he still lived with his parents, praised Ray Davies and the Fugs, and said “My only ambition is to be in the position to get out before I am thirty.” (Bear in mind that he was only 20 at the time.)
I would love to now wrap this up with a Beatles quote about how they planned to make a quick buck and then retire, but I can’t find any of them right now and my time is running short. So I’ll let you go. Vaya con Dios, my friends.
Enter Ken Scott. Wow!