The Beatles Plus 50 It was fifty years ago today…

There was a recording session today, but only Paul was there, adding vocal, guitar, and maraca overdubs to “I Will.” When he was finished, the song sounded more or less as we know it:

This, to me, is one of the more charming of Paul’s many, many love songs: spare, direct, effortlessly melodious, and short. He must have been quite goony over Linda to sing about loving her “forever and forever” when they had only met up a few times. Is it possible that Paul was, perhaps, a little competitive with John in this area too? That he was a bit jealous of John and Yoko’s “love cloud”? And that maybe Linda benefitted from this effect? Just a theory.

Also today, “Helter Skelter” was mixed in mono. Lots of people will tell you that the mono mixes of Beatles records are superior to the stereo mixes, because more attention was paid to them, what with mono being the dominant format at the time. And there may be cases where this is true, but this is not one of them. Not only is the mono mix of “Helter Skelter” a full minute shorter than the stereo mix (which was created in October), but it is crucially lacking Ringo’s “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” exclamation.

I’d embed it here if I could, but the Beatles Industrial Complex has not yet seen fit to put the mono mixes on YouTube — mindful, perhaps, that the kind of nerd with a burning need to hear them is precisely the kind of person likely to be willing to shell out $200 for The Beatles in Mono box set.

Anyway, both The Beatles Bible and The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions are keen to point out that at the end of today’s session, “Cry Baby Cry” was transferred from 4-track to 8-track tape to facilitate further overdubs — but that no more tracks were ever added, leaving the final song identical to its current version. And once you get down that level of detail, you know it’s time to stop.