Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles [Paperback]

A recent Blog reference tells of Elvis Costello spinning this book as an account of how little Geoff was credited during his time with the Beatles. In the book this is less emotively treated. We are told of how this was more or less the industry standard at the time. We are repeatedly told of George Martin passing on Geoff's opinons, from the control box, to the musicians without attribution. This , surely, could be explained by the producer merely exercising his role of incorporating all elements of his work and condensing for clarity.

We do get oodles of details about technical effects. Geoff is rarely shy about telling us how blinking marvellous he was in doing all kinds of ground-breaking technical things . It helps , I suppose , that the comments are entirely justified. Later in the book we hear about how Geoff and George went through the entire EMI/Beatle archive for the Anthologies project , a exercise which , perhaps , refreshed his memory. I did cross-reference some of the depictions with the Lewisohn/McDonald accounts , finding , in most cases , agreement. The account of the recording of The End ( from Abbey Road) is most interesting. McDonald queries aspects of the finish of the track - Geoff explains it as if responding to that account. Of course , it could be that there was no other way to tell it .

We get opinions on all the Fabs. John is the spiky, acerbic one , George the cagey , distant one , Paul the diplomatic , interested one and Ringo is quiet and does what he's told. So , no surprises there. The accounts of the early sessions are chockful of detail, really making you feel you were there. The account of the later ones , where Geoff was an intermittant presence , are are just as interesting. Between 1966 and 1970 The Beatles were , as he puts it , isolated in the awful building that housed the EMI studios and it was understandable how the pressurised situation eventually helped tear them apart.

This book is , as the title tells, primarily about the Fabs. We get some of Geoff's life story . He tells of how - as a child in Crouch End, London - he saw a UFO from his bedroom window. He knows it's hard believe but he saw it and thats that. Years later , in a break in a late night studio session, he discussed it with John and Paul , getting derison and acceptance in turn. We later learn of the the sad death from cancer of his wife , a few years before Linda McCartney and how that re-inforced the bond beween them. The account of recording Band On The Run in Africa is amusing and had me listening to it again from a new perspective. Incidentally Tug Of War is referred to as being Macca's first 'post Wings' album; what about McCartney II?

A page is given over to Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom. Geoff had been a fan of Elvis and was delighted to be asked to work with him etc. Were told of Elvis being 'almost as impatient as Lennon' , 'there was no " We need ten minutes to get a sound together" '. Geoff wanted to make Elvis' vocal stand out more , because his lyrics were so great thet deserved to heard more clearly. An amusing note tells of Steve Nieve composing a orchestral arrangement that required eighteen viola players. Geoff steered him away from that because ' the tricky thing would be finding eighteen top-notch viola players in London !'.

Howard Massey's involvement in the book is evident from the Americanisms that figure throughout. Though Geoff lived ( lives?) in Los Angeles for a while I just cannot believe that a Londoner would use 'gotten' as much is used here. Similarly , he quotes Lennon as saying that EMI should, during the 1967 'Pepper recordings , 'spring' for the cost of the orchestral sessions.

That quibble aside , this is a book well worth reading.