Honey Pie

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Overview

Background

Pattern analysis

Recording

Mix variants & recording techniques (V12-C)

Documented mix variants (5 mix lineages)

• 1968 UK mono — Apple/Parlophone PMC 7067/8 (22 November 1968) — The released-master mono is the 5 October 1968 mono remix 1 of Honey Pie made at Trident Studios from take 1 (per Lewisohn p. 159 session header). Like Martha My Dear, the Trident master was subsequently “converted” from the NAB equalisation standard to the CCIR equalisation standard at Abbey Road on or after 7 October 1968 (per Lewisohn p. 159 verbatim + K/R p. 335 verbatim). The released UK mono is therefore two generations removed from the original Trident eight-track multi-track tape: (i) Trident eight-track multi-track → (ii) Trident 5 October mono remix 1 from take 1 (NAB equalisation, 1/4” tape) → (iii) Abbey Road CCIR re-recording onto a BTR machine. A separate, earlier 1 October “unnumbered rough remix, from take 1” (per Lewisohn p. 158 session header) was a working mono reference made for George Martin’s arrangement writing, not a release lineage.
• 1968 UK stereo — Apple/Parlophone PCS 7067/8 (22 November 1968) — The released-master stereo is the 5 October 1968 stereo remix 1 of Honey Pie made at Trident Studios from take 1 (per Lewisohn p. 159 session header). Same NAB-to-CCIR conversion structural lineage as the mono per K/R p. 335 verbatim: the 7 October EMI Studio Two tape-copy session produced the CCIR-equalised master tape for the “banded” LP master compilation, against which a mixture of NAB and CCIR was “not acceptable”.
• 1968 US mono and stereo — Apple/Capitol SWBO-101 (25 November 1968) — Continues the same Trident 5 October mono and stereo remix 1 lineages onto the US Capitol pressing. Both UK and US issues derive from the same NAB-to-CCIR-converted master tapes per K/R p. 335 framing of the conversion-then-banded-master workflow.
• 2009 Stereo and Mono Remasters (Apple/EMI, 9 September 2009) — Allan Rouse’s remastering team; the mono appears within the The Beatles in Mono box. Per §1, this release sits outside the Lewisohn 1988 / K/R 2006 primary-source canon — technical provenance is documented in the 2009 box’s liner notes rather than in the Tier-1 sources; the remastering proceeds from the existing CCIR-equalised masters rather than a fresh derivation from the Trident eight-track.
• 2018 The Beatles 50th Anniversary (Apple/UMe, 9 November 2018) — Giles Martin / Sam Okell remix series. The 50th-anniversary box returns to the Trident eight-track multi-track tape and re-derives stereo, bypassing both the 5 October 1968 Trident stereo remix and the 7 October Abbey Road NAB-to-CCIR conversion. Per §1, this release sits outside the Lewisohn 1988 / K/R 2006 primary-source canon; the technical remix approach is documented in the 2018 release liner notes.

Recording techniques (10 bullets, primary-source-verified)

• The 78-rpm gramophone vocal effect — central editorial spine (Lewisohn p. 159 verbatim) — Per Lewisohn p. 159 verbatim, the closing flourish of the 4 October session was a deliberate period-emulation gag: Paul McCartney “turned his attention to ‘Honey Pie’, recording a quaint touch: the vocal line ‘now she’s hit the big time!’ which was heavily limited, chopping off the signals at both ends of the frequency range, and superimposed with the sound of a scratchy old phonograph, to make the end product like a vocal from a very early and worn 78 rpm record.” Two engineering operations combine here: (a) aggressive band-limiting (a steep high-pass and low-pass that strips the vocal of modern full-range fidelity, leaving only the mid-band a 1920s acoustic-horn recording would have captured), and (b) the superimposition of genuine phonograph surface noise to laminate the band-limited vocal with shellac crackle. The result is the most overt “diegetic” recording trick in the Beatles canon — an engineered sound that comments on the song’s own subject. Per §1 less-specific-when-uncertain: Lewisohn documents the intent and method but not the specific outboard units used for the limiting or the source of the phonograph noise, so the page records the technique as Lewisohn frames it without naming particular hardware.
• Full four-Beatle basic track with an unusual instrument distribution (Lewisohn p. 158 verbatim) — Per Lewisohn p. 158 verbatim, the 1 October basic track was “piano (Paul), bass (George), drums (Ringo) and electric guitar (John)”. This is the key contrast with session-partner Martha My Dear (a probable one-man Paul recording): Honey Pie is a genuine band performance, but with the bass handled by George Harrison rather than McCartney, and John Lennon on the basic-track electric guitar. McCartney sits at the piano for the basic track and returns on 2 October for the lead vocal and an overdubbed lead guitar; the song therefore carries two distinct guitar contributions — Lennon’s basic-track electric guitar and McCartney’s overdubbed lead. The role reversal (Harrison on bass) places Honey Pie in the small set of canon tracks where the conventional Beatles instrument assignments are swapped.
• McCartney’s 2 October lead vocal and lead guitar overdub (Lewisohn p. 158 verbatim) — Per Lewisohn p. 158 verbatim, the 4.00pm–3.30am 2 October Trident session committed “Overdubs for ‘Honey Pie’: lead vocal and lead guitar, both the work of Paul McCartney.” The lead guitar overdub is the song’s jazz-inflected fill work; the lead vocal recorded here is the take that would later receive the 78-rpm gramophone treatment on its “now she’s hit the big time!” line two days later (per Lewisohn p. 159). The eight-track headroom of Trident’s Ampex 440 allowed McCartney to layer the lead vocal and a lead-guitar line as discrete tracks over the four-piece basic.
• The seven-musician saxophone-and-clarinet overdub, 6.00–9.00pm 4 October (Lewisohn p. 159 verbatim) — Per Lewisohn p. 159 verbatim, the seven musicians who recorded George Martin’s brass-and-woodwind arrangement for Honey Pie were: Dennis Walton, Ronald Chamberlain, Jim Chester, Rex Morris and Harry Klein (saxophones); Raymond Newman and David Smith (clarinets). The ensemble is five saxophones plus two clarinets — a reed-heavy line-up appropriate to a 1920s dance-band pastiche, distinct from the 14-piece string-and-brass orchestra recorded for Martha My Dear in the immediately following 9.00pm–midnight block of the same session. Per Lewisohn p. 158 verbatim the song is “a hot 1920s-style jazzy number, with a lovely melody and blissful saxophones and clarinets, as scored by George Martin.”
• George Martin’s arrangement written from a take-away rough mono remix (Lewisohn p. 158 verbatim) — Per Lewisohn p. 158 verbatim, after the 1 October basic track “A rough mono remix was made for, and taken away by, George Martin in order that he could write the brass and woodwind arrangement.” The workflow parallels Martha My Dear (for which Lewisohn deduces a pre-prepared score from a McCartney home demo), but is here documented directly: Martin took the 1 October rough remix away, scored the seven-piece reed arrangement over the days between 1 and 4 October, and booked the musicians for the 4 October overdub. The “unnumbered rough remix, from take 1” logged in the 1 October session header (per Lewisohn p. 158) is this working reference, not a release mix.
• Trident’s Ampex 440 eight-track — the machine, corrected (K/R p. 333 verbatim) — Honey Pie was tracked to Trident’s Ampex 440 eight-track, the same machine used for Hey Jude and Martha My Dear. Per K/R p. 333 verbatim, Trident’s machine room held “mono and stereo Ampex MR-70 recorders, as well as four-track and eight-track versions of the newer Ampex 440 model”; the Sheffield brothers auditioned 3M’s M23 eight-track (the model EMI acquired in 1968) but “chose the Ampex eight-track, which was certainly the most popular eight-track machine in America at the time”, letting Trident “rightfully claim to be ‘the first eight-track studio in London’”. This corrects a common secondary-source conflation: the Studer A80 eight-track was a later machine and was not Trident’s 1968 Beatles eight-track — the documented machine per Kehew/Ryan is the Ampex 440.
• NAB-to-CCIR equalisation conversion — the Honey-Pie-and-Martha-only White Album case (K/R p. 335 verbatim) — Per K/R p. 335 verbatim, because “Trident used American machines, any mixes recorded on them used the American NAB EQ standard, rather than the European CCIR standard”, and because a single “banded” master “would have to conform entirely to the CCIR standard; a mixture of NAB and CCIR was not acceptable”, “the Trident mixes of ‘Martha My Dear’ and ‘Honey Pie’ had to be ‘converted’ from NAB to CCIR at Abbey Road. Whilst playing the Trident 1/4” tapes on one of their few NAB-capable machines, the mixes were re-recorded onto one of the studio’s CCIR BTR machines. The final versions of these two songs, therefore, were two generations removed from the multi-tracks, as was the final mix of ‘Hey Jude.’ (This may or may not account for the increased tape hiss audible in these tracks).” Of the four 1968 White Album Trident tracks, Honey Pie and Martha My Dear are the only two whose Trident-derived mixes reached the released master; per K/R p. 335 verbatim, the final mixes of Dear Prudence and Savoy Truffle “would eventually be carried out at Abbey Road, but the Trident stereo and mono mixes of ‘Martha My Dear’ and ‘Honey Pie’ actually made it onto the album”.
• Trident’s 20-input 8-output Sound Techniques console (K/R p. 334 verbatim) — The Honey Pie sessions ran through Trident’s “Sound Techniques console, acquired in September of 1967. The 20-input, eight-output console was custom-made, as Trident was the first working eight-track studio in London. It was enormous for the time and was considered to be of excellent sound quality” (per K/R p. 334 verbatim). Per K/R p. 334 the desk had a curious split of fader types: “the 20 input channels had linear EMT faders; the eight group faders in the centre of the desk instead made use of the distinctive Painton quadrant faders EMI used on their own desks.” This is the same console that captured Hey Jude (July–August 1968), Dear Prudence (28–30 August 1968), Martha My Dear (4–5 October 1968) and Savoy Truffle (3, 5 October 1968).
• Trident’s 1898 Bechstein grand piano on McCartney’s basic-track piano (K/R p. 334 verbatim) — McCartney’s 1 October basic-track piano (per Lewisohn p. 158) was almost certainly played on Trident’s house instrument. Per K/R p. 334 verbatim, “Also available at Trident was an 1898 Bechstein grand piano, which had been hired from Jacques Samuels, a classic London piano dealer. The Trident Bechstein (admired for its superb sound) thus became the prominent ‘Hey Jude’ piano and subsequently appeared on numerous hits by other artists recorded at the studio, including Elton John’s ‘Your Song’, ‘Rocket Man’ and ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’, David Bowie’s ‘Changes’, and all early Queen recordings.” This is the same instrument McCartney played for Hey Jude and the same one tracked on the session-partner Martha My Dear. (Per §1 less-specific-when-uncertain: K/R p. 334 notes “The specific mics used on the Beatles’ sessions were not written down, but Trident had typical favourites” — so the Bechstein is the documented house piano, but the specific microphone on it for Honey Pie is not separately documented.)
• The Trident “take one” pattern and house outboard chain (Lewisohn p. 158 + K/R p. 334 verbatim) — Per Lewisohn p. 158 verbatim, “the final version of a Beatles recording at Trident was a ‘take one’ though it should be stressed that there would certainly have been rehearsal takes too, though these were wiped before all the overdubbing began” — a documented Trident working habit (also seen on Martha My Dear and Savoy Truffle, both also “take 1”) in which numbered rehearsals were not logged. The overdub and mix chain ran through Trident’s house outboard: per K/R p. 334 verbatim, “The preferred compressors at the studio were Universal Audio LA-2As… There were two EMT 140 plates with remotes, as well as any required tape delays offered by the Ampex machines”, monitored on “two Lockwood cabinets per side, with Tannoy ‘Red’ drivers inside” driven by 60-watt Radford amplifiers — the brighter-than-Abbey-Road monitoring (per K/R p. 335) that contributed to the later equalisation reconciliation work.

Legacy & release history

Mono & stereo

• Both mono and stereo mixes were prepared; the UK mono White Album (PMC 7067/8) has many distinct edits, mixes and effects vs. the stereo (PCS 7067/8) — collectors prize the mono.

Documented alternate versions

• Anthology 3 (1996) — alternate take or demo
• Mono Masters (2009 box) — Allan Rouse / Guy Massey remaster
• White Album 50th Anniversary (2018) — Giles Martin stereo remix

Released on

• The Beatles (White Album) — LP, 22 November 1968

Cross-references

Other songs sharing themes (1920s-pastiche, shellac-fx, brass)

Other songs led by the same vocalist

Other songs from this era

1920s-pasticheshellac-fxbrass

Cultural appearances

Related songs