Honey Pie

(Lennon/McCartney)

Quick Facts

Composer	Paul
Lead Vocal	Paul
Recorded	Oct 1968
Length	2:41
Key	G
Noted Takes	1
Producer	George Martin
Engineer	Barry Sheffield

Originally released on

The Beatles (White Album)

Apple [Parlophone] — PMC 7067/8

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Story

"Honey Pie" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, from their 1968 double album The Beatles. The song was written entirely by Paul McCartney and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. [Wikipedia]

Honey Pie is a song by The Beatles, written by McCartney and led on vocal by Paul McCartney. 1920s pastiche complete with shellac scratch; brass arrangement by George Martin. Within the catalogue, its brass thread connects it to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Good Morning Good Morning, Magical Mystery Tour. Paul McCartney's music-hall pastiche employed orchestral arrangement, vintage recording techniques, and theatrical vocal delivery to create 1920s-inflected novelty number that celebrated pre-rock popular music traditions. The track's elaborate orchestration and retro aesthetic represented deliberate stylistic pastiche, with McCartney's sophisticated appreciation for jazz-age songwriting and popular-music history. The song demonstrated the White Album's stylistic eclecticism and McCartney's compositional range. McCartney's Honey Pie captured the sound of the 1920s, a music-hall pastiche of Hollywood starlet fantasies and period-accurate stylization. (Kozinn 1995, p.183)

The session work falls within the band's The White Album (1968) period, recorded 1 Oct 1968 at EMI Studios + Trident Studios (Soho). George Martin (with Chris Thomas covering) produced; Ken Scott (early), Geoff Emerick walked off — replaced engineered. For session-by-session detail, see Mark Lewisohn's account on p.150 of The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (excerpt below). Recorded with substantial orchestral arrangement arranged by George Martin, 'Honey Pie' featured Paul's vocals supported by large ensemble instrumentation including brass, woodwinds, and rhythmic accompaniment. Multiple recording sessions allowed for careful orchestral overdubs and vocal refinements, with careful microphone technique necessary to capture ensemble tonal qualities. Vintage recording techniques were employed to achieve period-appropriate sonic character. Large ensemble instrumentation required careful microphone technique and precise level management during multiple recording sessions to capture tonal qualities without distortion. (Emerick 2006) Honey Pie's orchestral arrangement, arranged by George Martin, employs brass, woodwinds, and rhythmic accompaniment with vintage recording techniques for period-appropriate 1920s sonic character. (MacDonald 1994, p.136)

captured the sound of the 1920s, music-hall pastiche.- Kozinn, Phaidon 1995, p.183

The tape was taken away and I've never heard of it since." Nor has anyone else, for unless the song resurfaced later with different lyrics, it is certainly unreleased to this day. The second off-the-cuff McCartney recording was included in The Beatles: a ditty titled `Wild Honey Pie'. In October Paul would record…— Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, p.150

What's distinctive

One of 65 songs led primarily by Paul. Recorded approximately 26 of 34 into the The White Album (1968) sessions. Carries the unique tag ‘1920s-pastiche’ — no other song shares it. Take count: 1 — the released master is take 1 (the Trident eight-track “take one” method), with the mono and stereo remixes made “from take 1”.¹

Recording

Honey Pie carries one of the most deliberately self-aware engineering gestures in the catalogue: a 1920s dance-band pastiche whose period character is completed by a single purpose-built studio trick. On the night of 4 October 1968 Paul McCartney built the line “now she’s hit the big time!” as a band-limited, surface-noise-laminated vocal artefact made to sound like worn shellac (see the quote below). Two operations combine: aggressive band-limiting that strips the vocal to the mid-band a 1920s acoustic-horn recording would have captured, and the superimposition of genuine phonograph crackle — the most overt “diegetic” recording trick in the Beatles canon, an engineered sound that comments on the song’s own subject.¹
Unlike its session-partner Martha My Dear (a probable one-man Paul recording), Honey Pie’s basic track was a full four-Beatle performance with an unusual instrument distribution: “piano (Paul), bass (George), drums (Ringo) and electric guitar (John).” The bass is George Harrison rather than McCartney, and John Lennon plays the basic-track electric guitar; McCartney returns on 2 October for the lead vocal and an overdubbed lead guitar, so the song carries two distinct guitar contributions.¹
Honey Pie and Martha My Dear are the only two of the four 1968 White Album Trident tracks whose Trident mono and stereo mixes were retained onto the released master, so both “had to be ‘converted’ from NAB to CCIR at Abbey Road” — leaving the released masters two generations removed from the multi-track. Dear Prudence and Savoy Truffle were re-mixed at Abbey Road on native CCIR machines and escaped the conversion.²

Equipment

Studio	Trident Studios, St Anne's Court, Soho (basic track + overdubs + remixes, 1–5 Oct 1968); EMI Studio Two, Abbey Road (NAB→CCIR tape conversion, 7 Oct 1968)
Tape machine	Ampex AG-440 eight-track (Trident)²
Console	Sound Techniques 20-input / 8-output (Trident)²
Microphones	U47/U48, AKG C12, U67 introduced
Outboard / effects	EMI RS124, EMT 140 & 250 (Trident), Fairchild 660, ADT, tape flanging, fuzz, wah (Vox/CryBaby)
Guitars	Epiphone Casino, Fender Strat (Rocky), Gibson J-200 acoustic, Martin D-28, Fender Telecaster Bass
Amplifiers	Fender Twin Reverb, Fender Bassman, Vox UL730

Recording Timeline

1 October 1968 (Tue) — basic track (take 1) + rough mono remix for the arrangement, Trident Studios — time unknown. P: George Martin. E: Barry Sheffield. “The basic track of ‘Honey Pie’ was recorded during this night-time session…: piano (Paul), bass (George), drums (Ringo) and electric guitar (John). 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 Trident “take one” pattern applied — rehearsal takes were wiped before overdubbing, leaving the released version logged as take 1.¹
2 October 1968 (Wed) — Paul lead vocal + lead guitar overdub (SI onto take 1), Trident Studios — 4.00pm–3.30am. P: George Martin. E: Barry Sheffield. “Overdubs for ‘Honey Pie’: lead vocal and lead guitar, both the work of Paul McCartney.” The lead vocal recorded here is the take that would receive the 78-rpm gramophone treatment on its “now she’s hit the big time!” line two days later.¹
4 October 1968 (Fri) — seven-musician sax/clarinet overdub + the 78-rpm vocal effect, Trident Studios — 4.00pm–4.30am (the 12.5-hour session shared with Martha My Dear). P: George Martin. E: Barry Sheffield. “Between 6.00 and 9.00pm seven musicians recorded their parts for ‘Honey Pie’… The seven for ‘Honey Pie’ were: Dennis Walton, Ronald Chamberlain, Jim Chester, Rex Morris and Harry Klein (saxophones), Raymond Newman and David Smith (clarinets)” — five saxophones plus two clarinets, a reed-heavy 1920s line-up. The 78-rpm vocal-effect overdub was recorded in the post-midnight stretch of this same session.¹
5 October 1968 (Sat) — mono and stereo remixes from take 1, Trident Studios — 6.00pm–1.00am. P: George Martin. E: Barry Sheffield. Mono remix 1 and stereo remix 1, both “from take 1.”¹
7 October 1968 (Mon) — EMI Studio Two tape copy; NAB→CCIR conversion, Abbey Road — 2.30pm–7.00am. P: George Martin. E: Ken Scott. 2E: Mike Sheady. “Tape copying: ‘Honey Pie’ (of remix mono 1 and of remix stereo 1)” — the structurally-required step in the NAB-to-CCIR equalisation conversion of the Trident mixes for the banded LP master.^1,2
22 November 1968 (Fri) — UK LP release — The Beatles (double LP), Apple/Parlophone PMC 7067/8 (mono) / PCS 7067/8 (stereo), side four track two: Honey Pie.¹

[Paul] 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.— Mark Lewisohn¹

Studio Notes

Trident’s Ampex 440 eight-track — the machine, corrected — Honey Pie was tracked to Trident’s Ampex 440 eight-track, the same machine used for Hey Jude and Martha My Dear. 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 but “chose the Ampex eight-track, which was certainly the most popular eight-track machine in America at the time,” letting Trident claim to be “the first eight-track studio in London.” This corrects a common secondary-source conflation — the Studer A80 was a later machine, not Trident’s 1968 Beatles eight-track.²
Trident’s 20-input / 8-output Sound Techniques console — the 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.” The desk had a curious fader split: “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” — the same console that captured Hey Jude, Dear Prudence, Martha My Dear and Savoy Truffle.²
Trident’s 1898 Bechstein grand piano — McCartney’s 1 October basic-track piano was almost certainly Trident’s house instrument: “an 1898 Bechstein grand piano, which had been hired from Jacques Samuels… 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’… David Bowie’s ‘Changes’, and all early Queen recordings.” The same instrument played on Hey Jude and the session-partner Martha My Dear. Per §1 less-specific-when-uncertain, the specific session mics were “not written down,” so the Bechstein is the documented house piano but its mic for Honey Pie is not separately recorded.²
The Trident “take one” pattern + house outboard chain — “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” (also seen on Martha My Dear and Savoy Truffle). The overdub and mix chain ran through Trident’s house outboard: “The preferred compressors at the studio were Universal Audio LA-2As… There were two EMT 140 plates with remotes,” monitored on “two Lockwood cabinets per side, with Tannoy ‘Red’ drivers inside” — the brighter-than-Abbey-Road monitoring that contributed to the later equalisation reconciliation work.^1,2

Releases

1968 UK mono — Apple/Parlophone PMC 7067/8 (22 November 1968) — The released-master mono is the 5 October 1968 mono remix 1 made at Trident from take 1, “converted” from NAB to CCIR equalisation at Abbey Road on or after 7 October. The released UK mono is two generations removed from the Trident eight-track: (i) Trident eight-track → (ii) Trident 5 October mono remix 1 from take 1 (NAB, 1/4" tape) → (iii) Abbey Road CCIR re-recording onto a BTR machine. A separate, earlier 1 October “unnumbered rough remix, from take 1” was a working reference for Martin’s arrangement, not a release lineage.^1,2
1968 UK stereo — Apple/Parlophone PCS 7067/8 (22 November 1968) — The released-master stereo is the 5 October 1968 stereo remix 1 made at Trident from take 1, with the same NAB-to-CCIR conversion lineage as the mono; the 7 October EMI tape-copy session produced the CCIR-equalised master for the banded LP compilation.^1,2
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.²
2009 Stereo and Mono Remasters (Apple/EMI, 9 September 2009) — Allan Rouse’s remastering team; the mono appears within The Beatles in Mono box. Per §1, this release sits outside the Lewisohn 1988 / K/R 2006 canon — remastering proceeds from the existing CCIR-equalised masters; provenance is documented in the 2009 box.
2018 The Beatles 50th Anniversary (Apple/UMe, 9 November 2018) — Giles Martin / Sam Okell remix returning to the Trident eight-track multi-track and re-deriving stereo, bypassing both the 5 October Trident stereo remix and the 7 October Abbey Road conversion. Per §1, this release sits outside the Lewisohn 1988 / K/R 2006 canon; the remix approach is documented in the 2018 release notes.

Sources

Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (New York: Harmony Books, 1988), 158–59.
Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums (Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006), 333–35.

Frequently asked

Who wrote Honey Pie?

“Honey Pie” is credited to Paul McCartney (Lennon–McCartney).

Who sings lead on Honey Pie?

The lead vocal on “Honey Pie” is by Paul McCartney.

When was Honey Pie recorded?

“Honey Pie” was recorded 1–5 October 1968 at Trident Studios, London (take 1, plus overdubs and the Trident mono/stereo remixes); the Trident master was converted from NAB to CCIR equalisation at Abbey Road on 7 October 1968.^1,2

How many takes did Honey Pie require?

One — Lewisohn's session log shows the released master as take 1 (the Trident “take one” method), with the mono and stereo remixes made “from take 1”.¹

On this page

Story

What's distinctive

Recording

Equipment

Recording Timeline

Studio Notes

Releases

Sources

Frequently asked