I Am the Walrus

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Overview

Background

Pattern analysis

Recording

Mix variants & recording techniques

Documented mix variants

• 1967 UK mono double-EP Magical Mystery Tour (8 December 1967, Parlophone MMT-1) — Final mono master = remix mono 23, an edit of the first half of remix mono 10 (no radio feed) spliced at the lyric “Sitting in an English garden” to the last half of remix mono 22 (with the live BBC King Lear feed), made 29 September 1967 in Studio Two by P: George Martin, E: Ken Scott, 2E: Graham Kirkby (Lewisohn 1988, pp. 127–128). Duration includes a four-beat Pianet intro after Ken Scott edited two beats out of the six-beat original intro “at the request of either George Martin or one of the Beatles” (Kehew & Ryan 2006, A Closer Look: I Am the Walrus, printed p. 467, quoted directly). Lewisohn p. 128 records that 17 mono remixes (numbers 6–22) were attempted that night and only two were complete; the final master is the RM10/RM22 edit.
• 1967 US stereo LP Magical Mystery Tour (27 November 1967, Capitol SMAL 2835) and 1971 UK stereo LP Magical Mystery Tour (19 November 1971, Apple PCTC 255) — Stereo mix begun 6 November 1967 by E: Geoff Emerick (back at the desk after his Pepper-era exhaustion break), 2E: Ken Scott (stepping back to second engineer to assist with the track he had seen to completion). Emerick “used the standard arrangement of Tracks 1 and 2 panned Left and Right and Tracks 3 and 4 brought to Centre” (K/R p. 467). Because the King Lear radio feed existed only on the mono master, Emerick created six stereo mixes from take 17, then created a “mock stereo” (re-channelled) mix from mono remix 22 in which “all the bass frequencies” were placed on one side of the stereo picture and “all the treble frequencies” on the other; the true-stereo first half and the mock-stereo second half were then edited together, with the switch at 2:00 into the song (K/R p. 467, quoted directly). Emerick returned on 17 November 1967 to re-mix the latter portion of the song again and “failed to trim the two beats off the intro” — the stereo therefore retains the original six-beat Pianet intro while the mono carries the four-beat trimmed intro (K/R p. 467, quoted directly).
• Anthology 2 (18 March 1996, Apple) — Post-Lewisohn release. Per §1 less-specific-when-uncertain (Lewisohn’s 1988 text predates Anthology 2 by eight years), this entry flags the variant’s existence without making claims beyond what the compilation’s own liner notes establish.
• The Beatles Anthology DVD true-stereo remix (31 March 2003, Apple) — Post-Lewisohn. K/R p. 467 (Postscript) records that for the DVD, EMI engineers “synced up the Beatles’ original instruments from Take 16, Paul’s bass, Ringo’s drum overdub, and John’s vocal from Take 17, the strings and brass from Take 20 and the chorale from Take 25.” This allowed per-element panning unavailable on the 1967 mix: cellos panned Right; violins and brass panned Left; Mike Sammes Singers Centre; Ringo’s drums Centre to sit with Paul’s bass; George’s electric guitar Right. “For an encore, they managed to find an actual clean recording of the BBC broadcast of King Lear and flew it into the mix, recreating the radio static and tuning noises as well” (K/R p. 467, quoted directly).
• 2009 Stereo Remasters (9 September 2009, Apple) and 2017 Sgt. Pepper’s 50th-Anniversary box (26 May 2017, Apple) — Post-Lewisohn variants. The 2017 release is part of the Pepper anniversary editions rather than a dedicated MMT remix; documented in album liner notes rather than in the primary-source canon; flagged here for completeness.

Recording techniques

• 5 September 1967 — first session, 16 takes (only 5 complete) — Studio One, 7.00pm–1.00am. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Ken Scott / Richard Lush. Recording: ‘I Am The Walrus’ (takes 1–16) (Lewisohn 1988, p. 122). The basic rhythm track comprised “bass guitar, lead guitar, an electric piano and drums, plus an overdub of a mellotron” (Lewisohn p. 122, quoted directly). Kehew & Ryan 2006 (A Closer Look: I Am the Walrus, printed p. 466) describes the best take of the session, take 16, as “Ringo’s drums, Paul’s tambourine, John’s Pianet, and George’s electric guitar” — identifying the electric piano as the Hohner Pianet specifically and not enumerating a Mellotron on take 16. Source conflict per §1: Lewisohn’s 5 September session log includes a Mellotron overdub; K/R’s per-take diagram does not. The page does not pick a side; both attributions are recorded. The first three takes from the session no longer exist — “the tape was wound back to its beginning and re-used during the session” (Lewisohn p. 122).
• 6 September 1967 — reduction take 16 → take 17 + bass / drum / lead-vocal SI — Studio Two, 7.00pm–3.00am. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Ken Scott. Recording: ‘I Am The Walrus’ (tape reduction take 16 into take 17, SI onto take 17). Mono mixing: remixes 1–4 from take 17 (Lewisohn 1988, p. 123). “Paul and Ringo then superimposed more bass guitar and drums and John recorded his memorable lead vocal” (Lewisohn p. 123). During the take 16→take 17 reduction, K/R p. 466 documents that “John’s Pianet was treated with fairly wide flanging/chorusing” — the four-track reduction itself was a flanging-processing stage for the Pianet, not just a tape bounce. Four mono remixes were made for acetate-disc cutting; only the complete one, the fourth, was marked “best” (Lewisohn p. 123).
• John’s blistering lead vocal — REDD.47 / REDD.51 overdrive — Geoff Emerick on the distinctive distorted edge of the 6 September vocal: “That was a bit of overload. Those mic amps were like their own fuzz pedals. It wasn’t a nasty distortion, it kind of helped the signal” (Emerick via Kehew & Ryan 2006, A Closer Look: I Am the Walrus, printed p. 466, quoted directly). The overload was the REDD.47 microphone amplifiers in the REDD.51 console driven hot — not an outboard fuzz pedal or a console-bus distortion stage. Per K/R p. 466 the sound “was the result of overdriving the REDD.47 amps in the REDD.51 console.”
• 27 September 1967 afternoon — orchestral session, Studio One — 2.30–5.30pm. P: George Martin. E: Ken Scott. 2E: Richard Lush. Recording: ‘I Am The Walrus’ (tape reduction take 17 into takes 18–24, with SI onto takes 18–24) (Lewisohn 1988, p. 127). Sixteen instrumentalists, all playing “notes around the bottom end of the scale” (Lewisohn p. 127, quoted directly): Violins — Sidney Sax (leader), Jack Rothstein, Ralph Elman, Andrew McGee, Jack Greene, Louis Stevens, John Jezzard, Jack Richards (eight). Cellos — Lionel Ross, Eldon Fox, Bram Martin, Terry Weil (four). Clarinet — Gordon Lewin (one contra-bass clarinet). Horns — Neil Sanders, Tony Tunstall, Mo (Morris) Miller (three). Per K/R p. 466, Martin “decided to record them across several tracks on another four-track tape” rather than lumping the orchestra onto a single track on take 17. Procedure — quoted from K/R p. 466: while take 17 played back to be reduced down to one track on the new four-track tape, “the strings and horns simultaneously recorded their parts onto the other three tracks — violins on one track, cellos on another, and horns and contra bass clarinet on a third.” Seven takes (18–24) of this simultaneous reduction + overdub were attempted; Martin later chose take 20 as the best, and between 5:30 and 7:00pm a reduction mix of take 20 was made, “bouncing the violins and horns together in order to free up one extra track” on a fresh tape labelled take 25, freeing a track for the Mike Sammes Singers due at the evening session (K/R p. 466).
• 27 September 1967 evening — Mike Sammes Singers, Studio Two — 7.00pm–3.30am. P: George Martin. E: Ken Scott. 2E: Richard Lush. Recording: ‘I Am The Walrus’ (tape reduction take 20 into take 25, SI onto take 25) (Lewisohn 1988, p. 127). Sixteen voices — eight male and eight female — from the Mike Sammes Singers session troupe. Personnel per Lewisohn p. 127: Peggie Allen, Wendy Horan, Pat Whitmore, Jill Utting, June Day, Sylvia King, Irene King, G. Mallen, Fred Lucas, Mike Redway, John O’Neill, F. Dachtler, Allan Grant, D. Griffiths, J. Smith and J. Fraser. Source conflict per §1 — “first non-Beatle vocalists”: Kehew & Ryan 2006 (A Closer Look: I Am the Walrus, printed p. 466) calls the Mike Sammes Singers “the first non-Beatle vocalists to appear on one of the group’s records.” Lewisohn 1988, however, documents non-Beatle backing vocals three months earlier on the 25 June 1967 All You Need Is Love session (Lewisohn pp. 119–120): the friends sitting cross-legged on the Studio One floor for the live Our World broadcast — Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Richard, Keith Moon, Eric Clapton, Pattie Harrison, Jane Asher, Mike McCartney, Graham Nash, Gary Leeds, Lana Bird, Hunter Davies and others — sang the chorus on take 58, the broadcast and released master. The Mike Sammes Singers were arguably the first professional non-Beatle vocal ensemble on a Beatles release, but not the first non-Beatle vocalists overall. The page records both attributions and does not pick a side. The Sammes troupe sang Martin’s “delightfully demented” vocal arrangement (K/R p. 466) including the musically-notated phrases “Ho-ho-ho, hee-hee-hee, ha-ha-ha”, “Oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumper!”, “Got one, got one, everybody’s got one” and “a series of shrill whooping noises” (Lewisohn p. 127, quoted directly). Martin K/R p. 466: “In the score, [I wrote] the directions for them where they [had] to shout, or all the glisses, the ups and downs… When we ran it through and John heard it, he fell about laughing and thought it was so funny.”
• 28 September 1967 — manual sync of take 17 with take 25 + flagged Lewisohn / K/R source conflict on bounce route — Studio Two, 4.00–5.30pm then 7.00pm–3.00am. P: George Martin. E: Ken Scott. 2E: Richard Lush. Recording: ‘I Am The Walrus’ (tape reduction of take 25 as SI onto take 17). Mono mixing: remixes 2–5 from take 17. Editing: remix mono 2 (Lewisohn 1988, pp. 127–128). The orchestra-plus-Sammes-Singers tape (take 25) had to be merged with the Beatles’ instruments and vocal (take 17), and track 2 of take 17 had been left free for the purpose (K/R p. 466 speculates Martin may have originally planned to use Ken Townsend’s four-track syncing method, which would have required a free track for the 50 Hz sync tone). Source conflict per §1: Lewisohn p. 127 reports that “take 25 itself was originally a reduction of take 17” and was then reduced again down to one track before the bounce onto track 2 of take 17 — making the final master contain “in essence, the same rhythm track both with and without the later overdubbing” (Lewisohn p. 127, quoted directly). K/R p. 466 instead argues Lewisohn’s “Take 25 was bounced down to a single track before it was bounced down to Take 17” may be a misinterpretation of paperwork documenting the actual reduction-to-one-track on take 17, OR may reflect a 1/4″ BTR2 mono-machine intermediate bounce forced by other four-tracks being unavailable that evening. K/R: “Regardless, the end result was the same: Take 25 was bounced down onto Take 17” (K/R p. 466, quoted directly). The page does not pick a side; both accounts are recorded. Remix mono 2 from this session was edited “down to make the final master” but was rendered unusable on 29 September by entirely new remixing with the King Lear additions (Lewisohn p. 127).
• 29 September 1967 — final mono mix + 17 remixes + King Lear radio feed — Studio Two, 7.00pm–5.00am. P: George Martin. E: Ken Scott. 2E: Graham Kirkby. Mono mixing: ‘I Am The Walrus’ (remixes 6–22, from take 17). Editing: ‘I Am The Walrus’ (of mono remixes 10 and 22, called remix mono 23) (Lewisohn 1988, p. 128). “Although 17 mono mixes of ‘I Am The Walrus’ were effected on this night, only two of those were complete. But they were enough, and the final master version was an edit of the two” (Lewisohn p. 128, quoted directly). The first half came from remix mono 10 (no radio feed) up to the lyric “Sitting in an English garden”; the last half came from remix mono 22 (with a live radio feed) — together edited as remix mono 23 (Lewisohn p. 128).
• The King Lear radio overlay — The 29 September live radio feed was tuned through “foreign stations” before coming to rest on the BBC Third Programme (renamed Radio 3 just one day later, on 30 September 1967, per Lewisohn p. 128) broadcasting a 190-minute production of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Lear. The audible material is from Act IV Scene VI — opening with Gloucester’s “Now, good sir, what are you?” and Edgar’s “A most poor man, made tame by fortune’s blows”; the Shakespeare broadcast is “particularly evident at the end of the song, from Oswald’s ‘…take my purse’ through to Edgar’s ‘Sit you down, father; rest you’” (Lewisohn p. 128, quoted directly). The actors were Mark Dignam (Gloucester), Philip Guard (Edgar) and John Bryning (Oswald) (Lewisohn p. 128). Ken Scott on the decision (K/R p. 467, quoted directly): “John was totally in charge of that. Ringo was turning the dial, and Mr Martin had little to do with it. As with so much to do with the Beatles, what came from the radio at any given time was in the lap of the gods. And let’s face it, anything that came up at that instant would have become part of rock legend.”
• The two-beat intro edit (mono only) — After the RM10×RM22 splice was committed as remix mono 23, “Ken Scott — at the request of either George Martin or one of the Beatles — then edited out two beats of the six-beat electric piano intro” on the mono master (K/R p. 467, quoted directly). Ken Scott on the editing session: “I remember with ‘Walrus’ being very frustrated, because I was trying to edit whilst everyone was talking at the top of their voices in the Control Room, and I couldn’t hear a thing. I was getting very pissed off and began shouting. I was on-edge as it was, and I remember screaming in the end, and they all shut up” (Ken Scott, K/R p. 467, quoted directly). The trimmed intro is the released mono; the stereo retains the original six-beat intro because Emerick failed to repeat the trim on the 17 November 1967 stereo re-mix (next bullet).
• 6 November 1967 — stereo mix begun, mock-stereo splice for King Lear feed — Studio Two. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick (back at the desk after his Pepper-era exhaustion break). 2E: Ken Scott (stepping back to second engineer for this session per K/R p. 467, “likely to offer assistance with the track he had seen to completion”). Emerick used the standard arrangement of Tracks 1 and 2 panned Left and Right and Tracks 3 and 4 brought to Centre (K/R p. 467). The King Lear radio feed existed only on the mono master, so Emerick made six stereo mixes of take 17 and then made a “mock stereo” (re-channelled) mix from remix mono 22 in which “all the bass frequencies” were placed on one side of the stereo picture and “all the treble frequencies” on the other (K/R p. 467, quoted directly). True-stereo first half and mock-stereo second half were then edited together, with the switch at 2:00 into the song (K/R p. 467).
• 17 November 1967 — stereo re-mix of the latter portion + the two-beat intro discrepancy — Emerick returned on 17 November to re-mix the latter portion of the song “yet again, and while doing so, he failed to trim the two beats off the intro” (K/R p. 467, quoted directly). This is the central audible mono/stereo divergence on the released master: mono carries the four-beat Pianet intro (Ken Scott’s 29 September trim); stereo retains the original six-beat intro (Emerick’s 17 November oversight). Per K/R p. 467: “This difference in beats on the intro is one of the most noticeable differences between the mono and stereo mixes.” The mock-stereo King Lear second half is the other.
• ADT — the standard Walrus-era vocal treatment — Ken Townsend’s ADT was invented on the Tomorrow Never Knows session of 6 April 1966 (Lewisohn p. 70 dates the invention) and was Beatles-era ubiquitous from 1966 forward. K/R’s per-song diagram (p. 466) does not specifically enumerate ADT on the Walrus master, but the John Lennon lead-vocal layering and the Sammes Singers chorale both sit inside the 1967 Pepper-MMT ADT-on-everything window. Per §1 less-specific-when-uncertain, the page records ADT as Walrus-era plausible-by-default rather than as primary-source-documented for this specific track.
• Final eight-element merge on take 17 (after the 28 September manual sync) — The released master sits on take 17 with all subsequent mixing done from that one tape (K/R p. 467). The merged elements per K/R p. 466–467: Ringo’s drums + Paul’s tambourine + John’s flanged Pianet + George’s electric guitar (from the take 16 bounce); Paul’s overdubbed bass + Ringo’s doubled snare-and-bass-drum overdub (6 September SI); John’s blistering REDD.47/REDD.51-overdriven lead vocal (6 September SI); the orchestra (Sidney Sax violin section + Lionel Ross cello section + Gordon Lewin contra-bass clarinet + Neil Sanders horn section) bounced together from take 20 (27 September afternoon); the Mike Sammes Singers chorale (27 September evening); and the live BBC King Lear radio feed (29 September mono remix 22 only). The mono and stereo masters draw on the same merged take 17 plus — in mono only — the directly-captured King Lear feed.
• Anthology DVD true-stereo remix (postscript) — K/R p. 467 (Postscript) records the only documented release-quality variant beyond the 1967 mono/stereo pair: for the 31 March 2003 Anthology DVD, EMI engineers synced the original four-tracks from takes 16, 17, 20 and 25, panning the individual elements separately — cellos Right, violins and brass Left, Mike Sammes Singers Centre, Ringo’s drums Centre to sit with Paul’s bass, George’s electric guitar Right. “For an encore, they managed to find an actual clean recording of the BBC broadcast of King Lear and flew it into the mix, recreating the radio static and tuning noises as well” (K/R p. 467, quoted directly). The Anthology DVD release post-dates Lewisohn 1988 and is therefore flagged per §1 as a secondary-source variant whose internal engineering documentation, while reliable, sits outside the primary-source canon.

Legacy & release history

Mono & stereo

• Mixed primarily in mono at Abbey Road; the Beatles attended only the mono mixes through Sgt Pepper.
• Stereo mixes from this period were prepared (often without the band present) and are now considered secondary by purists.

Documented alternate versions

• Anthology 2 (1996) — alternate take or mix
• 2009 Stereo Remasters — Allan Rouse / Guy Massey remaster

Released on

• Magical Mystery Tour — EP, 8 December 1967
• Hello, Goodbye — Single, 24 November 1967

Cross-references

Other songs sharing themes (spliced, king-lear, nonsense, mike-sammy-singers, classic)

Other songs led by the same vocalist

Other songs from this era

splicedking-learnonsensemike-sammy-singersclassic

Notable covers

Related songs