Paperback Writer

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Overview

Background

Pattern analysis

Recording

Mix variants & recording techniques

Mix variants

• 1966 UK mono single (10 June 1966, Parlophone R 5452, A-side) — The released master is mono remix 2 from the 14 April 1966 Studio Three control-room session, 7.30–8.00pm, P: George Martin, E: Geoff Emerick, 2E: Phil McDonald (Lewisohn p. 74 session header). Per K/R p. 415 verbatim, the mono mix carries a deliberate tape-echo slow-down on the “writer” tail of each chorus — per Phil McDonald’s session note “Slow down tape echo ADT just on the die away of paperback writer” — an effect that did not get re-applied when the stereo remix was made six months later. The master disc was cut by Tony Clark using EMI’s newly-acquired ATOC (Automatic Transient Overload Control) high-level cutting system — per Lewisohn p. 74 Clark verbatim: “It was EMI’s first high-level cut and I used a wonderful new machine just invented by the backroom boys, ATOC — Automatic Transient Overload Control. It was a huge box with flashing lights and what looked like the eye of a Cyclops staring out at you. But it did the trick. I did two cuts, one with ATOC and one without, played them to George Martin and he approved of the high-level one.” Per K/R p. 415 verbatim Emerick: “It was so different; really it was like seeing the first screening of 2001.” The combination of speaker-as-mic bass capture, aggressive Emerick compression (Fairchild 660 + RS92 filtering), and ATOC high-level cutting produced what K/R p. 415 calls “probably one of the loudest masters EMI had created up to that point”.
• 1966 US mono single (30 May 1966, Capitol 5651, A-side) — Released ten days ahead of the UK pressing. Mono. Per the Tier-1 corpus, the US Capitol mono is sourced from a copy tape of the UK mono master rather than a fresh remix from the UK four-track; the ATOC high-level disc cut described in Lewisohn p. 74 is a UK-only mastering pass and does not apply to Capitol’s US disc-cutting chain. (Per §1 less-specific-when-uncertain, neither Lewisohn 1988 nor K/R 2006 enumerates the Capitol US 5651 disc-cutting equipment chain.)
• 1966 US stereo single (Capitol 5651, B-side reissue context) — The stereo remix of Paperback Writer was made later in the Revolver mixing cycle and surfaced on US Capitol stereo LPs (Yesterday and Today, then Hey Jude 1970). Per K/R p. 415 verbatim, “when the song was remixed for stereo six months later this failed to be done” — referring specifically to the McDonald-noted ADT slow-down on the “writer” tail, which appears on the mono but not the stereo. The stereo remix is therefore an audibly different mix from the mono master, with the “writer” tail un-slowed and the bass mix slightly less forward in the channel balance.
• 1976 UK Rarities / 1981 Beatles 1962–1966 stereo — Continues the 1966 Revolver-cycle stereo remix lineage. Per K/R p. 415, the stereo remix preserves the un-slowed “writer” tail and the original stereo channel balance.
• 2009 Stereo Remasters — Past Masters (9 September 2009, Apple/EMI) — Allan Rouse / Guy Massey / Steve Rooke 24-bit flat transfer of the 1966 stereo master. Preserves the unslowed “writer” tail and the speaker-as-mic bass signature unchanged.
• 2023 1962–1966 Special Edition (Giles Martin / Sam Okell remix, 10 November 2023, Apple/UMe) — Post-Lewisohn remix using machine-learning-assisted source separation (the “MAL” demixing system developed by Peter Jackson’s WingNut Films during the Get Back documentary). The Giles Martin / Sam Okell remix isolates the Rickenbacker bass stem from the rest of Track 2, allowing the speaker-as-mic bass to be re-mixed with modern channel placement; the Frère-Jacques harmonies are similarly source-separated from the bass on the same track. Per §1 less-specific-when-uncertain, this remix sits outside the Lewisohn 1988 / K/R 2006 primary-source canon; the technical demixing approach is documented in the box’s liner notes rather than in the Tier-1 sources.

Recording techniques

• 13 April 1966 (Wed) — takes 1–2 + Tracks 1, 3, 4 filled (Lewisohn p. 73 + K/R p. 414) — EMI Studio Three, 8.00pm–2.30am. Recording: Paperback Writer (takes 1–2). P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Richard Lush (his Beatles-session tape-operator debut per Lewisohn p. 73 verbatim Lush: “I was pretty nervous. I’d worked with Cliff and the Shadows and they were very easy going but I knew that Beatles sessions were private.”). Per K/R p. 414 verbatim: “Track 1 was filled with nearly all of the song’s instrumental content. Paul played the main guitar part of the song, accompanied by John, also on guitar. Ringo played drums and George contributed tambourine. Where the a cappella vocal sections would eventually be, Ringo kept time on his hi-hat and Paul strummed guitar chords. All of this was recorded to Track 1 with no scratch vocal. Paul’s lead vocal and John and George’s harmony vocals were then double-tracked on Tracks 3 and 4.” Take 2 was the complete rhythm-and-vocals take; take 1 was a breakdown. Track 2 was deliberately left empty for the bass overdub the following day.
• Speaker-as-microphone bass — central editorial spine (K/R p. 415 verbatim + Lewisohn p. 74 verbatim) — Paperback Writer is the canonical Beatles speaker-as-mic recording. Per K/R p. 415 verbatim: “Instead of a microphone, Ken Townsend had placed one of the studio’s large White Elephant speakers in front of Paul’s bass amp. The speaker was then used in reverse, acting as a very large microphone. This method provided a bass signal unlike any previously obtained through normal means.” Per Lewisohn p. 74 verbatim Townsend was “reprimanded for matching impedances incorrectly” by chief technical engineer Bill Livy; the technique was discontinued shortly thereafter on EMI compliance grounds. Per K/R p. 420 verbatim Emerick re-confirmed the same technique was used on Rain the same evening: “I believe we used that on two tracks. The second song Geoff refers to was ‘Rain’, and listening to those two basslines in isolation shows how identical their sound was.” Per K/R p. 420 verbatim Dave Harries: “We were reprimanded for ‘improper use of equipment’. They told us we couldn’t use it because it wasn’t a real microphone.” The impedance mismatch was, per K/R p. 420, “simply too much for EMI’s rigid technical standards.”
• 14 April 1966 (Thu) — Track 2 filled across five attempts (K/R pp. 414–415 verbatim) — EMI Studio Three, 2.30–7.30pm. Track 2 of take 2 was filled in five successive attempts, each wiped by the next, per Tape Op Phil McDonald’s session notes and the Beatles Book Monthly in-session account quoted by K/R p. 414. Attempt 1: Paul bass plus George Martin on the Challen “Jangle Box” piano through a Leslie speaker (per McDonald the bass was “limited and compressed and sent through a bass cut filter and filters in Mr. Cook’s pad” — Room 47, Gus Cook’s office holding the RS106 band-pass filters per K/R p. 414). Attempt 2: John and George’s newly-introduced backing vocals overdubbed alone, recorded at 38 cycles/sec (a “halfspeed” varispeed attempt that would have played back almost five semitones higher; rejected after voices kept cracking on the high notes per Beatles Book Monthly via K/R p. 414). Attempt 3: The Frère-Jacques inspiration — per K/R p. 414 verbatim Paul “dived across to the piano and started playing bits of ‘Frere Jacques’.” Recorded at normal speed: John and George Frère-Jacques harmonies + Paul bass + George Martin on the Leslie’d Jangle Box. Per K/R p. 414 Martin verbatim: “I think that the best thing we’ve added are the ‘Frere Jacques’ bits.” Attempt 4: Paul moved to the Vox organ to try a Scottish-bagpipes simulation per Beatles Book Monthly via K/R p. 414; rejected. Attempt 5 (released master): Per K/R p. 415 verbatim, “It was decided that neither piano nor organ was needed, and George Martin would not make an appearance on the final track. As they had in the previous pass, John and George added vocals while George played additional guitar at the end of each chorus, Paul played his superb bass part, and all four tracks of the tape were now full.”
• Aggressive compression / limiting via Fairchild 660 (Lewisohn p. 72 + K/R p. 415 verbatim) — Emerick’s disc-cutting background informed an aggressive use of Fairchild 660 valve limiters and RS124 compressors on the bass and bass-drum chains. Per Lewisohn p. 72 verbatim Emerick (re Revolver-era bass-drum technique): “Then we put the sound through Fairchild 660 valve limiters and compressors. It became the sound of Revolver and Pepper really. Drums had never been heard like that before.” Per K/R p. 415 verbatim: “Geoff Emerick had the freedom to raise the bass in volume if he wished without also raising the drums [because the bass was now on its own track]. Another factor was the fact that the bass was recorded in a different way... Geoff had begun experimenting with more aggressive dynamic processing and filtering.” The combination of speaker-as-mic + aggressive Fairchild limiting is what gives the released master its characteristic bass envelope.
• ATOC high-level disc cutting — Tony Clark on the master lacquer (Lewisohn p. 74 verbatim + K/R p. 415 verbatim) — The UK mono single was disc-cut by Tony Clark using EMI’s newly-acquired ATOC (Automatic Transient Overload Control) system — Lewisohn p. 74 Clark verbatim: “It was EMI’s first high-level cut and I used a wonderful new machine just invented by the backroom boys, ATOC. It was a huge box with flashing lights and what looked like the eye of a Cyclops staring out at you. But it did the trick. I did two cuts, one with ATOC and one without, played them to George Martin and he approved of the high-level one.” Per K/R p. 415 verbatim Emerick: “I remember the buzz that quickly went around Abbey Road when it became apparent what we had achieved with the sound of a record. People were standing outside the door and listening... It was so different; really it was like seeing the first screening of 2001.” Per K/R p. 415 the resulting master was “probably one of the loudest masters EMI had created up to that point”.
• ADT slow-down on “writer” tail — mono only (K/R p. 415 verbatim + Phil McDonald session note) — Per K/R p. 415 verbatim: “McDonald’s notes include the instruction to ‘Slow down tape echo ADT just on the die away of paperback writer’. This subtle slowing down was, in fact, done on the mono mix, carried out the day after the song was recorded. But when the song was remixed for stereo six months later this failed to be done. Once more, the focus on mono mixes was obvious.” The ADT-slow-down on the tail of each “writer” chorus — an audibly pitch-bent decay — is therefore a mono-only feature and a documented technical difference between the released UK mono single and every stereo remix descended from the 1966 stereo master.
• Studio Three Studer J37 install (K/R p. 416 verbatim) — Per K/R p. 416 verbatim: “by the group’s fourth session [during which they recorded ‘Paperback Writer’], Studio Three had a Studer actually installed in the Control Room, just like Studio Two.” The earlier April Revolver sessions in Studio Three had been run via the remote Studer in Room 1A, requiring intercom communication to the Tape Op for drop-ins; the Paperback Writer session was the inflection point at which Studio Three’s recording chain achieved parity with Studio Two’s.
• A-cappella intro and chorus — Track 1 muted in the mix (K/R p. 415 verbatim) — Per K/R p. 415 verbatim, “during the a cappella intro and chorus sections, Track 1 of the tape had to be turned all the way down. This was because it held Ringo’s hi-hat and Paul’s guitar, both of which had only ever been intended for time-keeping purposes at those points.” The vocal-only intro is therefore a mix decision rather than a recording-track separation; Track 1 carried scratch hi-hat and guitar throughout the song, and was selectively muted during the a-cappella passages in the mix.
• Repeat-Echo-into-ADT on “writer” (K/R p. 415 verbatim) — Per K/R p. 415 verbatim, “at the end of the chorus, it was determined that the word ‘writer’ would have Repeat Echo applied and that the echo would itself be treated to ADT. This was to be taken one step further, though.” The Repeat-Echo-feeding-ADT chain is a stacked-effect signal-flow on a single sustained word — an example of Emerick’s 1966 willingness to layer effects on selected lyric peaks rather than across whole passes.
• Same-evening Rain coupling (Lewisohn p. 74 session header) — The 14 April Studio Three 8.30pm–1.30am session that followed the Paperback Writer bass-and-mono-remix work was the first Rain session (takes 1–5). Per K/R p. 420 verbatim, the speaker-as-mic bass technique was used on both songs that evening (“The second song Geoff refers to was ‘Rain’, and listening to those two basslines in isolation shows how identical their sound was”). The double-A coupling on the 10 June 1966 Parlophone R 5452 release therefore originates in a compressed two-song single-evening sequence at Studio Three, with both A and B side sharing the same speaker-as-mic bass-recording signature.
• ADT examples table cross-reference (K/R p. 296, Ch 8 Effects) — Paperback Writer appears in the K/R Ch 8 catalogue of canonical Revolver-era ADT vocal applications per K/R p. 296 (the “Examples of ADT” table), bundled with Rain on the “Paperback Writer / Rain” single row. ADT was the in-house Ken Townsend Artificial Double Tracking system (BTR2 + J37 sync-head delay loop) that became standard Revolver-era vocal treatment from Tomorrow Never Knows 6 April 1966 onwards (per Lewisohn p. 70).
• Source recordings preserved across separate days — the Phil McDonald notes (K/R p. 414 verbatim) — Paperback Writer is unusually well-documented at the session level because Phil McDonald wrote out detailed session notes for the 14 April Track 2 fill across all five attempts. Per K/R p. 414 verbatim: “Most revealing, however, were the notes made by Tape Op Phil McDonald, which documented the various attempts to fill Track 2. Each attempt was wiped by the one that followed.” The McDonald notes are the primary-source reason K/R is able to reconstruct the five-attempt sequence at all; Beatles Book Monthly’s in-session article (also quoted by K/R p. 414) provides corroborating narrative detail (the “Frere Jacques” piano dive, John’s “You’ve got it! You’ve got it!” reaction to Paul’s Vox organ attempt 4, George Martin’s “To the best of our ability, Paul…” quip).

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

• 2009 Stereo Remasters — Allan Rouse / Guy Massey remaster

Released on

• Paperback Writer — Single, 10 June 1966

Cross-references

Other songs sharing themes (loud-bass, letter-lyric, a-cappella-intro)

Other songs led by the same vocalist

Other songs from this era

loud-bassletter-lyrica-cappella-intro

Related songs