Bushwick is Beautiful: Book Review (Geoff Emerick) Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles

Here, There, and Everywhere:

My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles

by: Geoff Emerick

Just put the autobiography from Geoff Emerick down, and that was

something I found very hard to do while reading the book. This is

not the best book written about the Beatles(we'll blog soon on what that is),

but it's one of the best. The author is not some fan of the band who interviewed people

to put some biography together. He witnessed and even influenced the

music of the Beatles as it was being made. Geoff Emerick gives the

reader a first hand glimpse into the often bizarre world of Beatle recording

sessions.

Geoff gives us a lot of new antidotes even obsessive Beatle fans have never known.

He was the engineer on many of the later Beatles sessions, when things got

very tense but extremely creative until the bitter end. Geoff's first session

taking over for the head engineer, as for "Tomorrow Never Knows". You

can feel the utter nervousness of Geoff that first day in the control both

as the main man. He draws you in and put you directly in the seat of the control room in

Abbey Road Studios.

The book gives us stories about Yoko's bed in the control room, and how that came off the first day the others saw it. We also see a stoned and belligerent John Lennon storm into the

White Album sessions demanding to try Paul's song "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" his way. Low

and behold John's idea works the best, and that's the version that ended up on the album.

If you think he had the best job in the world, you may change your mind by the books end.

Geoff Emerick quits during the White Album sessions, in possibly leaving one of the

most sought after jobs on the planet. Want to know what drove him to quitting half way through 1968 only to return to the post for the final Abbey Road album? Read the book, they

are plently more interesting tid bits from how Geoff shaped some of the Beatles best songs

to the fighting and bickering towards the end. See it all from someone who watched it

all go down before his eyes.