I’m excited to sit down with Jerry Hammack to talk about the most influential band of all time: The Beatles!
The Beatles have influenced music makers for decades, they are irreplaceable for the development of modern recording! So many techniques we take for granted were first employed with The Beatles, George Martin, Geoff Emerick, the Studio and staff at Abbey Road play such an important part in what we hear today!
What I love most about them is that each band member was a complete artist: They wanted to be involved in it all, Not only being fantastic songwriters and musicians, but also doing film, visual arts and more.
Jerry Hammack has devoted 8 years of his life to research every tiny detail of the Beatles career and recoding process he could find. He wanted to ‘Write the book, that [he] didn’t have‘.
Jerry has collected over 5700 Beatles recordings, from original mono Vinyl masters to outtakes and remixes. He’s talked to engineers, producers and assistant engineers to find out exactly about their recording process, band chemistry and studio workflow.
As the essence of his research, he’s written 4 books covering the entire Beatles career, which reconstruct each song’s creation as well as detailing the technical profile of each and every classic Beatles recording session from 1961 to 1970. His first book ‘The Beatles Recording Reference Manual Volume 1‘ is already released and covers the early stages of recording from 1961 – 1964.
Many amazing publications have focused extremely well on the equipment used. But The Beatles Recording Reference Manual Volume 1 is a unique work, a book that gets in deeper, talking about the interaction between the band members and engineers and so much more!
So I was thrilled to be able to sit down with Jerry to learn more about one of my favourite bands!
In this interview, he tells us about the early stages of their career and the different drummers they went trough before finally welcoming the great Ringo Starr in 1962. You’ll learn more about the Beatles Decca auditions and the atmosphere and recording environment they were surrounded by in the early 60s. It was a tough business and it forced them to become stone-cold professionals in a very short period of time!
Jerry also shares amazing insights into the making of my favourite Beatles Album ‘Let It Be’ and gives us insider information on their classic singles ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘From Me To You’.
I hope you enjoy this interview and I’m looking forward to talking to Jerry again very soon! Thank you ever so much Jerry!
Thank you ever so much for watching this video! Please leave a bunch of questions and comments for Jerry below, his knowledge about the Beatles seems endless!
If you are interested in picking up Jerry’s book ‘The Beatles Recording Reference Manual Volume one (1961-1964), you can get 20% off by using the discount code ‘6MU6NT5Y’ here.
Have a marvellous time recording and mixing,
Warren