Beatles fans with a lust for the retro tech that made the Fab
Four fab should head to Carlsbad, California's Museum of Making Music, which has just opened an exhibit of artifacts from the band's sessions at Abbey Road Studios.
You can hear the classic songs coming out of the same speakers used in the sessions, and gawp at the original technology, some never before seen in public.
Underwire got the lowdown on exhibits from the show's curators, Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan. The pair co-authored a quintessential book of Fab Four techno facts,* Recording the Beatles,* which was reviewed by Wired last year (it's sold around 9,000 copies online).
Here's an exhibit for tech spec lovers everywhere: "Memo/letter to staff about rejection of the new 8-track recorder for the new Beatles album sessions (1968 White Album). While the
Beatles had been waiting impatiently for a modern 8-channel recorder, when it arrived the technical staff rejected it as lacking the same quality of the 4-channel machines it was replacing."
Former Abbey Road engineer John Kurlander (now a leading film score engineer) loaned a series of 1966 Abbey Road setup sheets, showing how studio equipment was to be placed for a session.
But if that's too specialist, simply kick back and listen to the music while pondering how things have changed. Or not. As Kehew enthuses: "Seeing these in person points out some huge differences in design and construction compared to today's recording methods. An original oily, tanklike beast (the EMI tape machine) and military-looking vocal compressor are now replaced by a modern laptop ... yet other items -- like classic European microphones and vintage guitar amplifiers -- are still in heavy use in today's studios."
Most of the artifacts are from private collections in America, though the former studio manager, Ken Townsend, loaned a nostalgic piece of kit -- a studio ashtray.
I have to declare a interest. In the 1960s, my music-mad dad sold the first Beatles singles in a music store in Jersey, Channel Islands, and was flown to Abbey Road to hear those early recordings.
The exhibition runs through July.
Photo of Neumann U47 microphone courtesy Museum of Making Music.
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