A Day in the Lifr

Geoff Emerick on recording Sgt Pepper:

I’ve always thought the piano track in “Day in the Life” is extraordinarily moving. Is that crazy?

No, that’s not crazy at all. John was a brash sort of a rough-and-ready type person, and where Paul was like the romantic, and that was a great combination of the two of them. Sometimes, as John got round the vocal mike to sing a song, especially “Day in the Life,” there’s all this sort of emotion and stuff that came out of him, which you don’t see when he’s just not singing and just being a normal John. I thought, “How does he get all this feeling and emotion into the way he sings?” It was many years afterwards, I’m thinking, he was just thinking of his childhood.

That must’ve been something to hear him sing those vocals.

When we first lifted up the faders in the control room, we had shivers running down our backs. “Day in the Life,” that’s just the best thing ever.