Bass at 66

Paperback Writer b/w Rain was released 66 years ago today. It's the A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving of mid-period Beatles, sandwiched & somewhat overlooked between the much more heralded singles that came immediately before and after (We Can Work It Out/Day Tripper & Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever) but Paperback Writer/Rain kicked off an explosion of sound innovation that the band would continue to push until their final breaths together, changing the way rock & roll bass was both recorded & listened to ever since.

From legendary Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick's Here, There and Everywhere:

Fortunately, as Paul and John turned to George Harrison and began showing him the chords to "Paperback Writer," inspiration struck. It occurred to me that since microphones are in fact simply loudspeakers wired in reverse (in technical terms, both are transducers that convert sound waves to electrical signals, and vice versa), why not try using a loudspeaker as a microphone? Logically, it seemed that whatever can push bass signal out can also take it in—and that a large loudspeaker should be able to respond to low frequencies better than a small microphone.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I broached my plan, gingerly, to Phil McDonald. His response was somewhat predictable: "You're daft; you've completely gone around the twist." Ignoring him, I took a walk down the hall and talked it over with Ken Townsend, our maintenance engineer. He thought my idea had some merit. "Sounds plausible," he said. "Let's wire a speaker up that way and try it."

Over the next few hours, while the boys rehearsed with George Martin, Ken and I conducted a few experiments. To my delight, the idea of using a speaker as a microphone seemed to work pretty well. Even though it didn't deliver a lot of signal and was kind of muffled, I was able to achieve a good bass sound by placing it up against the grille of a bass amplifier, speaker to speaker, and then routing the signal through a complicated setup of compressors and filters—including one huge experimental unit that I secretly borrowed from the office of Mr. Cook, the manager of the maintenance department.

With renewed confidence, I returned to the studio to try it out for real. Paul wasn't as nontechnical as John, but this was pretty way out, even by Beatles standards. He looked at me in a funny way as I set up the big, bulky loudspeaker in front of his amp instead of the usual microphone, but he didn't say anything, and neither did George Martin, who by now was getting used to my Rube Goldberg approach to recording. They returned their attention to the rehearsals, giving me the opportunity to cautiously raise the fader carrying the bass signal. Paul's distinctively fluid bass line in "Paperback Writer" consisted mostly of notes played high up on the lowest string, which helped round out the tone further still. His playing was also more melodic and busy than on previous tracks. It sounded absolutely huge, so much so that I became somewhat concerned that it might actually make the needle jump out of the groove when it was finally cut to vinyl. But Paul loved the sound, and it was eventually left to my mate Tony Clark to cut the master lacquer. I was glad Tony had gotten the assignment, and he did a brilliant job. If it had been one of the older guys, they would have either slashed all the bass out of it, or sent it back and told us to mix it again.