1/15/2023 0 Comments Beatles music keys infographic![]() If and when a recording he made proved successful, he would move up the studio food chain. Smith hoped to climb the EMI ranks from tape operator to balance engineer and the corporation provided opportunities for on-the-job training by assigning him to such tests. They want to know how you sound on mic!” In short, the 6 June session could have functioned as a review to help the production team appraise the strengths and weaknesses of the musicians, their equipment, and their material.įor the Beatles’ first visit to studio, the corporation engaged Norman Smith to serve as balance engineer. “The comparison I make to the EMI test is the motion picture industry screen test. ![]() Veteran EMI balance engineer, Malcolm Addey (whose career had seen him record some of EMI’s most successful hits to that date) confirms that the session probably constituted a recording test. A two-hour session suggests a test, not a recording session. Had the Beatles been there for a standard three-hour recording session, they would have received a payment of £7/10. A fee of £5/5 served as the regulation union fee for a two-hour session in 1962, which describes the amount of time that the Beatles officially spent in studio two. Guineas represented the preferred form of payment to professionals such as arrangers and music directors, while pounds and pence were what union musicians found in their packets. The payment made to each of the Beatles of five pounds and five shillings - the equivalent of five guineas - holds some significance. The payment at MU rates does not rule out the possibility that the Beatles had a recording contract, but session musicians received such fees. Martin responded the next day that he intended to pay them at the MU rate, suggested that this arrangement was routine, and that including it in the invoice seemed unnecessary. The question of whether or not this date represented an artist test, a recording test, or the first date of their recording contract rests in murky evidence, including a payment to the band members at the Musicians’ Union rate.ĮMI’s Evelyn Harwood had questioned Martin in a memo about why the draft contract had not included language about the members of the band receiving Musicians’ Union payments. But George Martin and others have asserted long and steadfastly that they auditioned the Beatles on 6 June, describing the contract date as either backdating or simply a clerical mistake. ![]() To wit: on 6 June 1962, were the Beatles auditioning or were they already under contract? Documentation and personal memories conflict such that no single answer can claim to be definitive, even as the evidence suggests a nuanced social interplay between Parlophone’s George Martin and Beatles manager Brian Epstein.Ī contract signed by Thomas Humphrey Tilling for EMI and Brian Epstein on behalf of the Beatles suggests that an agreement existed on 4 June, two days before the Beatles arrived for their first session. Perhaps the most significant unresolved controversy surrounding the recording of the Beatles first single “Love Me Do” rests on the question of whether or not EMI had finalized a contract with them. ![]()
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