Three factual questions about the Beatles

Factual Questions
1

  1. Why didn’t the Beatles “do” their own voices for The Yellow Submarine movie (ie why did voice actors impersonate the Beatles when it probably would have been easier and/or cheaper to do it themselves?)

  2. In the song “Strawberry Fields”, John’s voice sounds much different than on any other song they recorded. Did they intentionally slow down the tape to either make his voice lower, or the song longer? Or some other reason?

  3. Post-Beatles question. Did John Lennon sing backup on George Harrison’s song “My Sweet Lord?” John’s not credited, but it really, really sounds like him.
    Thanks,

-TGD

2

I remember hearing that the Beatles were not originally interested in “Yellow Submarine” – they were disillusioned with cartoon projects due to the less-than-ideal quality of those crappy Beatles cartoons produced at the height of Beatlemania.

When they saw the quality of the nearly-finished version of “YS”, they wanted to take part, but it was too late to redo the voices.

Not sure about the other two questions.

FU Shakespeare

3

My Sweet Lord was released on All Things Must Pass, which was re-released as a Millenial Edition with extensive sleeve notes (where GH gives credit to Eric Clapton (and others) for the first time – apparently when it was originally recorded it was not the done practice to credit artists signed to other labels, though friends would often guest without credit on each others work). Anyway I do not recall seeing JL’s name in these notes, I’ll check again next time they’re to-hand.

4
  1. John loved to play around with the tape recorders. He did speed up and slow down the tapes to create the kind of sounds he wanted.
5

[hijack]

John sang backup on Elton John’s cover of ‘Lucy in the Sky’. (He was returning the favor for Elton singing backup on ‘Whatever Gets You Through The Night’.

John also sang backup on Bowies ‘Fame’.

If you really want to hear the difference in John’s voice vis-a-vis tape speeds, compare the Let It Be version of ‘Across The Universe’ (mixed by Phil Specter) to the original, unreleased until the Beatles’ Rarities. (Currently available on Past Masters.)

[/hijack]

6
  1. Just heard about this recently- can’t remember where, but I think that Shakespeare has the gist of it correct.
  2. The album version of Strawberry Fields Forever is actually the result of mixing two previous takes of the song together. JL and George Martin like both versions, but couldn’t quite find the right sound. GM ended up speeding one version up and slowing the other down, mixing them together, and voila: the strange vocal quality you mentioned hearing in the finished product. Fantastic feat of engineering of GM’s part.
  3. I thought the exact same thing you did- it really does sound like him. Howver, he is credited nowhere on the “All Things Must Pass” album. However, “My Sweet Lord” does appear (at least, if my memory serves) on one of the Beatles double discs that came out a few years back as a studio version with just George Harrision single and an acoustic guitar, so if I’m not mistaken on that point, I guess it’s possible that JL might have had SOME involvement on it, possibly uncredited. At the time, I think there were still some pretty hard feelings between all the ex-Beatles.
7

  1. Mr. Shakespeare is essentially correct. Following “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!,” the band was under contract to United Artists for two more movies. Remember, in 1967, they had stopped touring the previous fall and had fully transitioned to a “studio band,” and were pursuing individual projects as well. They weren’t interested in cavorting in front of the cameras or spending time doing voice tracks, so the animated project was developed, with the Beatles agreeing to record several new songs for it (they ended up with four). As mentioned, they were pleased with the final project, and added on a “live appearance” at the end of the movie. By 1969, of course, they were even less interested in doing a movie, which is why their final film is simply footage of them recording in the studio and performing on the Apple rooftop.

  2. The final recording of “Strawberry Fields Forever” is composed of two different takes of the song. They are spliced together at almost exactly 1:00 into the song, before the words “I’m going to.” The first take was recorded in the key of A, and the second in B; they were sped up and slowed down, respectively, to give a final recording almost, but not quite, in B Flat. John’s voice is noticeable lower on the second half of the song as a result.

  3. Backup vocals on the “All Things Must Pass” album, including “My Sweet Lord,” are credited to " The George O’Hara-Smith Singers," which is simply George himself and Phil Spector, multi-tracked.

8

There’s an amazing version of the fast version of “SFF” going around (mostly on bootlegs)- the version that they chopped in half and slowed down to make the second half of the finished single. It starts with a horn and strings intro and John’s voice sounds frantically young and energetic. Once you’ve heard it, the actual released single will always sound wrong after that- “Slow John” stretching out “no one i think is in my tree” sounds like a 45 rpm record played at 33.
One of the major disappointments of the Anthology for me was that a clean version of this was left off.