Which Beatles songs were recorded in Abbey Road’s Studio Three?
Today, millions of people flock to Abbey Road Studios every year to pay homage to the musical home of The Beatles. Of course, there are the customary photos of tourists walking in formation across the fabled zebra crossing outside the studio building, imitating the cover photo for the band’s album named after the place where they recorded most of their songs. But very few actually get to go any further.
Only professional musicians, technicians, historians, and occasional journalists or documentaries are afforded a look inside the studios themselves to see where all that Beatle magic actually happened. Most of it took place in the famed Studio Two, with its large open recording space and grand piano. In fact, this is where the entirety of The Beatles’ first six studio albums were recorded.
But by 1966, the band was expanding their sound in revolutionary ways, and their recording process increasingly involved lengthy experimentation as well as a wide array of instruments and sound effects. It was no longer simply a case of rocking up and recording an entire album with guitars, bass, drums and piano in the space of a few sessions. The Beatles needed more time, and more space.
Their seventh LP, Revolver, took two and a half months to record in total, including various trips next door to their second-choice recording location at Abbey Road, Studio Three. This smaller studio had certain features that Studio Two didn’t, such as sound-isolating booths for different instruments or vocalists and additional controls on its mixing desk. It was also a backup option in case the band overstayed their welcome in the larger room next door, which became an increasingly common occurrence in the second half of their career.
Alongside elements of eight other tracks during the Revolver sessions, Studio Three hosted the famous tape-looping process recorded for the album’s closer ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. Soon after, other artists inspired by The Beatles’ forays into psychedelia booked the space for their own recording sessions. Pink Floyd made their first of many albums there in 1967, while The Zombies’ classic Odessey and Oracle and The Hollies’ single ‘The Air That I Breathe’ followed soon after.
But what about other Beatles songs?
Aside from album tracks, The Beatles recorded the master takes for their single ‘Paperback Writer’ and its B-side ‘Rain’ in Studio Three. And having found even more joy with experimentation and overdubs in this particular studio during the recording of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour, their visits only became more frequent.
Their 1968 single ‘Lady Madonna’ was taped there, with Paul McCartney playing his boogie-woogie piano part on its Steinway Vertegrand known as The Mrs Mills Piano. Footage of these sessions was shot for the single’s promotional video, showing the inner workings of Studio Three. Similar footage was taken of the band recording the Yellow Submarine track ‘Hey Bulldog’ in the same studio a few days later.
In total, 42 Beatles songs were at least partially recorded in Abbey Road Studio Three, including 44, which were released as singles or on their original studio albums. The last of these was Abbey Road’s ‘Oh! Darling’, an overdub for which was recorded on August 8th 1969. By that point, the studio had gone from backup recording space to the group’s home-from-home.
That wasn’t the end of the story, either, as John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr all recorded parts of their next solo records in the studio. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, in particular, was recorded almost entirely in Studio Three. He may have left his other band behind, but there remained no better place in the world to make his music.
Full list of Beatles songs recorded in Studio Three:
- ‘Got to Get You into My Life’
- ‘Paperback Writer’
- ‘Rain’
- ‘I’m Only Sleeping’
- ‘Eleanor Rigby’
- ‘For No One’
- ‘Yellow Submarine’
- ‘Granny Smith’
- ‘Penny Lane’
- ‘Good Morning Good Morning’
- ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite!’
- ‘Magical Mystery Tour’
- ‘Flying’
- ‘Your Mother Should Know’
- ‘The Fool on the Hill’
- ‘Hello, Goodbye’
- ‘Christmas Time (Is Here Again)’
- ‘Lady Madonna’
- ‘Across the Universe’
- ‘Hey Bulldog’
- ‘Revolution 1’
- ‘Don’t Pass Me By’
- ‘Revolution 9’
- ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’
- ‘Revolution’
- ‘Yer Blues’
- ‘Why Don’t We Do It in the Road’
- ‘The Ballad Of John And Yoko’
- ‘Old Brown Shoe’
- ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’
- ‘Oh! Darling’
- ‘Something’
- ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’
- ‘Here Comes the Sun’
- ‘Octopus’s Garden’
- ‘Come Together’
- ‘Polythene Pam’
- ‘She Came in Through the Bathroom Window’
- ‘Sun King’
- ‘Mean Mr Mustard’
- ‘The End’
- ‘Let It Be’
- ‘You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)’
