The two Beatles masterpieces John Lennon thought were “badly recorded”
The Beatles are revered for a lot of reasons. They’re celebrated for their songwriting and the timelessness of their anthems. They’re awed for their rapid evolution and experimentation, changing before the world’s eyes over and over during their relatively short existence. But they’re also deeply respected for their technical importance, helping to push the boundaries or even the very capabilities of what a band could do in a recording studio. However, when reflecting on some of their experiments, John Lennon had some regrets, not about the songs themself, but the sound.
In 1966, still early on in their careers and at the height of their global fame as Beatlemania swept the world, the band quit touring. It was a wild move. Now, we’re more accustomed to some huge acts rarely, or never, hitting the road, but back in the 1960s, live music was the true lifeblood of an artist’s career. So, for The Beatles to turn around and say they never wanted to perform in front of an audience again was a shocking move.
But the band were so overwhelmed they simply weren’t interested anymore. “This time as well, they were undergoing a lot of death threats,” their producer George Martin recalled of that moment, “George Harrison was pretty worried when they were in Berlin that they were gonna be picked off.” Unable to handle the pressure and chaos of their own fanbase, the band wanted to focus on something other than the screaming crowd: sonic experimentation.
“All we want to do is make records in the studio with George, and that’s it,” Martin remembered the band telling their manager, Brian Epstein. So, for the rest of the decade, that’s what they did. No longer tethered to live shows or having to make sure their music could translate to a stage, that decision to quit touring opened up their more experimental, pioneering eras where the band became obsessed with seeing what they could do in the studio and how far they could take things.
‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ was one of the first results. “I remember when The Beatles first brought in the Mellotron. It was made mostly for producing sound effects but it also had flutes, brass and string sounds on it. The Beatles used it in a way nobody had ever thought of,” the song’s engineer, Jerry Boys, said of the making of that track as the band began playing with new technology.
‘Across The Universe’ was another key experimental moment as they made even a simple, largely acoustic track feel woozy and interesting.
But John Lennon hated the recording of both. In both cases, he thought they were good songs done terribly, especially ‘Across The Universe’. “It was a lousy track of a great song, and I was so disappointed by it,” he said. To him, it was a sign of the times as he thought he could hear the tension within the band on the track, explaining, “The guitars are out of tune, and I’m singing out of tune ’cause I’m psychologically destroyed and nobody’s supporting me or helping me with it and the song was never done properly.”
He also blamed Paul McCartney for part of that, claiming his bandmate didn’t know when to leave something alone. “I think subconsciously sometimes we – I say ‘we’ although I think Paul did it more than the rest of us – Paul would, sort of subconsciously, try and destroy a great song… meaning we’d play experimental games with my great pieces,” he said, adding, “like ‘Strawberry Fields’, which I always thought was badly recorded.”
McCartney would certainly contest that given that both songs exist as some of his favourites from Lennon regardless of his old friend’s take on their sound.
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