What synths did The Beatles use?
On the eve of The Beatles‘ ‘Love Me Do’ debut in 1962, electronic music was only heard in the realm of science fiction or the fringes of avant-garde academia. Inhabiting opposite ends of the cultural spectrum, the novel tonalities of this sonic frontier could be heard in the B-movie picture house offering eerie theremin scores to features such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, or the pioneering electroacoustic collages crafted by musique-concrète composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Across the decade, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s eerie sounds heard on the seminal Doctor Who, experimental radio dramas and the plethora of comedy effects featured on The Goon Show pricked the ears of budding producers and engineers in the music industry. A young Eddie Kramer was found devouring the Workshop’s articles divulging their research and development in innovative studio trickery. Working around the corner from the department’s Maida Vale site, EMI bigwig George Martin collaborated with Workshop artist Maddalena Fagandini on the chirpy electronic piece ‘Time Beat‘ under the joint moniker Ray Cathode.
Martin’s immersion in the world of tape manipulation would later serve The Beatles’ increasingly creative ambitions. Fuelled by routine LSD trips and the emerging psychedelia taking hold in pop and rock, a fascination with Stockhausen and the growing embrace of the studio as an instrument saw the band dive into the world of electronic music in earnest—’Tomorrow Never Knows’, ‘I Am the Walrus’ and ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite!’ are some landmark cuts in lysergic-soaked collage pop.
While synthesiser technology occupied entire rooms in select American colleges and existed in prototype forms even in the late 1950s, modular synths became commercially available with an eye-watering price tag—over $300,000 in today’s money—by the late 1960s. Gripping artists of the counterculture eager to explore new sonic worlds while rankling music’s purists and unions, The Beatles would stand as one of the first mainstream rock acts to enthusiastically grapple with the mysterious synthesiser.
So, what synths did The Beatles use?
While in Los Angeles in November 1968, George Harrison came into contact with a massive modular synthesiser while producing Jackie Lomax’s Is This What You Want? at Sound Recorders studio. Mesmerised by its alien sounds, Harrison purchased the Moog Synthesiser IIIp and had the hefty unit shipped to his Esher house outside London. Toying with the new machine for his second solo record Electronic Sound in 1969—little more than a demo of the Moog’s capabilities—and then the shift to EMI’s Room 43 for the 1969 Abbey Road sessions would see the synth’s infinitely more creative use.
The first recording to feature the Moog was the August 5th ‘Because’ takes, with Harrison performing its distinctive filter sawtooth bridge amid the shimmering vocal harmonies. ‘Here Comes the Sun’ wields a synth double along with its guitar line, and John Lennon played around with its white noise generator to close his heavy progressive jam ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)‘. The Moog’s most sophisticated use is scattered all over Paul McCartney’s ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, the twee music-hall number that tested the band’s patience, yet indeed is an incredibly innovative sonic character realised through the synth’s magic.
The Moog’s pioneering third series could have been dolloped all over Abbey Road like a clumsy gimmick stodging the album with outdated trends, but, instead, it is smartly woven into the record. Synths would dominate prog and the wider 1970s classic rock era, but it’s The Beatles’ pioneering use of the Moog that still sounds as fresh as it did back in 1969, a longevity owing to the instrument never being deployed for novelty.
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