Geoff Emerick, 1945-2018

One of the unsung heroes of the recording industry passed away this past Tuesday (October 2). Geoff Emerick started out as an assistant engineer at EMI in London around the time The Beatles were getting ready to turn the world upside down. He was about the same age as the lads from Liverpool and managed to get a ringside seat at their first recording session for George Martin.

A few years later, Geoff had the opportunity to work under George Martin while The Beatles recorded some of their most iconic music. In the studio, Martin was the guy in charge. He managed the sessions, and did his best to translate what the band wanted into technical terms. Emerick was largely responsible for actually creating those effects. It was Emerick who experimented with different ways to mike Ringo’s drums. It was Emerick who suggested feeding John’s microphone into the speaker of a Hammond organ to give his voice an ethereal, slightly distorted sound. He messed with (some might say abused) the equipment to try to accommodate the requests from the studio floor. And to experiment with his own ideas of how to make the recordings sound better. The Beatles were always striving to do something different with each record. Geoff Emerick was one of the people who made that happen.

In memory and celebration of Geoff Emerick, here’s an interview he did with the Australian Broadcasting Company for the fiftieth anniversary of The Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper” album. It’s about 40 mins long, and can be a little technical at times, but worth watching:

And here’s one of the songs he helped engineer: