Baby's in Black

Story Section status: Outdated

Recording

• One evening, fourteen takes, thirteen edit pieces — Baby’s in Black was cut in Studio Two at EMI, Abbey Road on Tuesday 11 August 1964, 7.00–11.00pm: takes 1–14 plus thirteen unnumbered edit pieces. It was the first song recorded for the album that became Beatles for Sale. “A Hard Day’s Night had been out just two months when the Beatles began recording another LP, in keeping with the formula of two per year, the second always aimed at the Christmas sales market. ‘Baby’s In Black’, one of the LP’s strongest songs, was the first to be recorded.” George Martin produced, Norman Smith engineered, Ron Pender was second engineer.¹
• Only five of the fourteen takes were finished — “It took 14 takes before the Beatles were satisfied, although only five of those were complete, and five more barely got beyond the first note, a rather distinctive George Harrison guitar twang.” A third of the evening’s attempts died on the opening chord. John’s aside after take 14 — “Can we hear that rubbish back?” — is the sound of a band that had been at it for four hours.¹
• The thirteen edit pieces are all that first note — after the fourteen numbered takes, George tried a few variations on the opening note, none of which was chosen for the finished article. The edit pieces were not alternative performances of the song; they were a short list of candidate openings, taped separately so one could be spliced onto the front of the master.¹
• A shift in who was deciding — the exchange over those variations is the moment the working relationship turns: “Clearly, the roles between the Beatles and Martin were beginning to change, with Martin no longer entirely dictating proceedings.” Five months earlier the opening note would have been the producer’s call; here it is George’s idea being auditioned and the producer asking whether that is really what is wanted.¹
• A double-tracked guitar solo, and the fourth track that made it easy — by the summer of 1964 double-tracking of instruments had become commonplace on Beatles sessions. “‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, ‘Baby’s In Black’, ‘Words Of Love’, ‘Matchbox’, ‘She’s A Woman’ and ‘I Feel Fine’ all had double-tracked guitar solos. Again, the fourth track of the tape machine made this a relatively simple task, and double-tracking instruments would become a common practice from this point on.” The solo you hear is two performances of the same line, stacked.²
• This is the session that dates the new microphone technique — the setup used for nearly all of Baby’s in Black is the one the Beatles-for-Sale era is dated from: by the album’s first session on 11 August, Norman Smith had retired the STC 4038 and the U47 and U48 had been converted for vocals in a new figure-of-eight setting. Photographs of the 11 August session show them using the newly-modified mics.²
• From here, stereo mixing stayed in one room — “beginning 11 August with the recording of ‘Baby’s In Black’, all stereo mixes for the remainder of the year would take place in Studio Two.” Except in the event of studio booking issues, the team need never leave it.²

Equipment Section status: Outdated

Recording Timeline

• 11 August 1964 (Tue) — recording, takes 1–14 plus thirteen edit pieces, Studio Two, 7.00–11.00pm — P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ron Pender. The whole song was made in this one four-hour block, and it opened the album’s sessions. Five takes ran to the end; five collapsed on the opening guitar note. The thirteen edit pieces that follow take 14 are George’s variations on that note. The room that evening, as photographed: A.C.50 Super Twin rigs for John and George mic’d with Neumann U47s, Paul’s bass amp by now an A.C.100, a U47 suspended in front of John for his acoustic, and Paul and John sharing a single U48 switched to figure-of-eight.^1,2
• 14 August 1964 (Fri) — first mono remix, from take 14, Studio Two control room, 9.00–10.00pm — P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ron Pender. A one-hour mixing slot wedged between two recording blocks on a working evening that ran 7.00–11.15pm: I’m a Loser was cut from 7.00 to 9.00, the control room took over from 9.00 to 10.00 for mono remix 1 of Baby’s in Black from take 14 and remix 1 of I’m a Loser from take 8, and the band went back in at 10.00 for Leave My Kitten Alone, takes 1–5. Neither of the two mixes survived — both songs were later returned to and given improved remixes for record release. The LP was still untitled at this point, three days after its first song went on tape.¹
• 26 October 1964 (Mon) — mono remix 2, from take 14, Studio Two control room, 10.00am–12.45pm — P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Tony Clark. The replacement mono mix, made two and a half months after the first, in a long morning that also mixed Rock and Roll Music, Words of Love, I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party, I’m a Loser and Kansas City. Remix 2 is the mono the record carries.¹
• 4 November 1964 (Wed) — stereo remix, from take 14, Studio Two control room, 10.00am–1.00pm — P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Mike Stone. The stereo was made in the three-hour session that swept up the remaining stereo mixes for the LP — a run that opened with I’ll Follow the Sun and worked through eight songs in one sitting, a month before release, with an edit of Mr. Moonlight to finish. Take 14 is the source here as it was in August and October: every released mix of this song, mono and stereo alike, descends from the same performance, and no session after 11 August added a note to it.¹

Studio Notes

• The track layout is a reconstruction, not a tape box — the four-track sheet published for this song reads Track 1: drums, bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar; Track 2: electric guitar, tambourine; Track 3: vocals; Track 4: vocals. That is worth stating precisely, because of how it was arrived at. Baby’s in Black is not one of the 1964 track sheets reproduced from surviving documentation; its layout belongs to the set that was “determined solely by applying the known tape layout” and the panning conventions to the stereo mixes — “not by access to tape boxes or other studio documentation”. The values are a careful inference from what the record sounds like, not a transcription.²
• What is documented is the convention, not this sheet — tape boxes from the period do reveal that the four-track tape layout had indeed been established, and that it was “strictly adhered to”. That is why the reconstruction is credible: the format was fixed, so a stereo mix can be read backwards into it. The distinction matters in both directions — the convention is evidence, this particular row-by-row assignment is deduction.²
• The desk had no pan pots, and that is what you hear — the REDD.51’s lack of panning controls is the reason 1964 stereo sits where it sits. Anything hard left is Track 1; anything hard right is Track 2; Tracks 3 and 4 land in the centre. Read onto this song’s layout, that puts drums, bass and both the acoustic and one electric guitar in one channel, the second electric and the tambourine in the other, and the two voices up the middle. The wide, almost crude separation is not a mixing choice; it is the only thing the console could do.²
• Two singers, one microphone — Paul and John sing this together, and the photographs show them doing it into a single Neumann U48 set to figure-of-eight. The pattern is the whole point: a figure-of-eight capsule is live on front and back and dead at the sides, so two voices facing each other across one microphone are both on-axis and the room is rejected. The U48 was reached for on this kind of date precisely “due to the figure-of-eight capability of the microphone”.²
• The microphone list changed just before this session — by the album’s first date, Norman Smith had retired the STC 4038, and the U47 and U48 had been modified for vocals in a new figure-of-eight setting. The earlier pattern had been STC 4038 and 4033-A on drums, Neumann U47, U48 or KM54 on electric guitar, and U47 or U48 on acoustic guitar, piano and vocals. He had also made the transition to a D20 on Paul’s bass rig. Baby’s in Black is the first song the new arrangement was used on for nearly its whole length, which is why the changeover is dated from it.²
• The bass-drum microphone doubled as the bass-amp microphone — an STC 4033-A sat on the bass drum, and the same model was still being used on Paul’s bass. Two of the lowest-frequency sources in the room were being captured by the same design, which goes some way to explaining why drums and bass sit so comfortably together on one track of 1964 masters: they were being heard through very similar ears before they ever reached the tape.²
• The outboard was wired to the tape layout, not to the song — “Each of the four Main Fader channels on the REDD.51 desk had an item of outboard gear inserted into it: Main Faders I and II always had RS124 Altec compressors inserted; III and IV always used… Fairchild 660 limiters (after early 1964). This patching arrangement was directly tied to the four-track tape layout.” The consequence for this recording is specific: Tracks 1 and 2 — drums, bass, guitars, tambourine — went to tape through Altec compression, and Tracks 3 and 4 — the two voices — through Fairchild limiting. Nobody chose that per song; it was how the room was patched.²
• Before the Fairchilds, the trusted units — the limiters Smith had been working with were the familiar and trusted EMI RS114s, and the Fairchild 660s only take over Main Faders III and IV after early 1964. This song sits on the later side of that line, which is a small part of why the vocal on Beatles for Sale reads differently from the vocal on the two albums before it.²
• Snare damping was done with the tea towel — one habit of these sessions was throwing something soft over the snare head to kill the ring: “Occasionally, I would ask Ringo to put a tea towel over his snare.” It is a reminder of how much of the 1964 drum sound was set in the room rather than at the desk — with four tracks and the kit committed to Track 1 alongside the bass, whatever the drums sounded like going down was what they sounded like for good.²
• Which four-track machine is genuinely unknown — Abbey Road ran two: Room 1A held the T9U and Room 1B contained the Telefunken M10. The control-room-to-tape-room arrangement was reorganised around the new REDD.51 in January 1964. No record establishes which of the two machines took this recording, so the page does not name one.²
• The first mono mix was thrown away — remix 1 was made three days after the recording and did not last; the mono that shipped is remix 2, made on 26 October. Two and a half months is a long second look at a four-minute mix, and it happened to this song and to I’m a Loser, the two mixed together on 14 August, in the same decision.¹
• Everything decisive happened on one evening — there was no overdub session, no re-make, and no later recording date. The mixing calendar runs from August to November, but the performance on the record is one four-hour block in Studio Two, and the master is take 14 in every issued form.^1,2

Releases

Two distinct mixes of this song were made, and every release descends from one of them.

• 1964 UK LP mono — Beatles for Sale (4 December 1964, Parlophone PMC 1240) — the attended mix and the tighter listen: voices, guitars and rhythm section all sit in one place, so the harmony reads as a single blended line rather than a pair of parts, and the tambourine is inside the band rather than off to one side.
• 1964 UK LP stereo — Beatles for Sale (4 December 1964, Parlophone PCS 3062) — the wide 1964 split. Drums, bass and two guitars are pinned to one side, the second electric and the tambourine to the other, the shared vocal dead centre. Nothing is placed between those three points (see Studio Notes).
• 1964 US LP — Beatles ’65 (Capitol T-2228 mono / ST-2228 stereo) — the American home for this track, on a Capitol album assembled from Beatles for Sale plus other material. The mixes are the UK mono and stereo; what differs is the Capitol mastering.
• 1965 UK EP — Beatles for Sale (No 2) (first issued 4 June 1965, Parlophone GEP 8938, mono) — a mono extended-play issue carrying the same mono master. Four Beatles for Sale tracks: this song sits second on side A behind I’ll Follow the Sun, with Words of Love and I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party on side B. For a UK buyer who skipped the LP, this was the record the song arrived on.
• 1987 CD — Beatles for Sale (EMI CDP 7 46438 2) — the first digital issue, carrying the mono. Anyone who met the song on CD before 2009 met the centred mix, not the split one.
• 2009 CD — Beatles for Sale, stereo remaster (Apple 82414 2) — the stereo, remastered. The 1964 placement is untouched — the hard-left and hard-right blocks stay exactly where the REDD.51 left them — but the top end opens up and the tambourine and the acoustic strum become much easier to separate.
• 2009 mono companion — the mono remaster programme of the same year returns the 1964 mono to digital alongside the stereo. No catalogue number is given here for this song’s appearance in that programme, as none was confirmed.

Sources

1. Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (New York: Harmony Books, 1988), 47–48, 51–53, 200.
2. Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums (Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006), 168, 372–74, 380–81, 383–84.