Good Morning Good Morning

(Lennon/McCartney)

Quick Facts

Composer	John
Lead Vocal	John
Recorded	Feb–Mar 1967
Length	2:41
Key	A
Noted Takes	11
Producer	George Martin
Engineer	Geoff Emerick

Originally released on

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Parlophone — PMC 7027 / PCS 7027

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“Good Morning Good Morning” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was written by John and credited to Lennon–McCartney.

Good Morning Good Morning is a song by The Beatles, written by John and led on vocal by John. Title from a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes ad; closing animal-noise montage. Within the catalogue, its brass thread connects it to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, Martha My Dear. John derived the song’s title from a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes television advertisement, exemplifying his practice of mining contemporary culture for lyrical material. The composition satirises suburban ennui through deadpan observation, with the clock-driven radio jingle structure underlining the song’s commercial social critique.

The session work spans five sessions from 8 February to 29 March 1967 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road. George Martin produced; Geoff Emerick engineered. Eight takes on 8 February established the rhythm track, with brass overdubs arriving 13 March from Sounds Inc. The animal-sound effects compilation commenced 28 March, with John’s lead vocal also appearing for the first time that day. The final animal-effects overdub on 29 March completed the recording.

What’s distinctive

John’s song about an uneventful day, dressed in heavily worked-over sound: a brass section miked down the bells, limited, compressed and flanged until it no longer sounded like brass, and a closing parade of animals chosen so that each one could frighten or eat the one before, ending on a hen whose last cluck runs into the first guitar note of the Sgt. Pepper reprise.^1,2,3 Take count: 11 — eight takes of the rhythm track, take 8 reduced into take 10 and take 10 reduced again into take 11, which carries everything on the record.^1,2

Recording

A cornflakes jingle and eight takes. Work began on Wednesday 8 February 1967 in Studio Two, from 7.00pm to 2.15am, with George Martin producing, Geoff Emerick engineering and Richard Lush as second engineer. The song was John’s, “its title inspired by a British television commercial for cornflakes”, the one for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. Eight takes of the rhythm track were recorded, “four of them complete”, and take 8 was the one kept.^1,2,3
An arranger’s copy. On 16 February, in Studio Three, vocals and bass guitar were overdubbed onto take 8 and the four tracks were reduced, instruments to one track and John’s vocal to another. A mono mix of take 8 was made the same night, and at this point “George Martin took away a mono mix in order to write a brass arrangement for the song”. The brass itself did not arrive until 13 March.^1,2
Sounds Inc. John had decided to add brass, “but he was adamant that it mustn’t sound ‘ordinary’”, and the players were not session men but “old Liverpool mates”: members of Sounds Inc, a group signed to a management contract by Brian Epstein in March 1964. Three saxophones (Barrie Cameron, David Glyde and Alan Holmes), two trombones (John Lee and one player whose name is not recorded) and a French horn, played by a “Tom someone” whose surname nobody could recall. “We were there for about six hours,” said Alan Holmes. “The first three hours we had refreshments and the Beatles played us the completed songs for the new LP.”^1,3
Anything but brass. The overdub itself was slow. Richard Lush: “They spent a long time doing the overdub, about three hours or maybe longer, but John Lennon thought it sounded too straight. So we ended up flanging, limiting and compressing it, anything to make it sound unlike brass playing.” Geoff Emerick’s account starts at the microphones: “I shoved the mics right down the bells of the saxes and screwed the sound up with limiters and a healthy dose of effects like flanging and ADT”. The brass went onto track 2 of take 10.^1,2,3
The last layers. On 28 March John recorded another vocal onto track 3, “harmonising with himself in places”, and the tape, full again, was reduced into take 11, with both vocals combined on one track and the brass flanged on the way through. Onto the space this opened went backing vocals by John and Paul and a lead guitar solo “played by Paul, not George”. The next night the animals went onto the last free track, and the song “was complete and ready for mono” mixing.^1,2

Equipment

Studio	EMI Studios, Abbey Road: Studio Two (8 Feb, 13, 28 and 29 Mar 1967; mixing 6 and 19 Apr); Studio Three (16 Feb, and the 20 Feb mono mix)¹
Tape machine	Studer J37 four-track; by 1967 a second Studer four-track was often in the control room for four-track-to-four-track reductions²
Microphones	Brass close-miked, the microphones pushed down the bells of the saxophones; other microphones not recorded for this song³
Outboard / effects	Limiting, compression, flanging and ADT on the brass; ADT on the vocal in remixing; frequency control rack for varispeed, ADT, flanging and phasing^1,2,3
Brass	Sounds Inc: three saxophones, two trombones and a French horn, 13 Mar 1967^1,2
Guitars / bass	George’s guitar and Paul’s bass on take 8; lead guitar solo by Paul, 28 Mar 1967; instrument models not recorded^1,2
Sound effects	Abbey Road effects library, “Volume 35: Animals and Bees” and “Volume 57: Fox-hunt”, the collection looked after by Stuart Eltham¹

Recording Timeline

8 February 1967 (Wednesday) — recording, takes 1–8, Studio Two, 7.00pm–2.15am. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Richard Lush. Eight takes of the rhythm track, four of them complete, with take 8 best. Kehew and Ryan set out take 8 as drums on one track, “Paul’s bass on another, George’s guitar on a third” and John’s vocal on the fourth; Lewisohn logs the vocals and bass as overdubs onto take 8 on 16 February. Both place the same four parts on take 8 before its first reduction.^1,2
16 February 1967 (Thursday) — overdubs, reduction and mono mixing, Studio Three, 7.00pm–1.45am. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Richard Lush. Vocals and bass guitar onto take 8, then a tape reduction of take 8 into takes 9 and 10: the instruments were mixed down to track 1 and “John’s vocal was carried over to Track 4”, leaving two tracks free. Mono remix 1 was made from take 8, the mix George Martin took away to score the brass.^1,2
20 February 1967 (Monday) — mono mixing, Studio Three, 7.00pm–3.45am. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Richard Lush. A new mono remix 1, this time from take 10, made in a session otherwise given over to Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!.¹
13 March 1967 (Monday) — brass overdub, Studio Two, 7.00pm–2.30am. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Richard Lush. Sounds Inc overdubbed onto take 10, recorded to track 2 as “a heavily limited and compressed brass section”. The players spent the first half of their six hours listening to the album so far before a note was recorded.^1,2
28 March 1967 (Tuesday) — overdubs and reduction, Studio Two, 7.00pm–4.45am. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Richard Lush. John’s second vocal onto take 10; the tape reduction of take 10 into take 11, flanging the brass as it went; then onto take 11 the backing vocals by John and Paul and Paul’s lead guitar solo. An unnumbered take was also logged, and the same session added overdubs to Mr Kite.^1,2
29 March 1967 (Wednesday) — sound effects, Studio Two, 7.00pm–5.45am. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Richard Lush. An unnumbered take was superimposed onto take 11 and the animal effects went onto track 4; “with the addition of a few more animal sound effects” the song was complete and ready for mono mixing. The same night the group began With A Little Help From My Friends, then called Bad Finger Boogie.^1,2
6 April 1967 (Thursday) — mono and stereo mixing, Studio Two (control room only), 7.00pm–1.00am. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Richard Lush. Mono remixes 1 and 2 and stereo remixes 1–5, all from take 11, in a session that also made crossfades for the LP. Mono remix 2 was marked ‘best’ and placed on the master reel, but it “did not fit snugly alongside the reprise version” that follows it on the album.¹
19 April 1967 (Wednesday) — mono mixing, Studio Two (control room only), 7.00pm–12.30am. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Richard Lush. Mono remixes 10–23 from take 11, numbered from “a round number, 10”, to see “how best the two songs could be brought together”, by editing “or by means of a crossfade”. This mono replaced the 6 April one. Whether the 6 April stereo was ever redone is not recorded, and it is the stereo that was released.^1,4
1 June 1967 (Thursday) — UK release. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Parlophone PMC 7027 in mono and PCS 7027 in stereo. Good Morning Good Morning is the fourth song on side B, between Lovely Rita and the Sgt. Pepper reprise.^1,4
2 June 1967 (Friday) — US release. Capitol MAS-2653 in mono and SMAS-2653 in stereo, carrying the same two mixes as the British LPs: the 19 April mono and the 6 April stereo.^1,4

“John said to me during one of the breaks that he wanted to have the sound of animals escaping and that each successive animal should be capable of frightening or devouring its predecessor!”— Geoff Emerick¹

Studio Notes

Brass that was not allowed to sound like brass. Everything done to the Sounds Inc section pushed it away from a natural horn sound. The microphones went “right down the bells of the saxes”, and the result was “a heavily limited and compressed brass section”, flanged in turn during the 28 March reduction. The brass at 0:45 is one of the documented examples of the flanging effect on a Beatles record, and both the vocals and the brass are among the documented uses of ADT. The aim, in Richard Lush’s words, was “anything to make it sound unlike brass playing”.^1,2,3
Three generations on four tracks. The record was built by filling a four-track tape and reducing it twice. Take 8 held drums, bass, guitar and vocal on its four tracks. Its reduction into take 10 put the instruments on track 1 and the vocal on track 4, freeing tracks 2 and 3 for the brass and John’s second vocal. The reduction into take 11 combined the two vocals and flanged the brass, which left track 3 “now empty” for backing vocals and Paul’s solo, and track 4 for the animals. By 1967 reductions of this kind were routine enough that “a second Studer four-track recorder could often be found in the Control Room” to receive them. The master both 1967 mixes were made from, take 11, is accordingly a second-generation four-track tape.^2,4
Paul’s solo. The lead guitar solo on the record is Paul’s, “played by Paul, not George”, overdubbed on 28 March after the second reduction, in a session that ran until 4.45 the next morning. It is another of Paul’s “biting guitar solos”. It went onto the same track as the backing vocals by John and Paul and it arrived late in the song’s life, seven weeks after the rhythm track on which George had played the guitar part.^1,2
A food chain on tape. The animals came from the Abbey Road effects library, “looked after by Stuart Eltham”, and two tapes supplied most of them: “Volume 35: Animals and Bees”, for the lion, elephant and dog among others, and “Volume 57: Fox-hunt”, which ends the sequence with a hunt. The running order was not arbitrary. John wanted each animal to be able to frighten or eat the one before it, and he had “written down a list of the animals” before the effects were laid. Emerick: “those are not just random effects, there was actually a lot of thought put into all that.”^1,3
The hen and the guitar. The last sound of the song is a hen’s cluck, and it leads straight into the first note of the reprise. The 6 April mono did not make the join well enough, so on 19 April fourteen more monos were made to find the best way of bringing the two songs together. The cluck “wasn’t a perfect match”, and it was “shifted … up in time to match correctly”. Whether the idea was planned is remembered differently. George Martin’s account is “rather more poetic” and leans towards chance, and Kehew and Ryan call the cluck “fortuitous”, while Geoff Emerick counts it “one of the cleverest bits of matching a sound effect with an instrument ever done”.^1,2
A dry record on a wet album. Most of the tracks on Sgt. Pepper “had at least some audible amount of reverb”. This song is one of the exceptions: with Strawberry Fields Forever and I Am The Walrus, it “maintained the extra-dry” sound of Rubber Soul and Revolver. What colours John’s voice is not a room but ADT, and that was added in remixing rather than while he sang.^1,2
Faders and pan pots. At the mix, Geoff Emerick recalled “whacking the faders all the way up for Ringo’s huge tom hit during the stop time”, so hard that “the limiters nearly overloaded, but it definitely gets the listener’s attention”. In stereo, the pan controls of the time moved sounds across the picture in steps rather than smoothly, but “with care, relatively smooth panning could be achieved”, and the end of this song shows it.^2,3

Releases

Two 1967 mixes carry the song on the album, and they differ most at the end, where the animals are.

1967 UK mono LP — Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1 June 1967, Parlophone PMC 7027, side B track 4) — the 19 April mono, which fades early: the fox-hunt is cut short and the “good morning” refrain is heard nine times. Its final hen cluck is blended into the first note of the reprise more closely than in the 6 April mono it replaced. The same mix is on the US mono LP (Capitol MAS-2653) and the 2009 CD (Parlophone 99459 2).
1967 UK stereo LP — Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1 June 1967, Parlophone PCS 7027, side B track 4) — the 6 April stereo. The effects match the mono until the fox-hunt, which here runs about six seconds longer, past a later fade of the music, and the refrain is heard ten times; the animals travel across the stereo picture at the end. The same mix is on the US stereo LP (Capitol SMAS-2653) and the first CD (EMI CDP 7 46442 2, 1987).
1996 — Anthology 2 (Apple CDP 8 34448 2) — a stereo mix made in 1995, separate from both 1967 mixes and heard outside the album’s running order, so it has no crossfade into the reprise.
2017 stereo remix — Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band anniversary edition (2017, Apple, Giles Martin and Sam Okell) — a new stereo mix of the album, made fifty years on rather than taken from either 1967 master.

Sources

Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (New York: Harmony Books, 1988), 95, 97, 99, 102, 105–107, 109, 200–201.
Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums (Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006), 222, 296, 299, 437, 451, 460, 468.
Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey, Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), chs. 8–9.
Joseph Brennan, Usenet Guide to Beatles Recording Variations (rev. edn.), “Good Morning Good Morning”.

Frequently asked

Who wrote Good Morning Good Morning?

John. Its title came from a television commercial for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, and like all their joint catalogue it is credited Lennon/McCartney.^1,3

Who played the brass on Good Morning Good Morning?

Members of Sounds Inc, on 13 March 1967: three saxophones (Barrie Cameron, David Glyde and Alan Holmes), two trombones and a French horn. The section was then limited, compressed and flanged.^1,2

Who plays the guitar solo on Good Morning Good Morning?

Paul. The solo was “played by Paul, not George”, overdubbed on 28 March 1967.^1,2

Where do the animal sounds come from?

From the Abbey Road effects library, chiefly “Volume 35: Animals and Bees” and “Volume 57: Fox-hunt”, arranged so that each animal could frighten or eat the one before it.¹

When was Good Morning Good Morning recorded?

Between 8 February and 29 March 1967 at Abbey Road, in Studios Two and Three, and mixed for mono and stereo on 6 April, with the released mono made on 19 April.^1,4

How many takes did Good Morning Good Morning require?

Eleven by number: eight takes of the rhythm track, with take 8 reduced into take 10 and then into take 11, which carries everything on the record.^1,2