A Look Inside The Beatles "Rain"

Here's a great look inside the making of The Beatles 1966 hit "Rain." The song is often mentioned as a favorite of the various Beatles, since it was done all together as a band and might even represent their peak performance together. "Rain" was the B side to "Paperback Writer," but there was actually a lot going on that warrants a mention.

• On the first take you'll hear at 0:00 (which was actually take 5), the backing track is at a higher pitch than the rest of the subsequent takes. That's because they recorded the song faster than normal on a sped-up tape machine so when they slowed it back down to normal speed it would sound bigger.

• At 2:47 you hear a take with just John Lennon's lead vocal. Again, it's slowed down so it sounds a little slurred as a result.

• At 5:20 you hear just the bass amp and tambourine track. This was a grand experiment looking for a different bass sound where engineer Geoff Emerick used a speaker cabinet as a microphone for the bass amp, a variation we do all the time these days with a "sub-kick" mic.

• At 8:23 you can hear John doubling his lead vocal on the chorus. The vocals are split left and right so you can hear it well.

• At 10:53 you can hear the boys adding the background harmony vocals.

It's pretty interesting to hear that the drums and background vocals are sometimes a little shaky, but work well in the track. Still, we probably wouldn't let those things go by today.

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