The Beatles "All You Need Is Love" Backing Track

Here's a real studio gem. It's the backing track from The Beatles 1967 worldwide broadcast of "All You Need Is Love."

Surprisingly the song was thrown together at almost the last minute as the band had been asked by the BBC to take part in the first event of its kind. The only guidance they were given was to keep it simple and keep the theme universal.

It's hard to believe that this is actually part of the final track as parts seem so ragged. Paul McCartney played standup bass, George Harrison is on a very shaky violin, John Lennon played harpsichord (which you don't hear much on the final version), George Martin on piano, and Ringo was the human metronome.

Especially take a listen at 1:13 where everything seems to fall apart.

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The Untold Story Behind "Hey Jude"

Below is an interesting video of The Beatles recording one of their biggest and most iconic songs - "Hey Jude." The video was shot for a BBC television show called most appropriately Music. Take note about 2:22 where you'll see engineer Ken Scott (in the fashionable pink shirt), George Harrison and producer George Martin together in Abbey Road (actually it was still called EMI Studios at the time) Studio 2.

The real story is that what you hear on the video was almost the basic track to the song, but not quite. The film company, doing what film people do ("Don't worry, you won't even know we're here"), put everyone on edge, causing Paul McCartney and George H. to get into a row (which is why George is in the control room instead of playing). The next day the band took what they thought was the basic track to Trident Studios because it was the only studio in London that had an 8 track tape machine at the time, and the band wanted the extra tracks for the various overdubs to come. It seems that they had a difficult time transferring what they did at Abbey Road to 8 track, so they wound up recutting "Hey Jude" again and then finishing it at Trident.

There's a lot more to the story, including how the song had to be saved at the last minute due to a giant problem, but you'll have to wait until Ken's memoirs are published. The book is titled Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust and will be available for preorder soon (publish date is June 6th). In the meantime, you can  read a lot more about the book by going to the Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust website.

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Abbey Road Studios Not For Sale After All

According to a BBC report, EMI Records emphatically stated that the famed Abbey Road Studios are not for sale after all, although EMI is looking for investors in the property. It's easy to believe that the major uproar over the studio's potential sale had something to do with taking the property off the market, since the last thing EMI needs right now is any negative publicity or further confirmation of their weak financial status.

Even if a sale would've occurred, there appeared to be some buyers in the form of uber-composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and former Beatle Paul McCartney, as well as interest from the National Trust (the UK agency tasked with preserving historical sites). In fact, there seems to be ongoing plans to list the Abbey Road as a historical site, which will no doubt be accelerated due to the recent publicity.

According to the story, EMI had an offer for the property last year for approximately $46 million, which the company turned down. If it wouldn't take that offer, which sounds generous, it's hard to believe that it would find a better one now.

While it's true that studios like Abbey Road are dinosaurs in these days of extremely powerful and inexpensive personal recording setups, there will always be a place for a large studio capable of recording an orchestra since not many are left anywhere in the world. In fact, any kind of commercial studio with proper acoustics and a high quality signal path is getting harder and harder to find, which means that the ones left are still pretty busy since there are enough budgets to afford them (but barely so, it's still a struggle).

There will always be high-end projects and clients and they'll demand a studio like Abbey Road. It's unknown whether they'll be enough of them to keep the doors open, but at least it's good to know that the studio will probably have alternatives to stay alive if ever EMI should choose to liquidate it (which is still likely at some point).