On This Day in ’69, the Beatles record John’s “Because.” George, John and Paul sing three-part harmony, recorded three times to make nine voices in all. It’s one of the few Beatles songs to feature a Moog synthesizer, played by George.
“Yoko was playing Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' on the piano,” said John. “I said, 'Can you play those chords backwards?', and wrote 'Because' around them.”
“We created a backing track with John playing a riff on guitar, me duplicating every note on an electronic harpsichord, and Paul playing bass,” said George Martin. “Each note between the guitar and harpsichord had to be exactly together, and as I'm not the world's greatest player in terms of timing, I would make more mistakes than John did, so we had Ringo playing a regular beat on hi-hat to us through our headphones.”
This approach took extensive rehearsal and five hours of extremely focused recording. Paul and George both said it was their favorite track on Abbey Road.
"They knew they were doing something special," said engineer Geoff Emerick, "and they were determined to get it right.”
Below are photos of the Beatles in deep concentration with the Moog during that recording session and we imagine George saying: “No cig burns on my Moog!”
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