Studio owner and founder John Fry with Geoff Emerick.

Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick was in Memphis this week giving a presentation with his co-author Howard Massey at the Brooks Museum of Art in Overton Park. The presentation was hosted by our good friends at NARAS. From studio manager Jody Stephens:

Much of the Ardent staff, not to mention many Memphis Beatles fans, turned out to see Geoff Emerick this past Monday night. This Recording Academy presentation of “Here, There & Everywhere, My Life Recording the Beatles: An Interview With Geoff Emerick” included music journalist and author Howard Massey, Geoff's autobiography co-writer. It was an evening of stories that made us all feel like we were there in the moment with Geoff at the console and The Beatles were out on the floor of Abbey Road's Studio Two. His first session as engineer for them was recording "Tomorrow Never Knows." The beginning of many experiments that added imagination to the technical fundamentals of the recording process. John Fry and Geoff got to visit for about 45 minutes before the presentation, I will see if he has a story to tell. You can read the book for some of the stories Geoff and Howard told that evening.

Here's one that is not in the book......
My good friend Larry Nager (journalist/author) came up with a great question for Geoff that I asked the next night: There were many successful recording experiments during your sessions with The Beatles, can you tell us about one that failed? Without as much as a split-second pause, Geoff then said that John Lennon told him that he had gotten tired of having the mic in front of him, let's try having the mic in back of me. They tried it and it failed.

So all you beginning engineers out there don't have to try this one.

Geoff's book is available for purchase on Amazon.com.