Original subtitles

[ "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" plays ]

‐McCARTNEY: 1, 2, 3, 4. ‐LENNON: Bye.

WATERS: We were driving to a gig in an old Zephyr 4

when "Sgt. Pepper" was played for the first time on the radio.

And I remember we pulled off into a lay‐by

and sat there and listened.

♪ We're Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ♪

♪ We hope you have enjoyed the show ♪

And I remember we just looked at each other and went, "Fuck me!"

DALTREY: The way George Martin had musically put that together,

I thought, "Where do we go from here?"

‐All right. Here we go. ‐Okay, Richard?

Here comes a bit.

ENO: It's the birth of a new art form.

They were starting to make music that you couldn't actually play.

It couldn't exist outside of a recording studio.

GODRICH: They did it first.

It revolutionized the way that people worked in studios.

You could say that from then on,

it's like the rule book's out the window

because you're no longer trying to represent something

as it was.

♪ I ♪

♪ I love the colorful clothes she wears ♪

♪ And the way the sunlight plays upon her hair ♪

♪ I hear the sound of a... ♪

NARRATOR: In the '60s,

multitrack recording began to redefine what music could be

and turned the studio into a sonic laboratory.

♪ I'm picking up good vibrations ♪

♪ She's giving me excitations ♪

It was like a strange place full of, like, crazy scientists,

electricians, madmen.

WAS: Just having the time to experiment in the studio

was a radical change.

Ninety hours working on one song ‐‐

Everyone thought that was insanity.

NARRATOR: As recording technology evolved,

a sense of limitless possibility led some bands astray.

ASHER: It reached the point where

the ability to stay in the studio as long as you want

and spend as much money as you want

may not necessarily have been an entirely good thing.

[ Radiohead's "Bodysnatchers" plays ]

GODRICH: You can produce a band

that will play their songs perfectly in a room,

and your job as a producer would be to re‐create that...

♪ It is the 21st century ♪

♪ It is the 21st century ♪

♪ You can fight like a dog ♪

... or you can use the studio as a musical instrument.

That's an art form.

[ Music continues ]

♪ I've seen it coming ♪

You know, anything is possible, anything is right.

And that's what's exciting.

[ Music ends ]

[ Guitar strumming ]

HARRISON: What key is it in? What key is it in?

McCARTNEY: It'll be in F for you.

SPECTOR: Here we go. Just one more time.

FRANKLIN: Right after I say, "Are you sure?"

♪ Da da da ♪

‐Yeah. ‐MAN: Oh.

WILSON: Hal, here's how I want to do it.

Takes like this.

BOWIE: All right. It's fun time. Fun time.

MAN #1: Here we go.

MAN #2: Rolling. I thought we had a different title.

MAN #3: Seventeen, take one.

MAN #4: This will be a keeper, I think.

[ Laughs ]

[ Boston's "More Than A Feeling" plays ]

♪ I looked out this morning, and the sun was gone ♪

♪ Turned on some music to start my day ♪

GRANATA: In 1976, a band named Boston

had a hit single called "More Than a Feeling."

What no one knew was that Boston really wasn't a band at all.

[ Music continues ]

Boston was a result of me tinkering in a basement

with my multitrack recording studio.

♪ It's more than a feeling ♪

♪ More than a feeling ♪

♪ When I hear that old song they used to play ♪

♪ More than a feeling ♪

It was a really personal endeavor.

I worked in my own space, my own time,

put a rhythm guitar part on and then another one

and then a bass track, keyboards.

Then I called Brad Delp

to see if he wanted to sing the vocals,

which, thankfully, he did.

♪ Ah, ah ♪

So I basically threw a band together

to be able to play the songs live.

Not only didn't the record company ‐‐

not only were they not aware

that I was making a record in my basement,

but they never became aware

that the record that they were selling millions of copies of

was made in a basement.

[ Music continues ]

Multitracking allowed you to put music together

and change it.

And the reason it was cool

is because this gave you basically a whole new medium.

At one point, someone explained to me,

older than I was, that this whole process

of recording on multitrack recorders

was invented by this guy Les Paul.

And I said, "Wow. "What a coincidence.

There's a guitar that's named a Les Paul."

And he says, "Yeah. There's a good reason for that."

[ Up‐tempo music playing ]

WAS: Les Paul not only designed some guitars

that made new and incredible sounds,

but had this vision for recording studios.

He invented multitrack recording.

That changed everything.

[ "How High the Moon" playing ]

♪ Somewhere there's music ♪

♪ How faint the tune ♪

♪ Somewhere there's heaven ♪

♪ How high the moon ♪

CLAPTON: The records I heard by Les Paul

and Mary Ford in the '50s,

I was even aware then,

without any knowledge of recording techniques,

that they were doing something revolutionary.

You turn the tape machines on.

They're just a standard, regular, Ampex tape machine.

MAN: Mm‐hmm.

As I recall,

there are about a dozen or 20 voices come in there.

Now, whose are the voices?

That's Mary.

You mean they're all Mary's voices?

♪ Somewhere there's music, how faint the tune ♪

♪ Somewhere there's heaven, how high the moon ♪

Now, I'll add a tenor part to that.

‐All right. ‐Wait a minute.

‐♪ Somewhere there's music ♪ ‐♪ Somewhere there's music ♪

‐♪ How faint the tune ♪ ‐♪ How faint the tune ♪

‐♪ Somewhere there's heaven ♪ ‐♪ Somewhere there's heaven ♪

‐♪ How high the moon ♪ ‐♪ How high the moon ♪

How long can this go on

without getting awful confused in your head?

[ Laughs ] It's pretty confusing.

Or being cued by your husband?

Well, would you like to hear the third part?

Yes.

‐♪ Somewhere there's music ♪ ‐♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪

‐♪ How faint the tune ♪ ‐♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪

‐♪ Somewhere there's heaven ♪ ‐♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh ♪

‐♪ How high the moon ♪ ‐♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh ♪

[ Music continues ]

♪ Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah ♪

BECK: Les Paul, I mean,

he made sounds no one had ever heard before.

I remember my mom saying,

"You shouldn't listen to this music.

It's fake."

She said, "It's one guy tricking us."

So I said, "That's it. That's the music for me."

Because it enabled me to be rebellious, you know, as well.

And I enjoyed the sound.

I don't think you can beat that.

The way those records sound, it's still exciting.

♪ How high the moon ♪

[ Applause ]

‐[ Beeping ] ‐Now, come on. Give it to me.

Let me hear the whistle and the saxes once more.

That's right.

[ Up‐tempo music plays ]

GRANATA: Before magnetic tape,

an artist would come into the studio,

and they would be recorded live.

What they would do is literally etch the grooves into the disc

as the session was being recorded.

You had to start from the beginning and go to the end.

If you made any mistakes, too bad, or you had to start over.

[ Music continues ]

Magnetic tape just changed music completely.

It gave you the possibility to record in fidelity

that was better than anyone had ever even come close to.

So you can make a more accurate document.

At the same time, it lets you manipulate sounds,

so it didn't sound lifelike at all,

because now you could edit,

you could overdub, you could cut and splice.

Once the technology came out,

it very quickly became the standard format.

[ Music continues ]

[ Mid‐tempo rock music plays ]

GEORGE MARTIN: When I walked into Abbey Road Studios

for the first time, in 1950,

I was astonished at how primitive it was.

They were still recording on discs that were cut by a lathe.

From 1950 on, I just worked away,

and I had various ideas.

I was experimenting with the newfangled tape,

and I was able to learn what you could do to manipulate sound.

You can cut. You can edit.

Obviously, you can slow down or speed up your tape.

You can put in backwards stuff.

This is the kind of thing you can do on recording

that you obviously couldn't possibly do live,

because it is, in fact, making up music as you go along.

[ Machine clicks ]

MAN: Uh, take 6.

McCARTNEY: "How could I dance"? "She wouldn't dance."

"I'll never dance."

GEORGE MARTIN: When I first met The Beatles,

I had so little time with them in the studio

because they were incredibly busy all the time.

I would have maybe a day and a half here

and a couple of days there.

As a result of that, the songs that they produced,

which were marvelous, were still fairly basic.

Two, three, four.

[ "I Saw Her Standing There" plays ]

♪ Well, she was just 17 ♪

STARR: The first album only took us 12 hours.

We all knew those songs so well because that was our live show.

We were just in there doing the gig, really.

♪ How could I dance with another? ♪

♪ Oh ♪

♪ When I saw her standing there ♪

ENO: The old approach was that the band rehearsed,

went into the studio,

stood in front of some microphones, and played them.

And the job of the producer was maybe to mix them well

or put a bit of reverb or echo on them.

But essentially the music wasn't transformed.

♪ Whoa, and I saw her... ♪

The Beatles were over that phase by about 1966.

With the help of George Martin,

they were starting to make music that you couldn't actually play.

It couldn't exist outside of a recording studio.

It's very difficult to imagine

what The Beatles would have sounded like

without George Martin.

[ "Rain" plays ]

GRANATA: What's wonderful about this moment in time

is that four‐track recording opened up the possibilities

to use the studio in the creative palette.

So The Beatles' transition from a garage‐band group

that's standing around the mike,

playing and singing "Please Please Me"

and "I Saw Her Standing There," into a decisive recording group.

♪ Rain ♪

♪ I don't mind ♪

♪ Shine ♪

♪ The weather's fine ♪

They start to use technology to create sounds and sonic textures

that had never been heard in rock music.

GODRICH: The Beatles revolutionized

the way that people worked in studios.

You know, on "Rain,"

it's the first time there's anything backwards on a record.

You could say that from then on,

it's like the rule book's out the window

because you're no longer trying to represent something

as it was.

You're trying to break it,

break your perception of this band playing in a room.

[ Music continues ]

[ Music playing backwards ]

STARR: It's more fun in the record

if there's a few sounds that you don't really know what they are.

Really they're just instruments, only something happens on here.

I couldn't tell you what, 'cause we have a special man

who sits here and goes like this.

And the guitar turns into a piano or something.

And then you may say, "Why don't you use a piano?"

Because the piano sounds like a guitar.

[ The Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'" plays]

♪ Well, my temperature's rising ♪

♪ And my feet hit the floor ♪

♪ Twenty people knocking 'cause they want some more ♪

LENNON: We were all on this ship in the '60s, our generation.

We were part of it, and we went somewhere.

♪ And I'm so glad we made it ♪

♪ So glad we made it ♪

HARRISON: There was a great upsurge

of energy and consciousness.

And so there was a lot of excitement on the street.

There was a lot of people

who were all trying to go on the same trip together.

SPITZ: On "Revolver," The Beatles wanted to make the music

that was going on in their heads.

The first song they worked on was a song of John's.

It had the mysterious title "Mark I,"

which, of course, becomes "Tomorrow Never Knows."

LENNON: That's me in my Tibetan Book of the Dead period.

I gave it a throwaway title

because I was a bit self‐conscious

about the lyrics of "Tomorrow Never Knows."

So I took one of Ringo's malapropisms,

which was like "Hard Day's Night."

WAS: "Tomorrow Never Knows" ‐‐ That's a song

that pretty vividly depicts what you're hearing in your head

when you consume some psychedelics.

The Beatles laid that out for everybody to hear.

GEORGE MARTIN: "Tomorrow Never Knows" was a very weird song.

The tune had virtually no harmonies,

it was based on a continuous drone of sound.

[ "Tomorrow Never Knows" plays ]

"Tomorrow Never Knows" started with a backing track,

recorded here at Abbey Road Studios.

That's Paul on bass and Ringo on drums,

creating a sort of loopy, mesmeric effect.

[ Music continues ]

To this, John added his vocal, with George playing tambura.

LENNON: ♪ Turn off your mind ♪

♪ Relax and float downstream ♪

♪ It is not dying ♪

♪ It is not dying ♪

PETTY: Late in the song,

John's voice gets very unusual‐sounding,

especially at the time it was.

SPITZ: John wanted to sound like the Dalai Lama chanting

from the top of a mountain.

And he suggested that the way that they record that

would be to put him in a harness,

to hoist him high above the studio,

give him a shove, and he'd sing.

Every time he came around,

the mike would capture a few beats of it.

Which wasn't the most practical idea.

But the engineer, Geoff Emerick,

had the great idea of plugging it into a revolving speaker,

called a Leslie.

So when it goes fast, it creates one sound,

and when it slows down, it creates another.

♪ That you may see the meaning of within ♪

In the early part of the song,

John's voice is pretty straightforward.

Then, after about 1 1/2 minutes,

the Leslie speaker effect kicks in.

[ Echoing ] ♪ That love is all ♪

♪ And love is everyone ♪

♪ It is knowing ♪

♪ It is knowing ♪

GILES MARTIN: The Beatles always looked for

other sounds in their records, and they all had tape machines,

which they used for recording demos.

And they found that by making tape loops,

they could create sounds that people had never heard before.

One of the most recognizable loops on "Tomorrow Never Knows"

is the sound of ‐‐ Well, it sounds like sea gulls squawking.

It's actually the sound of, I think, Paul laughing

and speeding himself up, which is this.

[ Squeaking ]

Another loop is just made up of guitars being recorded

over and over again ‐‐

again, sped up and slowed down, turned backwards.

And they sound like trumpets.

[ High‐pitched trumpeting ]

And then early days of sampling ‐‐

Paul actually recorded an orchestra off a vinyl record

and created a chord here.

[ Orchestral music playing ]

GEORGE MARTIN: I had a bit of a problem.

How were we going to use the collection of sounds?

I devised a way of playing five loops at the same time.

And if you brought up the faders,

it was like bringing up an organ stop.

Each one had a different tape loop playing all the time,

so you could make your sounds as you wished.

These tape loops were running and running and running,

and The Beatles and my dad

and Geoff Emerick performed on the desk...

[ Music continues ]

... pushing up faders at the right time

to create the instrument sounds they wanted for the mix.

[ High‐pitched trumpeting ]

The actual mix of "Tomorrow Never Knows" is a performance.

It can't be re‐created.

♪ It is being ♪

♪ It is being ♪

ZANES: If you look at everything that's happening

in that recording,

it's like a prophecy of pop music in one song.

With the sampling and the loops, there's so much happening there

that will be active for the next four or five decades.

♪ It is knowing ♪

RUBIN: You can look at hip‐hop

and using samples or scratching in music.

The Beatles were doing that on "Tomorrow Never Knows."

That song makes you rethink what music is.

It's that profound.

♪ Or play the game ♪

♪ Existence to the end ♪

♪ Of the beginning ♪

♪ Of the beginning ♪

VISCONTI: This was the dawn of creating a new kind of magic.

This was really fantasy stuff.

[ Music ends ]

WILSON: Okay. "Wouldn't It Be Nice," take 5.

[ Drumsticks clicking ]

[ The Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice" plays ]

WAS: I think that kind of friendly competition

between The Beatles and The Beach Boys

really advanced the cause of popular music.

Brian Wilson heard "Rubber Soul" and understood that there was

a whole other place where you could take rock 'n' roll,

that that was an elevated musical consciousness at play.

GRANATA: Brian was listening

to what The Beatles were doing in the studio,

and he was completely knocked out.

Hearing that made him realize that he had to up the ante

on his next album, which was "Pet Sounds."

♪ You know it's gonna make it that much better ♪

♪ When we can say good night and stay together ♪

WAS: He told me that he and Carl used to pray before each session

that they would make a record that would be warmer

and more inspirational than "Rubber Soul."

WILSON: None of those big pickups.

Just... Just, like...

♪ Doo‐do, doo‐do ♪

GRANATA: Brian pre‐imagined everything that he did.

He heard all of the vocal parts, all of the instrumental parts,

even before anyone set foot in the studio.

Brian was the mastermind.

WILSON: I'd like to start it out now this time

with the organ and the Fender bass.

Then the bongos will come in at the second half

like everything else.

Here we go.

MAN: Rolling.

One. Two.

One, two, three.

GRANATA: Ironically, the only song

from the "Pet Sounds" sessions that reached Number 1

was recorded after the album was released.

And it was the result

of an unprecedented number of hours in the studio.

CAMPBELL: Time was nothing to Brian Wilson.

I remember we all got to sit there for about 3 1/2 hours

when he was running his finger up that thing going...

[ Imitates theremin playing ]

♪ I'm picking up good vibrations ♪

♪ She's giving me excitations ♪

♪ Ooh, bop, bop ♪

♪ Good vibrations, bop, bop ♪

♪ Excitations ♪

♪ Good, good, good, good vibrations ♪

♪ Ah, excitations ♪

♪ Good, good, good, good vibrations ♪

♪ Bop, bop, excitations ♪

♪ Close my eyes ♪

WAS: Just having the time to experiment in the studio

was a radical change.

When he made "Good Vibrations,"

Brian purportedly spent 90 hours recording it.

Everyone thought that was insanity.

You know, like, "He's gone mad.

He spent 90 hours working on one song."

You know, today that's nothing.

The session that we did on "Good Vibrations"

was not one session.

It was many, many, many sessions.

Take after take after take.

My fingers were almost bleeding.

It's like, "Come on, Brian. Fade us out. Fade us out."

♪ I don't know where, but she sends me there ♪

♪ Oh, my, my, what a sensation ♪

♪ Oh, my, my, what an elation ♪

♪ Oh, my, my ♪

[ Organ plays ]

♪ Got to keep those lovin' good vibrations ♪

♪ Happenin' with her ♪

♪ Got to keep those lovin' good vibrations ♪

♪ Happenin' with her ♪

WAS: Brian's a very deep guy.

You know, so he wanted to move beyond songs

about summer and surfing.

[ "God Only Knows" plays ]

Just saying something like

"God only knows what I'd be without you"

in a rock‐'n'‐roll song

and then create this wonderful music that enables a listener,

50 years later, to put it on and to feel what they were feeling.

That's great art.

♪ I may not always love you ♪

GRANATA: The way he layered and added different vocal parts

created that wonderful, celestial resonance.

Overdub over overdub over overdub

until on "God Only Knows,"

he ended up with seven tracks of vocal overdubs.

And that's how come you hear this heavenly choir.

♪ God only knows what I'd be without you ♪

♪ God only knows what I'd be without you ♪

♪ God only knows what I'd be without you ♪

♪ God only knows... ♪

McCARTNEY: We loved The Beach Boys.

And it was a bit of a competition across the pond.

When they did "Pet Sounds,"

I played it to everyone and said, "Listen.

Listen to what they're doing here," you know.

So we did "Sgt. Pepper."

[ "Within Without You" plays ]

[ Crowd cheering ]

[ Music continues ]

STARR: What happened to us was that while we were touring,

we were regressing as musicians

because the noise of the audience

was louder than the band.

I'm watching the feet, I'm watching their arses,

I'm watching the bobbing heads ‐‐

Whoo! ‐‐ Oh, it's that part ‐‐

to stay in some sort of time.

McCARTNEY: The last gig was Candlestick Park,

and by then we were just so fed up.

And we got loaded into a meat wagon.

[ Music continues ]

It was like a surrealist film.

It's gone downhill, performance.

'Cause we can't develop when no one can hear us.

So for us to perform, it's difficult.

It gets difficult each time.

We can't do a tour like we've been doing all these years

because our music's progressed.

We've used more instruments.

It'd be soft, us going onstage, the four of us,

and trying to do the records we've made with orchestras

and bands and things.

[ Music continues ]

♪ Try to realize it's all within yourself ♪

♪ No one else can make you change ♪

GEORGE MARTIN: The Beatles achieved a quantum leap

when they stopped touring.

That gave us an opportunity which we hadn't had before.

We no longer were under pressure to complete a song

within a day or two days.

We could spend as much time as we liked on it.

McCARTNEY: The boundaries were being moved so far forward

from the early mono days.

Now we were asking for things like a symphony orchestra

for "A Day in the Life."

You know, lunatics had taken over the asylum.

[ "A Day in the Life" plays ]

♪ I read the news today ♪

♪ Oh, boy ♪

♪ About a lucky man who made the grade ♪

♪ And though the news was rather sad ♪

♪ Well, I just had to laugh ♪

♪ I saw the photograph ♪

GEORGE MARTIN: Like many of John's songs,

"A Day in the Life" began quite simply ‐‐

based on the odd newspaper cutting.

Paul had written a scrap of a song ‐‐

"Woke up, fell out of bed." You know the one.

♪ Dragged a comb across my head ♪

But when we laid down the track,

Paul came up with the idea of giant crescendo,

a kind of immense musical orgasm.

♪ Ah, ah, ah, ah ♪

♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪

♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪

"Don't listen to the man next to you,"

I said to the orchestra.

"Make your own way up the sliding passage.

And if you're playing the same note as your companion,

you're playing the wrong one."

Well, the orchestra hooted with laughter.

All their lives, they'd tried to play as one man.

And it only took a few minutes

for The Beatles to change all that.

McCARTNEY: We were taking so long making "Sgt. Pepper."

I remember in one of the musical papers,

they said, "Oh, The Beatles have dried up."

And we were like... "No, we haven't."

[ Music crescendoes, ends ]

WATERS: We were on the road,

driving to a gig in an old Zephyr 4

when "Sgt. Pepper" was played for the first time on the radio.

And I remember we pulled off into a lay‐by and sat there

and listened to the whole thing from start to finish.

And I remember we just looked at each other and went, "Fuck me!

That's just..."

You know, I couldn't wait to hear the songs again.

Suddenly, here was an album

that was like a theatrical construction,

but it was also rooted in songs

that were about all our hopes and fears.

And so in that sense,

that album opened Pandora's box for everybody.

[ Playing "Breathe" ]

GILMOUR: "Dark Side of the Moon" started in a rehearsal room

in Bermondsey, I think, that belonged to the Rolling Stones,

where we did some sort of jamming, writing.

[ Music continues ]

WATERS: With "Dark Side," I had a strong and compelling notion

that we could make an album that was about life

and about feelings

and the human condition and things that impinge upon us.

Can I put this down?

MAN: Just a second. We're just finishing.

I still have to find the other track.

Okay.

GILMOUR: How do we make, you know, with a recording desk

and a couple of little old synthesizers and stuff ‐‐

How do you make that sound?

And you have to throw yourself

and your imagination into creating.

I just plugged this up

and started playing one sequence on it,

and Roger immediately pricked up his ears

and thought that sounded good

and came out, and we started mucking with it together.

A series of notes played in slowly...

[ Notes playing ]

...triggering a noise generator and oscillators,

and then just speed it up, you know?

[ Tempo increases ]

There you've got it, basically.

[ Music continues ]

[ Pitch rises, falls ]

WATERS: Well, recording changed with the technology.

When 16‐track came in,

we could overdub almost to our hearts' content.

[ Music continues ]

[ Voices, laughter echoing ]

I think the analogy of painting is very relevant

in terms of making records,

because you can paint over a whole bit

or erase a whole section

and say, "Well, I like that bit of the painting,

but let's start again here."

I actually like being able to sit back and listen to it,

and then go and say,

"Well, maybe if we just add something here."

♪ All that you touch ♪

♪ And all that you see ♪

♪ All that you taste ♪

♪ All you feel ♪

That was very freeing.

But you could say maybe it was destructive

in some ways as well, 'cause it meant

you didn't have to make that simple brushstroke

that meant something.

You know, you could go, "Brr! We'll sort it out later."

♪ Beg, borrow, or steal ♪

♪ And all you create ♪

♪ And all you destroy ♪

CARNEY: That record to me is ‐‐ It's mind‐blowing.

The way that still sounds ‐‐

I mean, the tape loops, the mixing, the depth.

No one has come close to that, probably to this day.

GILMOUR: I can clearly remember that moment

of sitting and listening to the whole mix all the way through

and thinking, "My God.

We've really done something fantastic here."

JOHN: There was an explosion of creativity in the '60s

to the mid‐'70s of music that will never, I don't think,

be matched in pop music again.

[ Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" plays ]

Technology was certainly enabling people

to experiment more as musicians.

SCHMITT: Multitracking came in, and then we had three‐tracks.

And then we got four‐tracks.

And then I remember all the studios got eight‐tracks.

And then, all of a sudden, we got 16‐tracks.

And we were all looking at one another, saying,

"What the hell are we gonna do with 16 tracks?"

Before anybody really learned how to use one of those,

here comes a 24‐track.

And the next thing you know, it's multi‐forever.

[ Chuckles ]

♪ Sweet ♪

♪ Emotion ♪

In the '70s, people were spending

more and more and more money on these gigantic studios.

GEORGE MARTIN: Technology has helped us enormously,

but it has had also a damaging effect

because it's allowed too much freedom.

I've known groups

who will concentrate on getting a bass line on one song

and spending five days doing it.

DALTREY: Music suffers from overproduction.

You don't gain.

You think you're gaining,

because everybody wants to play with toys.

When another 16 tracks arrive that you can play with,

you have to play with them because they're there,

like a kid with a new toy box.

But I thought once you got past 16, it was a waste of time

and became a bit self‐indulgent.

And it allowed records to go on forever in the studio.

[ Applause, up‐tempo music playing ]

And the album of the year is...

‐Fleetwood Mac! ‐Fleetwood Mac!

[ Cheers and applause ]

BUCKINGHAM: The success of "Rumours"

was such a disproportionate thing.

You have so much pressure from the outside

wanting you to repeat the formula that is embodied

in an album like "Rumours."

But there was no formula to "Rumours."

We were just responding

to what was going on in our personal lives.

So no matter what we did,

we couldn't have repeated the authenticity of that.

♪ Loving you ♪

♪ Isn't the right thing to do ♪

Every song on that album

is a cross‐dialogue between one member and another.

♪ You can go your own way ♪

You can't hear "Go Your Own Way" in any way

other than, you know, me talking to Stevie.

♪ Another lonely day ♪

Making the left turn that we made on "Tusk,"

it was all about how do we not paint ourselves into a corner?

And so I said to the band, "Look.

Let's try something a little different."

And they were sort of like, "Well, okay."

♪ Why don't you tell me what's going on? ♪

I had a small studio in the back of my house,

and I just wheeled a 24‐track in,

and I just started putting stuff down.

What I'm basically trying to do

is take a track that we cut in the studio,

mike the bathroom, which is right across the hall,

which has an amazing sound ‐‐

I mean, 1927 bathrooms are rock 'n' roll all the way ‐‐

and record it back onto some empty tracks.

[ Drum beating ]

Working at home alone allows you to sort of go into the void

and to find all sorts of mysterious things.

And that was something I wanted to explore

and then bring back and share with the band.

Sing the melody for a second.

NICKS: We were recording at Village Recorders

in Santa Monica, and we were recording six days a week.

And it was really horrible.

It's like Lindsey with the microphone on the tile floor,

going, "Ooh, ooh, ooh‐ooh‐ooh, ooh."

And we're just all like, "Okay.

That was great. Take two."

[ Chuckles ]

And he's like...

♪ Ooh‐ooh‐ooh, ooh‐ooh ♪

♪ Ooh‐ooh‐ooh, ooh‐ooh ♪

Okay. Take three."

And then he's taking the whole thing and slowing it down,

and then he's recording that.

And then he's speeding it back up.

And then he's putting it through a Leslie.

And it was just hard for the rest of us,

because we kind of ‐‐ We weren't always involved.

[ "Tusk" plays ]

BUCKINGHAM: The title track, "Tusk,"

typifies the spirit of the album.

I wanted Mick to play, like, jungle drums.

So we got him going, and then we made a loop of it,

and everything else got added in after that.

♪ Why don't you tell me who's on the phone? ♪

Mick had the idea to put the marching band on,

and that was sort of the coup de grace on that song

and really pushed it over the top.

♪ Why don't you ask him the latest on his throne? ♪

♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪

♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪

♪ Don't say that you love me ♪

ASHER: Obviously, it reached the point

where the ability to stay in the studio as long as you want

and spend as much money as you want

may not necessarily have been an entirely good thing.

They were actually in the studio 24 hours.

Lindsey and whoever would come in in the daytime,

record stuff with one engineer,

which Mick would come in at night,

dislike, erase, and replace.

So in theory, they could have actually gone on

forever and ever and ever.

And, of course, you know, prodigious amounts of cocaine

were involved in the process,

which added a certain piquancy to the whole thing.

[ Music continues ]

BUCKINGHAM: The Warner Bros. people

never really took much stock of what we were doing.

But when we delivered that album to them,

that would have been a funny moment to be a fly on the wall,

because I know they were probably looking at each other

and going, "What is this?"

♪ Tusk! ♪

There was a kind of a backlash,

there was a kind of a negativity to it.

I remember Mick coming to me and saying,

"You know, Lindsey, we're not gonna do that again."

And I was like, "Okay."

It did take many years for that album to rise to the surface,

to where now everyone else loves it.

And I think a whole generation, especially indie band types,

seem to really get it.

It was a ballsy thing to do,

but it was just the need to experiment

and the need to be an artist.

[ Eurythmics' "Who's That Girl" plays ]

STEWART: Annie and I saw ourself more like performance artists.

I would sit on a chair,

and Annie would have a suit and sing,

and I wouldn't do anything.

♪ The language of love ♪

♪ Slips from my lover's tongue ♪

LENNOX: We always liked everything to be quite reduced.

And at the time that we were forming Eurythmics,

there was a fantastic evolution in the kind of equipment

that you could get access to in terms of recording.

♪ Who's that girl ♪

♪ Running around with you? ♪

♪ Tell me, who's that girl ♪

♪ Running around with you? ♪

It was the beginning

of that kind of bedroom recording studio.

Being the technological person that he was,

Dave was very clued in with this.

I'd went out and bought a thing called a Caterpillar,

which went with the Wasp.

[ Notes playing ]

And I had this new drum machine. It was a prototype.

In fact, the outside of the computer was wood.

And it had a tiny little screen that was black and white,

almost like early Space Invaders or Ping‐Pong, you know?

And I had a TEAC Portastudio.

So with these things, I'd worked out

how to sort of make a little sequence, like...

[ Vocalizing ]

And that was the beginning of Eurythmics.

[ "Love Is a Stranger" plays ]

LENNOX: We didn't like big, intimidating studios.

You go in there, and it's all, you know, big desks,

and it's very glossy.

It's like a big Rolls‐Royce

as opposed to, like, a little Volkswagen.

We liked the Volkswagen.

We didn't go for the Rolls‐Royce.

♪ Love is a stranger in an open car ♪

♪ Tempt you in and drive you far away ♪

We didn't care for the status quo,

what we referred to at the time

as sort of prehistoric‐dinosaur big rock bands, you know?

So we wanted to do it in a very different way ‐‐ our own way.

♪ And drive you far away ♪

So we knew someone who had this massive picture‐framing factory.

And at the very, very top,

there was a kind of attic room, so the roof was like that.

And there was lots of little cables, and we'd sit for hours,

and he would be noodling, and I would be like this.

I was programming it, and Annie kind of woke up and went, "Whoa.

"What the hell is that?"

And she got sort of really excited about it

and put some weird harmonies on it.

We really went all the way out in experimenting,

nothing to do with pop music.

♪ And I want you ♪

♪ And I want you ♪

♪ And I want you so ♪

♪ It's an obsession ♪

And that was where we first started with Eurythmics songs,

Eurythmics recordings ‐‐

"Sweet Dreams," "Love Is a Stranger,"

all the early stuff.

That's where we recorded it.

♪ An obsession ♪

STEWART: This was like 1982,

and it was kind of the beginning of loads of artists going,

"Well, hang on a second. I can do that."

And all of this music started to come out

that wasn't made in big commercial studios,

and it was kind of made in people's bedrooms,

and it was cool.

[ Beck's "Loser" plays ]

♪ In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey ♪

♪ Butane in my veins and I'm out to cut the junkie ♪

The first few albums I did were all done at someone's house

who just had a little setup.

They weren't in real studios.

There was maybe a three‐ or four‐hour window.

He's like, "Yeah, you can come by,

and then my girlfriend's coming home,

and we can't record after that

because the microphone's set up in the kitchen."

And then halfway through singing it,

shoes are flying at the engineer.

His girlfriend has had it, you know,

of living in a recording studio.

♪ Soy un perdedor ♪

♪ I'm a loser, baby ♪

♪ So why don't you kill me? ♪

MILNER: Home studios of the analog era,

they were basically miniature versions

of the existing recording studio in your home.

And you had four tracks, and you made records.

What digital technology did in a way

is get rid of the studio entirely.

And now the recording studio was your computer,

and you could make music anywhere.

[ Bon Iver's "Flume" plays ]

♪ I am my mother's only one ♪

VERNON: When I made "For Emma,"

this was up at my dad's hunting lodge.

All I had was my old big block G4 computer

and a Pro Tools interface.

It's funny to think it was Mac OS 9,

which seems so bizarre to some people now.

Me too.

But that's all I had.

♪ Only love is all maroon ♪

Pro Tools has been my musical voice.

I mean, it's my way of understanding songs.

It's my tool of songwriting now, where it's like,

I enjoy so much being able to open up a session ‐‐

blank tape, so to speak ‐‐ and just create environment.

With a guitar, it used to be really exciting to me

to sit down at a desk

and use the room that I was in and sing and play.

But when I'm looking to write a new song now,

I'm waiting for an environment

to sort of be created accidentally,

so then I can kind of step into it,

just like when somebody picks up a guitar

and there's a chord they play,

they're instantly writing a song.

ST. VINCENT: I was right around the first generation of kids

who were making music alone in their bedrooms on a computer.

That's really how I started to make music.

It wasn't really in bands or in relation to other people.

It was very much this insular, layering method of making music.

[ Mid‐tempo music plays ]

It takes me a while to find even where I am sometimes,

'cause there are so many tracks.

[ Music continues ]

♪ For the lover ♪

♪ For the love ♪

These are all the tracks down here.

They are all the violin and French‐horn tracks

that we had to mix down to the smaller amount of tracks.

You have an infinite amount of layers that you can add,

so you have a billion more variables

on where a song could go.

Being a recording artist means, you know, pushing and stretching

all these limits and boundaries of what music can sound like.

[ Vocalizing ]

When I discovered that I could use a looping pedal

to create this multitrack sound live in front of people ‐‐

That was awesome.

I'm gonna do this thing. All right?

What I do onstage

is I stamp with my foot on the looping pedal

and that starts the recording.

[ Crowd cheering ]

If I press the pedal again,

it will give me another layer on top of that.

Looping and looping and looping,

and I can stack layers and layers upon each other of sound.

[ Drumsticks clicking ]

The worlds of sound that I had been hearing my whole life

and what drew me to recorded music

suddenly were at my ‐‐ not my fingertips ‐‐ my toe tips.

[ Vocalizing, drumming continues ]

It's an organic sound being put into a digital device

played by a human.

And so there's all these weird, like...

You know, "What is that? What's happening here?"

But, to me, that's where we're living now

is, you know, in that in‐between space.

♪ What's the bizness, yeah? ♪

♪ Don't take my life away, don't take my life away ♪

‐♪ From a distance, yeah ♪ ‐♪ Yeah ♪

♪ Don't take my life away, don't take my life away ♪

[ Vocalizing ]

There are no limitations these days.

Because we are multitracking, because we're overdubbing,

you know, it's completely limitless.

Let's move on. Yeah.

[ Indistinct conversations, synthesizer playing ]

GODRICH: There's so much more technology around nowadays.

As a producer, you have to manage

all of that technology that's available to you.

[ Radiohead's "Lotus Flower" plays ]

And if you have the discipline

to sort of compartmentalize what you're doing,

then you benefit.

♪ I will shape myself into your pocket ♪

♪ Invisible ♪

♪ Do what you want ♪

But the way I personally deal with that

is by just ignoring a lot of it.

Because I know that it's of no value to me.

It's like, "No, we're not gonna use Pro Tools to record."

Use a tape machine where it would be easier

to just put it in the computer and take the good bits.

Use a razor blade.

Select things with a pencil, and cut them with a razor blade

and stick them back together with tape.

I still do it because it's sort of a meditation of some sort.

In the process, you have time to think about what you're doing,

and that works better a lot of times.

Things sound better for some reason.

An edit done tape sounds better than an edit in the computer.

It just does.

EPWORTH: I love the idea that we're in the position now

to be able to pick and choose different recording practices

from the different eras.

And sometimes you put something that's quite retro

on top of something very modern,

and you create something very new.

When the drums come in ‐‐ just the drums.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

[ Drum beating, birds chirping ]

[ Down‐tempo introduction plays ]

ENO: One of the underlying stories of rock music

is this constant experimentation with sound.

Because of multitracking,

you really make the music during the mixing.

And you can create drama in the music.

You can make things that were not musically feasible before.

You can make things that didn't really belong to performances.

♪ Don't haunt me ♪

♪ Don't haunt me ♪

♪ Don't haunt me ♪

♪ Don't haunt me ♪

♪ Gather up ♪

♪ The lost and sold ♪

BECK: All eras of recording are happening simultaneously.

I have a lot of musician friends who only record on tape,

some who only record on their laptop,

on a program that comes free with your computer.

And they all have big records that people listen to.

♪ ... haunt me ♪

♪ I think I should give up the ghost ♪

♪ Into your arms ♪

GEORGE MARTIN: When I first came into the record business,

the ideal for any recording engineer in a studio

was to make the most lifelike sound you could possibly do...

...to make a photograph that was absolutely accurate.

Well, the studio changed all that

and certainly what we were doing,

because instead of taking a great photograph,

we could start painting a picture.

By overdubbing, by different kind of speeds,

you are painting with sound.

‐♪ Into your arms ♪ ‐♪ Don't haunt me ♪

‐♪ Into your arms ♪ ‐♪ Don't haunt me ♪

♪ Don't haunt me ♪

♪ Into your arms ♪

♪ Don't haunt me ♪

♪ Don't haunt me ♪

♪ Into your arms ♪

[ Birds chirping ]

Please tell me that sounded all right.