Geoff Emerick RIP

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sweetest punch
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Geoff Emerick RIP

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https://variety.com/2018/music/news/geo ... 202966681/

Geoff Emerick, Beatles Chief Recording Engineer, Dies at 72

Geoff Emerick, the Beatles chief recording engineer who worked on some of the band’s most seminal albums, has died according to his manager William Zabaleta. He was 72 and believed to have suffered a heart attack.

Said Zabaleta in a statement to Variety: “Today at around 2’o’clock, I was making my way back from Arizona to Los Angeles to pick up Geoff so we could transport some gold records and platinum plaques to our show in Tucson. While on the phone, he had complications and dropped the phone. I called 911, but by the time they got there, it was too late. Geoff suffered from heart problems for a long time and had a pacemaker. … When it’s your time it’s your time. We lost a legend and a best friend to me and a mentor.”

Emerick, born Dec. 5, 1945, began working as an assistant engineer at Abbey Road at just 15 years-old and, just a few months months in, was face-to-face with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in the London studio. He apprenticed and later worked on such early Beatles’ recordings as “Love Me Do”, “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” “She Loves You,” and “A Hard Day’s Night.” Later becoming the band’s chief engineer, he helmed “Revolver,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “The White Album” and “Abbey Road” as well as the dual-sided single “Penny Lane”/”Strawberry Fields Forever
Other than George Martin, Emerick was the behind-the-scenes brains that helped shape the Beatles sound. When John Lennon asked Emerick to make him sound like “the Dalai Lama singing on a mountain” for “Tomorrow Never Knows” on Revolver, one of the effects Emerick used was to put Lennon’s voice through a spinning Leslie speaker. As Andy Babiuk describes in the book “Beatles Gear,” Emerick’s “open-mind approach and willingness to ignore standard recording practices and techniques when necessary was exactly what the group was looking for.”

Emerick was a Grammy Award winner for his work on “Sgt. Pepper’s” and “Abbey Road” as well as Paul McCartney and Wings’ “Band on the Run.” He is credited on albums by Elvis Costello (“Imperial Bedroom”), Badfinger, Supertramp, Cheap Trick and America, among many others. In 2006, he released the book “Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles.”

Emerick had many upcoming appearances scheduled, including one on Saturday in Tuscon under the banner Geoff Emerick’s London Revival, where he was due to talk about his work with the Beatles. He was also to be one of several Beatles experts at The White Album International Symposium scheduled for Nov. 8 to 11 at Monmouth University in New Jersey to honor the 50th anniversary of the release of “The White Album,” which is being reissued as a box set with outtakes and a new 2018 mix.

Denny Laine, who was a members of Paul McCartney and Wings, tweeted upon hearing the news: “Geoff was a brilliant engineer and a fine man.”
Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
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And No Coffee Table
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Re: Geoff Emerick RIP

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Steve Nieve:
"I just learned about the passing of Geoff Emerick. I am very sad to hear that. Geoff was the brains, the inventor of so many cool techniques and musical studio ‘tricks of the trade’ we now take for granted, but he was the genius that cooked them up in the first place. A very gentle man, we worked together on many occasions, and he always made you feel at ease in the studio and then captured your best work. At the end of the day he made you sound better than you ever sounded before or after. And working with him you learned so much, and you had fun, musical fun. Thank you Geoff for all your patience, for Imperial Bedroom, for All This Useless Beauty, and for all the times after when we ran into you along the road."

Bruce Thomas:
"Geoff Emerick. A great producer / engineer, a pleasure to know and a joy to work with - and a never-ending source of wonderful Beatle anecdotes."
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And No Coffee Table
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Re: Geoff Emerick RIP

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Elvis Costello:
"Geoff Emerick was a wonderful man, a masterful engineer and mixer and a patient but confident presence in the studio.
I feel very fortunate to have worked with Geoff on two records. We simply could not have made the 'Imperial Bedroom' with anyone else.
On those sessions, Geoff was as important as any member of the ensemble, the studio being his instrument.
In fact, almost anyone in the post 1966 recording world owes an, often unacknowledged, debt to his quiet and modest innovations. Infinitely less-talented individuals make a song and dance out of matters that Geoff took in his stride.
He told me once that learning his trade at Abbey Road might mean being ready to record Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia in the morning, Judy Garland in the afternoon or The Beatles until the song was done in the small hours. Little wonder there was barely a musical or sonic conceit with which you could daunt or confound him.
I feel very lucky to have known and worked with him and I will miss him a great deal.
My favourite Geoff Emerick record?
It has to be 'Revolver'"
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