Watevs...

No matter what it is, The Beatles did it first.

The Beatles 8th studio album “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club” is considered almost unanimously as their most experimental album. But, what a lot of experts don’t realise is that early in their career The Beatles experimented at least the same amount, if not more, than they did in the later stages of their career. The only difference was that a lot of the experimental sounds they created didn’t make it to the albums. If you look closely at this picture you can see The Beatles experimenting with a slight variation to the standard drum kit.

The hit single “Yesterday” is another excellent example of experimental sounds which were scrapped from the final public release. During the recording process for Yesterday, Paul McCartney’s fascination with the un-restricted vocal capabilities of an infant child led to some rather out-there experimentation. Paul had learnt that infants have perfect vocal techniques due to their lack of self-consciousness, a technique which can not be perfected to the same degree after a child grows up and begins to realize social pressures from external sources. Wishing to capture this vocal purity, Paul employed several babies to come into the recording studio and sing on the “Yesterday” recording. Child labor laws threw some hurdles up here, but when the babies agreed to offer their work voluntarily, the experiment was given the go-ahead. However, Paul became frustrated with the babies when he learnt that they could not pronounce the word “Suddenly”, and resorted to torturing the babies to death.  Paul was satisfied with the baby death-screams and wished to leave them on the recording, but eventually the decision to include them on the final release was overthrown by Capitol records, who declared the screams to be “a little pitchy”.

So, there you have it. Proof that if anything, the drugs toned them down a little.