Do you need anybody?

Last night I went down to USC to hear George Martin tell the story of the making of "Sgt. Pepper".

Not that I usually go to NARAS events. But a friend I only know from the Internet bought me a ticket. And despite my arriving thirty minutes past the time of our assignation, when I phoned Mike he was still stuck on the freeway, so while I ate hors d’oeuvres I engaged in conversation with Mike Clink about producing the new Zakk Wylde album and Daryl Friedman regarding the Recording Academy’s agenda in D.C. Daryl assured me that there would be a performance royalty for recordings played on the radio in 2009. And then we discussed the NARAS agenda. Clink and David Helfant laughed and said the board argued over all the same issues I bring up in my newsletter. And then the bell rang and we went inside.

This is not your normal Hollywood crowd. These are not the faces on TMZ. They’re connected with the industry somehow, but I didn’t know almost any of them. And not being connected, I found myself upstairs in the balcony, wedged in between unfamiliar faces. And the reason I’m complaining about this is when George Martin emerged, I couldn’t hear every single word.

But I could hear enough.

I couldn’t understand why the woman next to me spent the entire presentation with her head on her boyfriend’s shoulder. Then again, she probably wasn’t even born when "Sgt. Pepper" was released. She didn’t live through not only one chart-topping success after another, but the endless limit-testing. Madonna kept reinventing herself, but the Beatles kept reinventing their music. They were always one step ahead of us, they pulled us into the future.

But they almost didn’t get their chance. George spoke of making the deal with Brian Epstein, how he’d have passed if he knew everybody else had. How he thought the original material was rubbish. How the original version of "Please Please Me" was a lame Roy Orbison clone. But when they came back to record it…he was stunned… They’d delivered. You see the Beatles were hungry. They had an awful royalty rate, but they would have done it for free.

George told how Paul McCartney rejected his use of strings on "Yesterday" out of the box, worried about his cred, but then caved and was pleased and was ultimately open to George’s rip of the "Psycho" soundtrack for "Eleanor Rigby".

Then we got to the main attraction, "Sgt. Pepper".

And George told how they’d cut "Strawberry Fields Forever" first. And then "Penny Lane". Breaking down "Strawberry Fields", hearing the original version sans mellotron, was fascinating. As was the use of a classical musician for the trumpet solo on "Penny Lane".

But then the real work began. On the album as we know it.

And to tell you the truth, although fascinating, very little of this was a revelation. Because it’s been covered so many times before. But then, George starts breaking down the tracks.

I don’t know what it’s like being a kid today. Whether all the distractions make for the harried life the media depicts. What with soccer practice and music lessons and Facebook and Net surfing it appears kids have no free time. We didn’t have so many diversions. To us, the music was almost everything. Sure, we had TV. But there were only three networks, and the programming was safe. The records were dangerous. Limits were tested aurally, not visually.

But those days are through.

I love a great record. But I don’t hear as many as I used to. Or maybe it’s me, I’m in a different part of my life.

But then, sitting high in Bovard Auditorium, George Martin isolated the background vocals on "With A Little Help From My Friends".

This is after telling the story of coaxing Ringo to do the vocal. Before Ringo complained that everybody else in the group was a frustrated drummer and told him how to play his parts. We were in the middle of the track. That’s when the spine-tingling moment occurred.

We listen on earbuds. Most people’s stereo is their computer, whose awful speakers, which including amplification, cost less than $100. We get a facsimile of the sound. It’s so far removed from the studio that it doesn’t make any difference if the sound was made by machines, machines are just about the only thing that sounds good using today’s technology.

But we used to listen to analog recordings. On the best stereos money could buy. And what came out of the speakers was POSITIVELY MELLIFLUOUS!

Where were you during the summer of ’67? I bought "Sgt. Pepper" the day it came out and listened to only it for a week straight. My favorite cut was "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite". Then I fell in love with "Lovely Rita". The title track’s reprise was too short for me.

But that was eons ago, forty years, in fact. Not only has my body been ravaged by time, but my mind has been buffeted by life, and two of the men who made this music are dead.

But when I heard the band backing up Ringo, we were all suddenly ALIVE!

Does it worry you to be alone?

It does me. The joy comes from being a member of the group. As great as some of the band members’ solo work was, they were best together. With egos clashing, laughing, trying to top each other.

This vocal sound was not something cut in GarageBand. Through experience George Martin blended the background vocals so you could hear the husky emotion in John Lennon’s unique voice, imploring you to pay attention, riddled with the desire to leave Liverpool behind, yet still sweet. All of this baked into one little snippet, a movie appearing in the theatre of the mind.

Now the audience has a grip on our performers. Acts are afraid to take a step without checking the public’s pulse. But we used to just try to keep up. We didn’t own the acts, they owned us. We followed them to a better place. And, forty years later, when you hear these tracks it’s all still there. The joy. Of life, of record-making, of experimentation, of music.

The Grammy Foundation