Saturday, August 29, 2015

Christmas Messages for Radio 1966

On December 06 1966, during the sessions for the upcoming as yet untitled LP, The Beatles started working on a new McCartney song entitled "When I'm Sixty Four" which was an early composition written mainly by Paul but with a middle section about grand kids added by John. The very basic track of piano, bass, drums and some lead guitar at the end was attempted and left. Nothing from the very basic track and this date has been released in any form so far.
The other task for the session in EMI Studio 2 was to record some upcoming Christmas messages for the fans and to send these messages to the various off short/ alternate radio stations such as Radio Caroline and Radio Scotland in and around the UK island.
A three minute recording of the original session tape is available via youtube as well as on the bootleg CD "The Seven Years of Christmas". These messages have each individual Beatle sending a greeting backed by either a mellotron or a piano in the studio.  There are several "takes" or attempts at the greetings with some of them in various accents.
Four of the spoken word items ( one for each Beatle ) was eventually overdubbed onto an outtake of the 1967 "Christmas Time Is Here Again" tune and used on the 1995 EMI vinyl single/ CD single "Free As A Bird" and is available commercially.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9371-RJ7XA


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