Thursday, December 17, 2009

Fifty Woman Knockin' On My Door


The last song on the fourth Parlophone UK LP "Beatles For Sale" is a cover version of another Carl Perkins original. This time it's George Harrison taking the lead vocal spot with the other Beatles (and George) playing their regular instruments. This was the second Carl Perkins cover on the LP, the first one being "Honey Don't" although Carl Perkins had been covered before by the Beatles on the "Long Tall Sally" EP as well as various performances on certain BBC radio shows. The song in question is entitled "Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby".

This song was recorded on Sunday October 18 1964 at EMI studio two. This is another one take wonder for the LP (along with "Rock 'N' Roll Music" which was recorded on the same day and was recorded right after "Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby" - two one take wonder in a row; nice ). There seems to be quite a lot of tape echo on George's voice for this song and you can hear some of the tape echo leakage on some of the other instruments as well. In those days, the Beatles did not wear headphones but were putting down vocals with a large monitor speaker on either the right or left of them while using a one directional microphone. The overdubs include tambourine and another George vocal.

"Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby" was mixed for mono three days later at EMI studio room 65 on October 21 1964. Finally, the tune was mixed for stereo on November 04 1964 from the control room of studio two. There is more echo added to the mono mix of "Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby" than the stereo mix of the same title.

"Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" is available on the Parlophone UK LP/CD "Beatles For Sale" as well as the North American Capitol LP/CD "Beatles '65". It is also featured on the 2-LP EMI/Capitol compilation "Rock 'N' Roll Music".

The song was played live during the Beatles 1964/65 Christmas shows and also during the 1965 European and North American tours. There are live performances of the song available on the Lingasong 2-LP set "The Beatles Live At the Star Club" from 1962 as well as being featured on the Apple 3-LP/20-CD "Anthology 2" where a performance from August 15 1965 at Shea Stadium is heard. The song was also recorded on August 29 and August 30 from the Hollywood Bowl by Capitol records but it was not included on the commercial EMI/Capitol LP: "The Beatles Live at The Hollywood Bowl" (although it can be heard on the complete Hollywood Bowl concert tapes on bootleg).

"Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby" was performed four times for BBC radio although it was aired five times: Once on "Pop Go the Beatles" episode 1, the second time on "Saturday Club", the third time on "Top Gear" which was repeated on another episode of "Saturday Club" and finally it appeared once again on "The Beatles Invite You To Take A Ticket To Ride".

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