Post by P(D)enny La(i)ne on Dec 3, 2009 13:28:14 GMT -5
This has come up before briefly in a few other threads, but it never really went anywhere.
In my opinion, it's deserving of it's own thread, so...
Bernard Purdie is a legendary session drummer who claims to have played on 21 Beatles recordings.
He recently did an interview with Electronic Music Magazine.
The interview is NOT embeddable, so I'm just going to link to it and excerpt it.
emusician.com/ms/beatle_tech/videos/bernard_purdie/
Here are the most important bits:
Purdie was also questioned about this by Max Weinberg for his book, The Big Beat:
There is also this interview from the Feb, 1978 issue of Gig Magazine:
The other threads are here, btw:
invanddis.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=Clues&thread=5691&page=1
invanddis.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=ra&thread=90&page=1
invanddis.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=introduce&thread=3685&page=1
In my opinion, it's deserving of it's own thread, so...
Bernard Purdie is a legendary session drummer who claims to have played on 21 Beatles recordings.
He recently did an interview with Electronic Music Magazine.
The interview is NOT embeddable, so I'm just going to link to it and excerpt it.
emusician.com/ms/beatle_tech/videos/bernard_purdie/
Here are the most important bits:
Q: Can you talk a little bit about your work, and the kind of things you worked, project-wise with the Beatles.
Purdie:
"Well, I prefer not to, simply because I've had enough problems with the Beatle business when I finally opened up in 1978 and I started talking about it.
And I've had my life threatened so much that I don't care any more about this thing that folks got a problem with somebody playing the Beatles music and saying that they didn't do something.
People don't know, the young people today and the people that are coming up - they're looking at the technology the way things are today. Well, people didn't know how recordings were done. In the early part of the 60s, the guy who invented multi-tracking is the guy who was teaching me how to overdub drums. I was in his studio in 1961 and 62 doing and learning about multi-tracking.
What I do , what I've done for 40 plus years, I have gone in and fixed more records - thousands of records I'm actually on, just fixing tracks for other people.
It was my job to elevate the music, and I was good at it.
Sometimes, it's hard to explain to somebody when someone is looking at someone as an idol. To tell them that no, Joe Blow did not do that, that somebody else did that - it's the quickest way in today's society to get killed."
Purdie was also questioned about this by Max Weinberg for his book, The Big Beat:
MW: You played on the Beatles' tracks?
BP: Twenty-one of them.
MW: Do you remember which ones?
BP: Ummmhmmm.
MW: Which ones?
BP: That's information I don't disclose.
MW: Why won't you name the tracks?
BP: Because, if I need that information to get me some money, then I'll have what's necessary. I also played on songs by the Animals, the Monkees--
MW: Everyone knows the Monkees were a fabricated band, but the Beatles--
BP: Ringo never played on anything.
MW: Ringo never played on anything?
BP: Not the early Beatles stuff.
There is also this interview from the Feb, 1978 issue of Gig Magazine:
New york - According to Bernard Purdie, a substantial amount of the drumming on the early Beatle albums was done by him, not Ringo Starr. Purdie is a New York based session drummer, best known for his seven years with Aretha Franklin.
"I overdubbed the drumming on 21 tracks of the first three Beatle Albums", maintains Purdie. "They paid me a lot of money to keep my mouth shut, but it's been ten years, so f-- it. I guess I can talk about it."
Not many other people are talking about it however, not surprising considering what's at stake. Reached through his lawyer Bruce Grakal, Ringo "does not wish to comment". Beatles producer George Martin would only say "I did not use another drummer," and no one at Capitol-past or present-knows anything or is willing to talk about it.
"I got paid in five figures," Purdie adds, "and that was the largest amount of money I'd ever gotten in my life."
It's actually been 14 1/2 years now. Purdie told Gig that in the summer of 1963, six months before the first Beatle album was release in the U.S., he was contacted to do a session-which initially seemed like al the others he was doing at the time.
"I had never heard of the Beatles," he says, "but their manager, Brian Epstein, called me and took me down to Capitol's 46th street studio. I did all the overdubbing on the 21 songs in nine days."
After Purdie was paid his double session fee of $130 an hour, he says, "Epstein called me into his office and gave me the additional (five figure - smallest would be $10,000) check. I thought they were paying me all that money because they liked what I played. Then he told me I was being paid to keep my mouth shut."
Purdie says he signed a "contract". Does he still have it?
"The contract", he explains, "was the check that I signed and I cashed it! On the back of the check, it was spelled out what I did -'payment for services rendered'. I took up half the check. But I didn't think about making a photostated copy. It didn't mean anything to me."
He says he worked on finished tapes. The early Beatle albums had already been released in England. This could mean the original English copies have Ringo doing the drumming while the American counterparts have Purdie on some tracks, Ringo on others, and, Purdie suggests, both of them on others.
"We were only doing eight trck recording. We weren't doing sixteen or twenty-four track at the time. They had four tracks and they put me on two separate tracks. I would listen to what Ringo had played and then overdub on top of it to keep it happening."
He doesn't remember specific titles except one he calls "Yeah Yeah Yeah", which would of course be "She Loves You."
"I remember that one well", Purdie says. "That was one of the big things coming out at the time, and was the one the engineer brought my attention to."
He says he never met any of the Beatles at the time. "The only people in the studio were me, the engineer, and Brian Epstein and a few of his people."
Not George Martin?
"No. I didn't even meet George Martin until 1969 when I went to England to do some work." Purdie says he doesn't even think Martin knows what he did.
"The manager did everything", Purdie stresses. "Epstein instigated everything that had to be done. He was the one who told me to keep my mouth closed. He was the one."
...........
Purdie, who says he did the same thing for the Animals and the monkees, suggests that other alterations were done to the early Beatle albums.
"After I was finishing up one day, the engineer said they had another guitar player coming in later to do overdubs and they were paying him good money to keep his mouth shut too. I asked him who it was, and he said "keep out of that Purdie.' I never did find out who it was.
"You listen to the guitar parts on the early records," Purdie adds. "There's a different sound to a lot of them."
The other threads are here, btw:
invanddis.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=Clues&thread=5691&page=1
invanddis.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=ra&thread=90&page=1
invanddis.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=introduce&thread=3685&page=1