Recording: Here, There And Everywhere – 16 June 1966

Thursday 16 June 1966 | Recording | Studio Two, EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London, England
Producer: George Martin | Engineer: Geoff Emerick

On Thursday 16 June 1966, The Beatles returned to Studio Two at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, to continue work on Here, There And Everywhere — Paul McCartney's contribution to what would become Revolver, and one of the most quietly perfect songs in the Beatles catalogue. The session produced nine further takes (numbered 5–13), a reduction mix, and McCartney's varispeeded lead vocal. By the end of the following day, the song would be complete. On 16 June, it was being built, layer by layer, in the way that only Abbey Road in 1966 could build a song.

The Song: Here, There And Everywhere

Here, There And Everywhere is a love song — one of the purest McCartney ever wrote. He has said that he composed it sitting by the pool at John Lennon's house in Weybridge one morning in the early summer of 1966, waiting for Lennon to wake up. The melody came quickly; the words followed. It is the kind of song that sounds as though it arrived fully formed, which is both its greatest quality and its most misleading characteristic. The recording sessions at Abbey Road tell a different story: a song this simple requires extraordinary care to realise.

McCartney has cited the Beach Boys' God Only Knows — from Pet Sounds, released in May 1966 — as an influence on the song's harmonic approach. The Beatles had received an advance copy of Pet Sounds and had been listening to it obsessively in the weeks before the Revolver sessions began. Brian Wilson's use of close vocal harmonies, unexpected chord changes, and a kind of luminous emotional directness left a clear mark on Here, There And Everywhere — though the song is entirely McCartney's own in character and execution.

John Lennon later named it as one of his favourite Beatles songs — a significant endorsement from a man not given to easy praise of his songwriting partner's work.

The Session: Takes 5–13

Recording of Here, There And Everywhere had begun two days earlier, on 14 June 1966, with takes 1–4. The 16 June session picked up from there, working through takes 5 to 13 — nine attempts at the basic track, each one refining the arrangement and performance until take 13 was selected as the best.

The instrumentation on the basic track was deliberately spare:

• Paul McCartney — Epiphone Casino guitar, guide vocal
• Ringo Starr — drums
• George Harrison — Rickenbacker electric 12-string guitar

John Lennon is notably absent from the basic track instrumentation — his contribution came later, in the harmony vocal overdubs. The choice of McCartney's Epiphone Casino and Harrison's Rickenbacker 12-string gives the basic track a particular texture: the Casino's warm, slightly hollow tone against the shimmer of the 12-string, creating a sonic bed that is simultaneously intimate and luminous.

McCartney also recorded a guide vocal during the basic track sessions — a scratch vocal intended to help the other musicians keep their place in the song's structure. This guide vocal was later wiped, as was standard practice: once the final lead vocal was recorded, the guide track was erased to free up tape space. The guide vocal is gone. What replaced it is one of McCartney's finest recorded performances.

Four-Track Recording: The Constraints and the Creativity

The Revolver sessions were conducted on four-track tape — the standard format at Abbey Road in 1966, and a constraint that shaped every decision made in the studio. Four tracks sounds limiting by modern standards, where digital audio workstations offer effectively unlimited tracks. In practice, it required a discipline and an ingenuity that produced some of the most inventive recording in popular music history.

On 16 June, the four tracks of the tape were allocated as follows:

• Track 1: Basic track (McCartney on Casino, Starr on drums, Harrison on Rickenbacker 12-string)
• Track 2: McCartney's bass guitar overdub
• Track 3: First harmony vocal (Lennon, McCartney, Harrison)
• Track 4: Second harmony vocal (Lennon, McCartney, Harrison) — with finger clicks

With all four tracks full, there was no room for further overdubs without a reduction mix — the process of bouncing the four tracks down to fewer tracks on a new tape, freeing up space at the cost of a slight degradation in audio quality. This is exactly what happened: a reduction mix of take 13 was made, numbered as take 14, which combined the existing four tracks onto fewer tracks and freed up space for McCartney's lead vocal.

The Harmony Vocals: Lennon, McCartney and Harrison

One of the most distinctive elements of Here, There And Everywhere is its vocal arrangement — the close three-part harmonies that wrap around McCartney's lead vocal like a warm chord. On 16 June, Lennon, McCartney and Harrison recorded two separate harmony vocal performances, one onto track three and one onto track four.

The second harmony vocal — on track four — also featured finger clicks, adding a subtle rhythmic element that sits just beneath the surface of the finished recording. It is the kind of detail that you may not consciously notice on first listening but that contributes to the song's feeling of warmth and intimacy. The finger clicks are not a percussion instrument. They are three people in a room, clicking their fingers together, and the sound of that human gesture is preserved in the final mix.

The three-part harmony on Here, There And Everywhere is often cited as one of the finest vocal arrangements in the Beatles catalogue. It draws on the close-harmony tradition of American vocal groups — the Everly Brothers, the Beach Boys — but filtered through the particular blend of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison's voices, which had been singing together for nearly a decade by 1966 and had developed an instinctive understanding of how to fit around each other.

The Reduction Mix and the Varispeeded Lead Vocal

With all four tracks of take 13 full, Geoff Emerick made a reduction mix — bouncing the four tracks down to create take 14, with space freed up for further overdubs. Onto this reduction mix, McCartney recorded his lead vocal.

The lead vocal was recorded with the tape running slower than normal — a technique known as varispeeding or vari-speed recording. When the tape is slowed down during recording and then played back at normal speed, the recorded audio plays back faster and at a higher pitch than it was performed. The effect on McCartney's voice is subtle but audible: it gives the vocal a slightly brighter, more ethereal quality than his natural voice would produce at normal tape speed.

Varispeeding was a technique that Geoff Emerick and George Martin used extensively during the Revolver sessions — it appears on several tracks on the album, including Rain (where the entire backing track was sped up) and Tomorrow Never Knows. On Here, There And Everywhere, the effect is more restrained: it lifts McCartney's voice just enough to give it a quality of floating above the track, which suits the song's emotional register perfectly.

Take 7: The 1996 Outtake

One of the most remarkable footnotes to the 16 June session is the fate of take 7. This outtake — one of the nine takes recorded that day — was included on the Real Love single in 1996, as part of The Beatles Anthology project. It offers a rare window into the recording process: the basic track with McCartney's guide vocal, unadorned by the harmony overdubs, the bass overdub, or the varispeeded lead vocal that would follow.

Hearing take 7 alongside the finished recording is one of the most instructive experiences available to anyone interested in how The Beatles made records. The bones of the song are all there — the melody, the chord sequence, the essential character — but the finished version is so much more than the sum of those bones. The overdubs do not merely add instrumentation. They transform the song's emotional register, turning a beautiful sketch into something that sounds, in the finished version, as though it could not have been made any other way.

The inclusion of take 7 on the Real Love single was a deliberate curatorial decision by the Anthology team — a way of showing the work behind the finished product, and of giving fans access to a moment in the creative process that would otherwise have remained in the EMI archive.

Geoff Emerick: The Engineer Behind Revolver

Geoff Emerick had been appointed as The Beatles' chief recording engineer for the Revolver sessions in April 1966, at the age of just 20. It was his first major project in that role, and the results were extraordinary. Emerick brought a willingness to break the rules of conventional studio practice — placing microphones closer to instruments than was standard, using unconventional EQ settings, experimenting with tape manipulation — that gave Revolver its distinctive sonic character.

His work on Here, There And Everywhere is a masterclass in restraint. The song does not need the kind of sonic experimentation that characterises Tomorrow Never Knows or I Am The Walrus. What it needs is clarity, warmth, and precision — and that is exactly what Emerick delivered. The varispeeded lead vocal is the most technically adventurous element of the recording, and even that is deployed with a light touch. The song sounds effortless. The session notes tell a different story.

Emerick would go on to engineer Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Abbey Road, and many other landmark recordings. His memoir, Here, There And Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles (2006), takes its title from this very song — a measure of how significant the Revolver sessions were in his own creative development.

Revolver: The Album in Context

Revolver was recorded between April and June 1966 and released on 5 August 1966 — the same day as The Beatles' final UK concert, at the Empire Pool, Wembley. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums ever made: a record that expanded the possibilities of what a pop album could be, sonically, lyrically, and conceptually.

Here, There And Everywhere occupies a particular place within Revolver's architecture. The album is, in many ways, a record of extremes: Tomorrow Never Knows at one end, with its tape loops and droning sitar and Lennon's voice processed through a Leslie speaker; Here, There And Everywhere at the other, with its acoustic intimacy and close harmonies and the sound of three people clicking their fingers in a room. The album needs both. The extremes define each other.

McCartney has said that Here, There And Everywhere is one of his favourite songs — a song he is most proud of. Given the competition, that is a significant statement. It was completed on 17 June 1966, the day after this session. It has been played at weddings, at funerals, and at every point in between. It is, by any measure, one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded in Studio Two at Abbey Road.

Key Facts: 16 June 1966

• Date: Thursday 16 June 1966
• Location: Studio Two, EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London
• Song: Here, There And Everywhere
• Album: Revolver (released 5 August 1966)
• Producer: George Martin
• Engineer: Geoff Emerick
• Takes recorded: 5–13 (nine takes)
• Basic track: McCartney (Epiphone Casino), Starr (drums), Harrison (Rickenbacker 12-string)
• Overdubs: McCartney bass (track 2); harmony vocals – Lennon, McCartney, Harrison (tracks 3 and 4, track 4 with finger clicks)
• Reduction mix: Take 13 reduced to take 14
• Lead vocal: McCartney, recorded with tape running slower (varispeeded)
• Guide vocal: Recorded by McCartney; later wiped
• Outtake released: Take 7, on Real Love single, 1996
• Song completed: 17 June 1966 (following day)
• First recording session: 14 June 1966 (takes 1–4)

Studio Two at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, St John's Wood, London — the room where Here, There And Everywhere was recorded across three sessions in June 1966, and where the majority of The Beatles' studio output was made between 1962 and 1969.

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