ROB WARMOWSKI: Hi. We're here at AES 2006, and you know, when you come to a show like this, you'd run into people that you'd never expect to run into. I ran into Geoff Emerick, legendary recording engineer and Howard Massey, author, who collaborated on a book by Geoff Emerick called "Here, There, and Everywhere", which documents Geoff's time recording with The Beatles, going way back in history in some of the most important recordings ever made in rock and roll. Geoff, thank you very much for speaking with us.

GEOFF EMERICK: Sure. It's a pleasure.

ROB WARMOWSKI: I have a question. You know, this book is, I mean what's the time frame that this book covers.

GEOFF EMERICK: Well, the time frame comes from when I was 15 years old and started EMI Studios, which is now Abbey Road Studios, and through the whole Beatle, clearing up into the whole Abbey Road basically, and --

HOWARD MASSEY: And there's a chapter on "Band on the Run".

GEOFF EMERICK: Yeah. Band on the Run.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Oh. "Band on the Run" too?

GEOFF EMERICK: Yeah, and so reaching the spot whatever I had at that time and then with the synopsis of my life from there to now. You know, there's room for more books I guess.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Was EMI equipped with multitracks by the time you started working there?

GEOFF EMERICK: The four-track was just sort of speaking in, and my only recordings, some of them were just straight stereo.

ROB WARMOWSKI: What kind of compression there you were commonly using at that time?

GEOFF EMERICK: Compressors were Altecs and the units were Fairchild 660's that I'm sure everyone knows.

ROB WARMOWSKI: And looking back to the earliest times when you were working with the Beatles and George Martin, what would you say, in terms of contribution, you know, behind the mixing desk, what's the one thing that pops out at you that's something that really you can point to all these years and remember that moment?

GEOFF EMERICK: Well I mean the big contribution was when I was promoted to being their recording engineer which was the first album I've engineered was "Revolver", and my sort of synopsis of the whole thing was I didn't want to record in fashion that they were fed up with recording in the normal way, the night here, the night there, blah, blah, blah. So, I actually sort of changed the whole system and I'd say into my head, so I experimented in mic techniques which was basically putting the mics close to the instruments and inside the instruments, and when we cut "Tomorrow Never Knows", John Lennon wanted to sounded like how the Dalai Lama singing on a mountaintop, you know, 50 miles away, and then, you know, I saw the Leslie speakers spinning in front of me. I thought well if we could change the circuitry and put the vocal through that then we can get a different sound for the voice, and it all started from there, and John was sort of won over for me. I was like 19 at that time, and they did not know and then think at that time that Norman Smith, the original engineer, was not going to be there any more, so that was certainly it.

ROB WARMOWSKI: I remember hearing some story about having to putting a microphone in water.

GEOFF EMERICK: Oh yeah. That was from the "Yellow Submarine", and you know I'd do anything to keep them happy. You know, when John wanted to sing underwater and blah, blah, blah, you know, so we ended up putting a 56 in a cauldron and into, you know, a bottle of water. It didn't really work, but --

ROB WARMOWSKI: Did he keep the track? Was it...?

GEOFF EMERICK: No. I don't think so. It was too muffled.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Howard, how did you and Geoff meet?

HOWARD MASSEY: I interviewed Geoff for EQ magazine, and we just kind of hit it off and stayed in touch and then, I don't know, a year or two later, Geoff [OVERLAPPING]

GEOFF EMERICK: I like the way Howard wrote the most. I was always wary of doing interviews and Howard was such a great writer and that's how we really came together.

HOWARD MASSEY: So, when he asked me if I'd like to do a book with him, it took me about a tenth of a second to say, "Yes, please."

ROB WARMOWSKI: [LAUGHING]

HOWARD MASSEY: And we spent five years working on this book. It's a very long time.

ROB WARMOWSKI: That was going to be my next question. Five years, huh? An incredible amount of material I'm sure, having to go through and through at all. Was there access to the any of the equipment? Any access to any of the information, records? Was that an issue?

GEOFF EMERICK: No. [INDISCERNIBLE] I didn't want to get involved with all that. It's not all that sort of technical, and it's not in depth with regard to that sort of stuff. What we did there was to bring on my old assistant, you know, there was Richard Lush who came from Australia and John Smith came down from Canada, and we've sat there and just reminisced and reminisced, and you got to imagine and remember that working on those albums at that time were those moments that you read about in the book that are so indelible in your mind that even if you forget, you can't forget them. You know, you really cannot.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Well, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.

GEOFF EMERICK: Yeah. A pleasure.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Geoff Emerick.

GEOFF EMERICK: It was great.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Howard Massey. Gearwire 2006.