Beatles engineer Ken Scott on White Album studio sessions & why Now and Then is "milking a dead cow”

In 1964, 16 year old Ken Scott landed a job as a tape operator at EMI Studios (later known as Abbey Road Studios). His first ever session was on side two of The Beatles' album, A Hard Day's Night, and his life was never the same.

“That's been this amazing life that I've had,” reflects the English record producer and engineer from his home in the UK, where at the time of interview, he is working on his speech after being awarded an MPG Special Recognition Award this year.

“The first session I'm ever working on is a Beatles session. The first session that I was the main engineer on is the Beatles. I'd never sat behind a mixing console before! And here I am with the biggest artists in the world. Insanity!” he laughs, shaking his head. 

“Then my first production ever is Hunky Dory with Mr. Bowie. I go on to manage a band in the States called Missing Persons, and we finished up selling 800,000 albums and playing in front of 183,000 people at a festival. It is the most ridiculous life ever,” he insists. 

“All old people say the same thing: it just feels like yesterday! It really doesn't seem anything like 60 years. My start was listening to Elvis Presley, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly on 78s on a wind up gramophone in the spare bedroom. These days, I'm at home mixing multi tracks for big name artists, going into the studio and doing Atmos mixes, doing sessions in Nashville and going around doing master classes and lectures throughout the world. It's insane,” he says humbly.

2024 celebrates Scott’s 60th year in the industry. In addition to being one of the five main engineers for The Beatles, he went on to engineer for Elton John, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Duran Duran, the Jeff Beck Group, Supertramp, and many more. 

His career spans decades and genres, he’s worked with some of the biggest names in music on iconic records, and has left an indelible mark on the landscape of recorded music. Despite his outstanding contribution to music and engineering and having produced hundreds of records that many consider to be the soundtracks to their lives, until his recent MPG Award, he had gone largely unrecognised.

“Believe me, I have had problems with people coming up to me and thanking me and saying, ‘Your music has been part of my life’,” he says of his music legacy, which he speaks of fondly with equal parts pride and disbelief – frequently recalling vivid memories with some of the most well known musicians in the world, yet without an ounce of braggadocio.

“I was doing something that I loved and I was doing it for myself, for no one else, and because of that, I feel guilty when they place so much importance on what I did in their lives. I eventually realised – hang on – I have to thank them as well. 

"The record-buyers have to be thanked because, let's face it, without the fans buying the music, I wouldn't have had the life that I did. They are almost more important than the act, because without them spending their well earned money, we wouldn't be doing what we were doing.”

Going back to being thrown in the deep end with The Beatles, Scott quickly went from working in the tape library to second engineer at EMI where he found himself winging it behind an enormous mixing desk. His first project in his new role was with The Beatles again on Your Mother Should Know. Scott, a natural storyteller, remembers the session like it was yesterday:

“It was terrifying!” he recalls. “I had no idea what I was doing. I knew that there were things on the board and I could push something up and it would make something louder, and pull it down and it'll make it quieter, but actually doing it was a whole different ball game. I'd watched some of the greats do it, and now it was my turn. It was scary, and luckily, the session was a write off! 

"We didn't get anything good. The Beatles had gone to an outside studio to record Your Mother Should Know, and Paul wanted to try a different arrangement of the song,” he explains, “and the new arrangement didn't work, so it didn't matter that I'd completely screwed it up. It was fine,” he laughs.

In his lectures today, Scott lets his students in on a little secret: as an engineer, 80% of the gig is about personality, not technical prowess. “It's how you get on with people, because they've got to trust you,” he nods. “And I can only guess that because I'd worked with The Beatles from side two of A Hard Day's Night all the way through to Rubber Soul, that they knew me well enough and they trusted me. A few days after that write-off session, I was doing the orchestra on I Am the Walrus, so yeah, it worked out,” he grins.

His association with The Beatles during The White Album sessions in particular marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Scott’s meticulous attention to detail and innovative recording techniques contributed significantly to the band's evolving sound, pushing the boundaries of what was possible in the studio. A handful of Beatles tracks that benefitted from Scott’s expertise include Lady Madonna, Hello, Goodbye, Hey Jude, The Fool on the Hill, Glass Onion, Helter Skelter, Birthday, Back in the U.S.S.R and While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

The Beatles’ The White Album sessions have long been painted as a difficult time for the band (rumours of a ‘no partners’ rule in the studio, surprise holidays taken during booked studio time, an engineer quitting, band members temporarily leaving, etc), which many believed put the wheels in motion for the fab four’s split. Scott is keen to set the record straight on these sessions, which he says were, for the most part, a joy, and certainly typical of any studio session he’d worked on with a group:

“There was lots of talk about how badly The Beatles were getting along at the time of doing The White Album, and I've always fought that because we had a blast. It was great fun. They weren't always at each other's throats. Yes, it happened every now and again. I've done two week projects where at some point or another, someone will lose their temper. It happens,” he shrugs.

“Being followed around by cameras everywhere puts a strain on one,” he considers. “The Beatles, with all of the mania that they had going on around them and then being followed around by cameras, that was pressure. To try and produce great music with that kind of pressure would have been very hard. The first movie was terrible. With the new version [The Beatles: Get Back], you could see that they were having a blast. Yes, at times they would lose it for a brief period of time, but it was soon forgotten and they moved on.”

Recording Hey Jude

As conversation moves to one of The Beatles’ most crowd-pleasing songs, Hey Jude, Scott clears up a common misconception about the recording of the classic. This was the first Beatles song to be recorded on eight-track recording equipment, which was recorded at Trident Studios in central London. It’s been reported that Scott and George Martin mixed the finished recording at Abbey Road.

“No, it was all done at Trident,” Scott clarifies. “We started to work on Hey Jude that first evening, and as usual with The Beatles, it was very much just working out the arrangement of the song. We got so far on it and then canned it for the evening, and came in the next day. So we're trying to do Hey Jude, and we do eventually get a basic track of it. That was really good. At this point at EMI Abbey Road, we will still only had four track.

“The first eight track studio in England was a startup studio called Trident in the middle of Soho, and The Beatles had heard so much about eight track recording from American artists. They wanted to try it. They booked three days at Trident studios, so they went there and they canned what we're done and just started from scratch. They record it and they get most of it on the first night. The second night, they put the orchestra on and the third day was for mixing it. 

"I did something that I wasn't supposed to do,” he admits. “I went down on their third night just to hear what they were doing. the engineer, Barry Sheffield said, ‘Sit down in the front there and we’ll play you the mix’. I sat down in front of the mixing console with this array of huge speakers and they played me the mix of Hey Jude and it was astounding. It was so good. It was the best I'd ever heard anything. It was loud. It was clear. It was brilliant. I thought, ‘Fine, I’ll go back to EMI,’ and they came back a couple of days later.”

As good as the mix sounded, the transfer of the Trident master tape to acetate proved problematic due to the recording sounding murky when played back on EMI's equipment.

“The tapes had arrived back at EMI Abbey Road,” he recalls. “They were cutting what were called playback acetates, and they were just 45s. That would last maybe seven or eight times of playing – that was the only way that artists, producers and arrangers could hear what they'd done in the studio because there were no cassettes, no CDs, no mp3 or anything like that,” he explains.

“You just had these records that were cut that would last seven or eight plays. So a bunch of those were being cut of Hey Jude and I went up to the cutting room to hear it. It sounded as if there were towels covering the front of the speakers. It was all very muffled. It didn't sound anything like it did at Trident. Now we've got a problem. I go back down to the control room and I'm sitting down there waiting for people to arrive. The first person to arrive was Sir George Martin and he says, ‘So how's it sound here?’ I sort of didn't say anything. He said, ‘You've been upstairs and heard it, right?’ I said, ‘Yes, I have’. He says, ‘So how does it sound?’ I said, ‘Not very good. It's completely lacking a high end’.

“At that point I think John was the first one in, and the way I remember it is George [Martin] turning to John and saying, ‘Ken thinks it sounds like shit’. Now that wasn't George Martin in any way, shape or form. John looks at me, and slowly but surely they all come in and they go downstairs to the studio. I see the five of them talking, and they look up at me every now and again in the control room. And it was very much, if looks could kill. I was thinking, ‘Oh, my God, this is it. They're going to listen to it, they're going to love it and I'm going to be out of a job’. 

"Anyway, they all come upstairs and George [Martin] says, ‘Okay, get the tape down’. So I sent John Smith, my system engineer, to bring the tape down. We play it… and they agreed with me. We spent the rest of that day EQing it to try and get something out of it, and that's what you still hear today. It was how we doctored it. The problem was, we couldn't mix it because we didn't have an eight track. We had to go with what had already been done at Trident, and that's what you hear today.”

Those listening closely (and loudly) to Hey Jude have picked up that in the song's final bridge section, John or Paul (no one is 100% sure) says, "Fucking hell!"

“It’s John,” Scott asserts with a smile, adding that the swear word’s inclusion in the final mix

was brought to his attention later. “I don't remember hearing it then, but what I understand from the people at Trident that were there when it happened was that John picked up a pair of headphones and put them on to do backing vocals. 

"They started to roll the tape and John put on a pair of headphones and they were way too loud. As he pulled them off and threw them on the ground, it was, “Oh fucking hell,” and that's what was left on there. Now, of course, the question in my mind has always been, they knew it was there. Did they just miss pulling it out? Or was it done intentionally and kept down just enough that the BBC would never hear it?”

Helter Skelter

Helter Skelter is famously reported to have been a particularly frenzied recording session, with some claiming that Harrision set fire to an ashtray that he ran around the studio with, and Starr later commenting that it was “total madness and hysterics in the studio”. The band did 18 takes lasting approximately five minutes each, with the last one featured on the original LP.

“I've seen that as well,” says Scott on the ashtray story. “I don't remember it, if it did actually happen. There are lots of things that transpired. The only thing that I remember was Paul saying he wanted it to be the loudest song ever recorded. I think The Who had claimed to be the loudest band ever, and Paul didn't want them to have that against their name. He wanted it against The Beatles’ name, so that's what we were aiming for.”

Scott suddenly recalls the tragic and unexpected way the song’s meaning was claimed to be interpreted by cult leader Charles Manson, who was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate. Manson said he felt guided by his interpretation of The Beatles' lyrics and adopted the term ‘Helter Skelter’ to describe an impending apocalyptic race war.

“I did find it very, very disturbing how Helter Skelter played such an important part in Charles Manson's life and what he believed,” Scott says sadly. “That whole thing about bringing down a certain race of people… it's about a bloody fairground ride,” he says, sounding exasperated now. “It had nothing political…there was nothing like that. But he took it in a completely different way. It was pretty scary knowing that I had even just a minor part of what transpired, thanks to him.”

Back to his memories (or as it turns out, lack of) of the recording session: “I was the engineer when Eric Clapton came in and played the guitar on While My Guitar Gently Weeps. That has become very significant in The Beatles’ history, because it was the first time an outside musician came in and played along with the band. I don't remember it at all!” he laughs. 

“Neither does Chris Thomas, who was George Martin's assistant, and he was the producer at that time because George was on holiday. He doesn't remember it. And John Smith, my assistant engineer at that time, does not remember it. We were in the centre of a storm, if you like, and there was so much going on. We had no idea that 60 years later, people would be asking about the sessions, so it's hardly surprising that we don't remember a lot of things. And that Helter Skelter story is one I certainly don't remember.”

Towards the end of the track, the song completely fades out, then gradually fades back in, fades back out partially, and finally fades back in quickly with three cymbal crashes and shouting from Starr, who famously threw his drumsticks down after the 18th take and screamed, "I got blisters on my fingers!" Scott says there are two versions as to how this went down:

“Chris Thomas has the story that Paul had fallen asleep, and I needed some help,” he says. “So I went and got Chris from wherever he was. He came in and it was his suggestion to fade out and fade back in again. We were still dealing with mono a lot of the time,” he says, explaining the backstory. “The White Album was the last album they did that was both mono and stereo, and from then on Abbey Road was just stereo,” he explains.

“All they were interested in was mono and then the stereo would be done sometime later without them around, and quite often things would be forgotten that happened during the mono mix. Songs like She's Leaving Home were sped up because Paul liked to hear his voice slightly higher and thinner than at normal speed, but when they did the stereo mix later, they forgot that it had been sped up, so it was done at normal speed. So you can compare the mono and the stereo and see they're completely different. That kind of thing happened a lot.

“So because there was a deadline for The White Album – because there'd been so much publicity about Apple Records and they had to release a record on a certain date – there was a 36 hour session to get it finished. I believe it was actually during that 36 hour session we mixed the mono version of Helter Skelter and then we moved on to the stereo,” he realises.

“The way I remember it is that Paul was sitting by me – he hadn't fallen asleep at all. He was there. I set up the stereo mix – basically the mono mix but just putting things in some different places. We got to the end, and I fade out exactly the same way as I did for the mono, and when I get to the bottom, Paul says to me, ‘Okay, now fade back up again’. I look at him and he says, ‘Fade back up’. So I start to fade it back up again. When I get to the top, he said, ‘Okay, now fade it down again,’ and I fade it down again. I'm just going down and he says, ‘Okay, now bring it up really quick’. So I bring it up at, "I’ve got blisters on my fingers," and he says, ‘Put it down’. 

"I pulled it down quickly and I just looked at him and said, ‘What the fuck was that all about?’ He said, ‘Well, we've been getting lots of fan mail saying that there are differences between the mono and the stereo, so we thought we would actually make differences and that way, we might sell twice as many records’. That's how that happened. It's always, ‘follow the money’.”

The Beatles’ sound got more and more experimental (and psychedelic) as the years went by. Starting around 1965 with the Rubber Soul sessions, The Beatles increasingly used the studio as an instrument in itself, spending long hours experimenting and writing. Goodbye, Love Me Do, hello Revolution 9.

“I lapped up their experimentation,” Scott enthuses. “I learned because of their experimentation.

As I said, when I started with them on Your Mother Should Know, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Working with The Beatles, they were a one-off band, they had no monetary problems, they had no time problems, and they wanted everything to sound different every time they would record it, so that gave me the freedom as a trainee engineer, which I considered myself at that time, to experiment. 

"I always knew that I could completely fuck up with them. I could use completely the wrong mics in completely the wrong place, screw up reverbs, screw up compression, all of these different things, and there was as much chance of them walking up the stairs, hearing it and saying, ‘That sounds like shit,’ as it was them walking up the stairs and saying, ‘That sounds like shit, but I like it, we'll use it’. 

"The freedom that that gives you to learn your art is astounding. I don't think anyone ever has, or ever will, have the freedom that I had to learn my craft.”

Now and Then

Dubbed "the last Beatles song," Now and Then was released at the end of 2023 - a psychedelic soft rock ballad that Lennon wrote and recorded around 1977 as a solo home demo but that was left unfinished. The song was completed by his surviving bandmates McCartney and Starr, using overdubs and guitar tracks by Harrison from the abandoned 1995 sessions, while Lennon's voice was extracted from the demo using the machine-learning-assisted audio restoration technology commissioned by director Peter Jackson for his 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back.

Headliner asks Scott’s opinion of Now and Then: “So you want to talk about David Bowie, do you?” he answers quickly.

“That's what I think about it. It's more to do with the fact that I know that George was not particularly fond of finishing it off back in the day. To me, it's kind of milking a dead cow. It's putting something together to sell more records, kind of thing. It's that, ‘If there are differences between the mono and stereo, we may be able to sell twice as many records; If we put out a new single that we put together, it doesn't matter if it's not quite as good as our old stuff, but it will boost the interest again, so maybe we'll sell more records’. 

"I almost get that feeling, and it could be I could be completely wrong,” he says, holding up his hands.”But that's what turns me against it.”

Scott continues to work to this day, mixing in Dolby Atmos, hosting master classes, and is a senior lecturer at Leeds School of Arts. During his career, Scott has witnessed significant changes in technology and the music industry. He explains how these changes have influenced your approach to production:

“Very little. I'm still very old school. I tend to treat Pro Tools more as a tape machine and do it the same way. If I get a particular sound using a couple of mics and if I get the sound I want, I will mix both of those together on the one track. That's the sound that I chose at that time and I will stand by that sound. Whereas no one wants to make a decision these days, so they'll keep everything separate – they'll have the room mic, and they'll have the close up mic on separate things. 

"Then when it comes time to mix, they struggle to get that sound back again. They don't want to commit because maybe, just maybe, they can make it a little better when you mix. As far as I'm concerned, if you've got the sound that you wanted when you're recording, that's it, then stick with it. You don't need to cover all bases just in case you might be able to get it better. You won't.”

Despite being someone he would consider slightly set in his ways in terms of his approach to production, Scott has, however, fully embraced working in Dolby Atmos. “That was a whole different ball game for me,” he says. 

“I do like the advent of Atmos, I think it is very good and needs to be thought of as a whole new way of listening. I don't like the idea of taking a song and mixing it in stereo, and then for Atmos, you just take that stereo mix and you just put things in different places. To me, if you're going to go into that whole area of sound being all around you, then you need to think about it totally differently.”

Headliner enquiries as to if Scott has heard any of The Beatles’ albums that have been remixed in Dolby Atmos, particularly songs he engineered in an immersive context?

“I will be honest with you. I haven't heard any of them in Atmos,” he answers. “Quite honestly, I don't particularly want to hear them. There are things about the new mixes that I know the Beatles didn't want in there and it bothers me.”

One of the things that has set Scott apart during his career is not just his technical skill but his willingness to experiment, including accommodating any of The Beatles’ more unusual requests in the studio:

“With The Beatles, you always had to be very careful about what you'd say to them, because you might be joking and they take it seriously,” he discloses. “By the side of the control room in Abbey Road there used to be this very small room that housed a four track machine. 

"It was almost like a broom closet – very small. We were recording a song that didn't finish up going on The White Album, a song called Not Guilty (one of George's songs), and he was having difficulty getting the feeling that he wanted to get from his vocal. So we were trying lots of different ways of letting him hear it and letting him sing it to try and get that feel.

“During one playback, because we were trying some silly things, I turned to John and I said, ‘The way things are going, you guys are gonna want to record in there next,’ and pointed to this very small room. I meant it as a joke. He didn't think it was funny. The next day, he comes in and says, ‘Okay, we're going to record a new song. It's called Yer Blues, and we're going to record it in there – and he pointed to that little room.

“We had to fit in all four Beatles, their instruments and a live vocal, all in that small room to record Yer Blues, and you had to make it work. You've got two guitars and bass being picked up on the drum mics – there was really no separation between anything really. But it worked. You had to make it work and it still is one of my favourite drum sounds. That's what they were after all the time – a different sound.

“When dealing with The Beatles, you’d go through all of those kinds of things all of the time,” he says as a parting thought. “I can't tell you the number of times I was called up to the manager's office and given a talking to because I'd done something which was against studio policy. But if you've got the biggest band in the world saying, ‘We're going to do this,’ you can't turn around and say, ‘No, we're not – it's against protocol,’ you have to go along with it and suffer the consequences later. Dealing with interesting situations was very much a part of working with The Beatles,” he smiles.

Let It Be images via Disney Plus.