Scribbles in the Margin: Here, There & Everywhere by Geoff Emerick & Howard Massey

These days I can't go home for lunch. It's kind of a bummer. No puppy snuggles mid-day and no clearly defined lunch time can really wear a girl down. Especially on those not so fun days of endless phone calls, "I-know-better-than-you" clients and other assorted designer related hassles. Fun lunch bag not with standing, I really miss going home for my mid-day meal. BUT, the new lunch time has one amazing perk...I have time to read. A LOT of time to read. If you figure it takes me 20 minutes to heat my lunch and eat it, that gives me 40 whole minutes of reading time each day. This translates into roughly 20-30+ pages per day, it is so awesome. Time to read...at work, who would have guessed!

A few weeks ago I finished off The Secret Supper by Javier Sierra, which by all standards was "eh". It wasn't the best thing ever, but I've read worse.(Great Gatsby, I'm looking at you.) What's been knocking my socks off lately is Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles by Geoff Emerick, ghost written by Howard Massey. But before we take one more step forward it is imperative that you understand one thing...the Beatles are my favorite band. Ever. I love all sorts of music and artists but the Beatles are the first band I've ever loved with all my nerdy little heart. When my CD's got stolen last summer the only ones that I've made a concentrated effort to replace have been the 12 disks (British Versions only please) that comprised my Beatles collection. So now that you understand my unmitigated bias, but please believe me when I say this book is pretty damn awesome.



Unlike a lot of stuff about the Beatles (or any book about a celebrity, band or artist), the tone isn't that of a gossipy expose. It focuses on the one thing that often gets passed over in favor of tales of larger than life personalities and the implosion of the one of the most popular bands of the 60's...the music. As the EMI sound engineer for Revolver to The White Album (and as an 16 year old assistant as early as With the Beatles) Emerick is uniquely qualified to tell the story how the Beatles found, created and explored their sound . From his view of their first recording session to his years recording with Paul McCartney as a solo artist, Emerick makes the technical information flow in an interesting and easy to understand way and lightens the tone of the book with impressions of the band and their entourage, memories of the recording sessions and the clear story of just HOW and WHY those LP's ended up sounding they way they did. It isn't the book for everyone, heck it's probably not the book for most people. But if reading about the technical aspects of music recording during the 60's sounds like fun or if you just really, really like the Beatles this is a pretty good pick.