Strawberry Fields Forever (Vee-Jay Remix)

[Tex]

Although I think we can all agree that George Martin pulled off a minor miracle by merging together two takes with completely different instrumentation, tempi, and KEYS(!) to create the final edit of Strawberry Field Forever

I actually think this is a somewhat Beatles myth.

Before Martin even met the Beatles he would have known the direct correlation of tempo/pitch to the tape speed. During Revolver he would have learned this in more detail such a specific line frequency changes to change pitch to certain keys because you have to be able to overdub hard tuned instruments onto pitch altered backing tracks (not sure they did that specifically though) and those altered backing would HAVE to set to some standard pitch even if not the original one. Voices are different you can sing in relative pitch to any speed backing track.

So with "Strawberry Fields Forever" Martin would have KNOWN that the lower pitch and lower tempo take 26 could have been sped up to somewhat match the original take 7. I suspect that was always the plan. They were NEVER going to release "Strawberry Fields Forever" in it's slow incarnation like we hear on bootlegs it was always going to be sped up somewhat.

The "miracle" was really that both version's could be matched so well. The "maybe, i'll try" became an "OMG, it works!" moment.

[itslefty]

I heard George Martin speak at USC not long before he passed away. He mentioned a conversation he'd had with John Lennon in the late seventies where John was telling George about all the modern advancements that had been made in mixing and how he'd love to go back and have all the Beatles' songs remixed. George Martin asked in horror, remembering all the strenuous hours he'd put into SSF, "Even Strawberry Fields?" And Lennon replied, "ESPECIALLY Strawberry Fields!" George said he was rather annoyed to hear John say that.