Recording
"I Am the Walrus" was the first studio recording made after the death of the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein in August 1967. The basic backing track featuring the Beatles was released in 1996 on Anthology 2. George Martin arranged and added orchestral accompaniment that included violins, cellos, horns, clarinet and a 16-piece choir. Paul McCartney said that Lennon gave instructions to Martin as to how he wished the orchestration to be scored, including singing most of the parts as a guide. A large group of professional studio vocalists named The Mike Sammes Singers, took part in the recording as well, variously singing "Ho-ho-ho, hee-hee-hee, ha-ha-ha", "oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumper!", "everybody's got one" and making a series of shrill whooping noises. The recording is another Beatles song with an unrelated coda, in the shape of new parts of strings, new choruses and the sampling of a radio in its fade-out.
The dramatic reading in the mix towards the end of the song is a few lines of Shakespeare's King Lear (Act IV, Scene VI), which were added to the song direct from an AM radio Lennon was fiddling with that happened to be receiving the broadcast of the play on the BBC Third Programme. The excerpt begins at Act IV, Sc vi,II lines 224-25, most pointedly (given Lennon's problematic history with his own father) where the disguised Edgar talks to his estranged and maliciously blinded father the Earl of Gloucester: Glo: "Now good sir, what are you? Edg: A most poor man, made tame to fortune's blows." Edgar then kills Oswald the steward of Goneril (who cries out "Slave, thou has't slain me"). Edgar describes the dead Oswald in words heard in the song's coda as a "serviceable villain." Gloucester asks "What, is he dead?" and Edgar replies "Sit ye down father rest you."
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Famous quotes containing the word recording:
“Self-expression is not enough; experiment is not enough; the recording of special moments or cases is not enough. All of the arts have broken faith or lost connection with their origin and function. They have ceased to be concerned with the legitimate and permanent material of art.”
—Jane Heap (c. 1880–1964)
“Write while the heat is in you.... The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I didn’t have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)