[NJARC] Norman Smith, 85, Engineer for the Beatles

[John Ruccolo]

Hi Folks,

Some of you may have seen this already, but I just
found out today.


> Norman Smith, 85, Engineer for the Beatles
> 
> The New York Times via Dow Jones
> 
>   Publication Date: Friday March 07, 2008 
>   The Arts/Cultural Desk; Section B; Page 6; Column 
>   c. 2008 New York Times Company 
>  
>   By DOUGLAS SCHORZMAN 
> 
>   Norman Smith, who was the lead recording engineer
> for every Beatles song
> through 1965 and who as a producer helped usher in
> an era of psychedelic rock
> when he discovered the band Pink Floyd, died Tuesday
> in East Sussex, England. He
> was 85. 
> 
>   The cause was cancer, his wife, Eileen, said. Mr.
> Smith, originally a
> dance-hall and jazz musician, came to the recording
> business relatively late,
> taking an entry-level job at EMI Recording Studios
> on Abbey Road in London in
> 1959, when he was 36. But within a few years he
> played critical roles for two of
> the biggest-selling bands in history. 
> 
>   Later, in the early 1970s, he had a moment in the
> spotlight himself, scoring a
> Top 5 hit in the United States with his "Oh Babe,
> What Would You Say," singing
> under the name Hurricane Smith. 
> 
>   Mr. Smith worked his way through the EMI hierarchy
> at a time when there was a
> division between technical personnel and frontline
> engineers, who were required
> to wear ties and jackets. (Reacting in part to this
> buttoned-down style, the
> Beatles nicknamed him "Normal.") In his role, Mr.
> Smith was more focused on
> capturing performances than on fiddling with tubes
> and wires. 
> 
>   "I was such an admirer of his musical prowess,"
> said Malcolm Addey, a
> recording engineer and colleague of Mr. Smith's at
> EMI. "He really knew it
> inside out, as a player and arranger." 
> 
>   Mr. Smith was the engineer on duty when the
> Beatles came into EMI studios for
> their first sound test, in 1962. The relationship
> would become very close, but
> it did not start so smoothly. 
> 
>   "First impressions of the group coming into the
> studio were not very great, in
> point of fact," Mr. Smith said in an interview
> in"Recording the Beatles," the
> definitive studio history of the group, by Brian
> Kehew and Kevin Ryan. "I mean,
> 'Here comes another scrappy group.' But I must say
> that I was taken with their
> hairdos because we hadn't seen anything quite like
> them." 
> 
>   Under the producer George Martin, it was Mr.
> Smith's role to choose the
> equipment and techniques used to capture individual
> sounds in the studio and
> then to weave them into a finished recording. In the
> Beatles' case, he favored
> sounds that were more stark than those typically
> heard in the ornamented and
> reverberation-drenched songs on popular radio. 
> 
>   "Norman thought the actual Beatles' sound, playing
> together in the room, was
> great, and he wanted to preserve that," Mr. Kehew
> said. "And that was really
> different from other records at the time." 
> 
>   His approach made its mark on a remarkable stretch
> of hit songs from 1962
> until early 1966. They included "I Want to Hold Your
> Hand," "A Hard Day's
> Night," "Help!" "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It
> Out" -- all crisp and
> energetic recordings that were increasingly
> experimental. 
> 
>   In the last full album he worked on with the
> Beatles, "Rubber Soul," in 1965,
> Mr. Smith helped the band members lay the groundwork
> for the increasingly
> radical studio performances they would feature on
> later LPs like "Revolver"
> (1966) and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"
> (1967). One "Rubber Soul"
> breakthrough was the use of a sitar on the song
> "Norwegian Wood." 
> 
>   After Mr. Martin left EMI in 1966, Mr. Smith
> succeeded him as a senior
> producer. He scouted and immediately signed the
> experimental group Pink Floyd to
> a contract and produced its first two albums, "Piper
> at the Gates of Dawn" and
> "Saucerful of Secrets," both recognized as
> definitive works of psychedelic rock.
> Mr. Smith also produced another art-rock band, the
> Pretty Things. 
> 
>   Norman A. Smith was born on Feb. 22, 1923, and
> reared in Edmonton, North
> London. He was trained as a glider pilot in the
> Royal Air Force during World War
> II but did not see combat. Afterward, he worked day
> jobs and formed a band, the
> Bobby Arnold Quintet, in which he played mostly
> drums and vibes and performed in
> local clubs and dance halls, a practice he continued
> in his early years at EMI,
> Mr. Addey said. 
> 
>   At age 50, Mr. Smith embarked on a solo singing
> career, taking the stage name
> Hurricane from a movie title. His hit, "Oh Babe,
> What Would You Say," was a song
> he had written and hoped to sell but ended up
> recording himself at the urging of
> a producer, Mr. Addey said. 
> 
>   Besides his wife of 62 years, Mr. Smith is
> survived by his son, Nick, also a
> recording engineer; his daughter, Dee Smith, a
> dancer and dance instructor; and
> a grandson. 
> 
>   Toward the end of his life, Mr. Smith was
> gratified to be getting attention
> from new generations of Beatles fans, Mrs. Smith
> said. Mr. Kehew traced much of
> this renewed attention to a fascination with "the
> scene behind the making of the
> record." 
> 
>   "The record itself has become more important than,
> say, the Maharishi or dogs
> or wives," Mr. Kehew said. "And the people behind
> the scenes had almost as much
> a hand in creating those sounds as the Beatles
> themselves." 
> 
> 
>   (END) 
> 
> 



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