“Only A Northern Song” animation
A home-made animation of “Only A Northern Song” a psychadelic song written by George Harrison and published on Yellow Submarine soundtrack
“Only A Northern Song” was recorded on 13 February, 1967, with overdubs added on 14 February and 20 April, during the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions. It was recorded using two 4-track tape machines, allowing eight tracks for the complex arrangement of the song, a method not common at the time in recording at Abbey Road. However, problems arose to getting both 4-track machines to begin playback at the exact same time, causing difficulties mixing in stereo.
Therefore only a “fake stereo”, or Duophonic mix was created from the mono mix to appear on the original stereo release of Yellow Submarine, and the song was one of only seven mono tracks released in the 2009 remastered Stereo Box Set (the only mono track released on the 2009 release of Yellow Submarine), instead of the unfavoured “fake stereo” mix. This complex arrangement involves an unconventional musical form and unusual instrumentation, including distorted trumpet played by Paul McCartney, Harrison’s reverbed organ, and a glockenspiel played by John Lennon.
Harrison himself described the song as “a joke relating to Liverpool, Holy City in the North of England. In addition the song was copyrighted to Northern Songs Ltd. which I didn’t own”.
[Source: Wikipedia]
