According to Geoff Emerick, who was the recording engineer on that session ("
Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles", pp. 126-28):
There was also a bit bit of stress during the recording of "Eleanor Rigby," though for an entirely different reason. After hearing Paul play this beautiful song on acoustic guitar, George Martin felt that the only accompaniment that was necessary was that of a double string quartet: four violins, two violas, and two cellos. Paul wasn't immediately enamored of the concept--he was afraid of it sounding too cloying, too "Mancini"--but George eventually talked him into it, assuring him he would write a string arrangement that would be suitable.
"Okay, but I want the strings to sound really biting," Paul warned as he signed off on the idea. I took note of what he said and began thinking of how to best accomplish that.
String quartets were traditionally recorded with just one or two microphones, placed high, several feet up in the air so that the sound of the bows scraping couldn't be heard. But with Paul's directive in mind, I decided to close-mic the instruments, which was a new concept. The musicians were horrified! One of them gave me a look of distain, rolled his eyes to the ceiling, and said under his breath, "You can't do that, you know."
His words shook my confidence and made me start to second-guess myself. But I carried on regardless, determined to at least hear what it sounded like.
We did one take with the mics fairly close, then on the next take I decided to get extreme and move the mics in really close--perhaps just an inch or so away from each instrument. It was a fine line; I didn't want to make the musicians so uncomfortable that the couldn't give their best performance, but my job was to achieve what Paul wanted. That was the sound he liked, and so that was the miking we used, despite the string players' unhappiness. To some degree, I could understand why they were so upset; they were scared of playing a bum note, and being under a microscope like that meant that any discrepancy in their playing was going to be magnified. Also, the technical limitations at the time were such that we couldn't easily drop in, so they had to play the whole song correctly from beginning to end every time.
Even without peering through the control room glass, I could hear the sound of the eight musicians sliding their chairs back before every take, so I had to keep going down there and moving the mics back in closer after every take; it was comic, really. In the end, the players did a good job, though they clearly were annoyed, so much so that they declined an invitation to listen to the playback. We didn't really care what they thought, anyway--we were pleased that we had come up with another new sound, which was really a combination of Paul's vision and mine.
It was during the Revolver sessions that I realized I simply couldn't rely on textbook recording techniques in terms of mic positioning and placement. The Beatles were demanding more, so much more, of both me and of the technology. We didn't know it at the time, but we were making tremendous advancements in the recording process.
So many textures and sounds from them ...
