Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [VINYL]

Product Information

DB - I found EMI really pleasant – more musical, less technical. When you’re working in a factory, as I was before, there are production commitments, they needed 8 sides cut a day. I’d get in trouble as I didn’t produce any sides, but I was spending time working directly with clients. But EMI was a recoding studio, and it was all about the music. You could spend a day with a client and it was looked on as a very positive thing. They accepted the fact that clients would sit in while the album was cut. It was part of the deal, but in the other factory situations it was considered a pain. DB - In the end, RCA decided to close the factory and I was sent to EMI, as I was told they might have a position for me. I now had quite a bit of experience. When I arrived, EMI said they’d heard about my reputation, and were offering me a job. And I said, “Um, what have you heard?”

SGT. PEPPER - Beatles Collecting Guide SGT. PEPPER - Beatles Collecting Guide

DB – When I started mastering in 1971, I was told to leave the recordings alone – no EQ or other changes allowed! The priority was to transfer the audio on to the vinyl without distortion. And if you have a good clean vinyl of a traditionally cut record, you’ve got a bit of gold there, because they don’t age. Vinyl is a very accurate physical representation of the audio modulations etched into it. My father was an American advertising executive assigned to Japan Air Lines, and had been transferred to Yokohama. And my mother was a bit of a bohemian - born in Paris during the 1920’s, her parents were members of the Lost Generation. She was happy to be in Japan, but realized we still needed a connection to home. So one hot summer day, we rode a crowded train to a Tokyo theater specializing in American movies. And so, it also began for Don Bartley. One of the top sound engineers in Australia, Don first heard Sgt. Pepper’s…. upon its release in 1967, and decided then and there to enter the music business. As a result,, he eventually came to master what many consider the “holy grail” of audiophile Beatles records: the “Audio-5 Sgt. Pepper’s”. DB – After a couple of years on the job at EMI, management called me into a meeting. They presented me with these tapes. They said they were special tapes from Abbey Road, and they wanted to produce an audiophile version of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. I was amazed, and said to myself, “This is me? I’m going to work on this album?” It was like a dream coming true. I also mastered an AC/DC project for the Albert group. Ted Albert attended the session and spent time with me while I mastered the album. I also mastered a direct to disc recording one weekend – Crossfire, Direct to Disc. It was very successful, did very well, and it was an exciting process. Charles Fisher produced that one as well.

Fewer than 500 copies of the Audio-5 album were made. This is fewer than the Nimbus Supercut production run, making it one of the rarest Sgt. Pepper’s… factory pressings in existence. It was never available at retail outlets and was sold only for “cash in hand” at the hi-fi show. And its audiophile provenance makes it all the more desirable. DB - My first job was a Van Morrison best of compilation, and we had to put the master together as well as cut the master lacquers. I had already been editing tape at home, so I gave it a go. Richard said, “no, it’s not good enough” and told me to do it again. He pointed out the level issues and other aspects to me, and then how to do it right. It was a great learning process. The album was released and was quite popular. The facility was then bought by Columbia and became CBS records. Not much difference, but there was a bit more diverse product coming through. I had built my own amp, mixer and speakers, so I was already a minor hi-fi buff. But it really got me thinking that I want to get into this business, this process. It was a life changing experience. I thought, “There’s something going on there I want to know more about.” I had albums before that – but this one came along, and it was a combination of everything I had been listening to. Such a clever production - it grabbed me. Inspirational is the word. I worked for the Sydney Water Board in their electronic section as a cadet design engineer, looking after two-way radios and telemetry systems. It was quite interesting, actually. It was quite advanced for the 1960s. One day, a component salesman I knew stopped by and said “I was talking to a guy who is looking for someone to help in the mastering department of their record plant – would you find that interesting?” So I went and met Richard Harvey. It was a position in the mastering rooms for international releases from Columbia, Polydor and Warners, as well as some local product. At the time, they had Ampex tape machines, Neumann lathes and Westrex cutters – one was a valve room, and the other was a transistor room. BW: So moving on to the Audio-5 Sgt. Pepper, what was that day like – when you first received the tapes?

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DB – Yeah, for me it was fantastic, because it was one of the very first albums I bought. It was the stereo version, and in fact, I still have that copy (laughs). I heard it for the first time in 1967, and I was mesmerized. At the time, I was working for the government as an electronics technician in training. I listened to this incredible sound coming off that record, and said ‘Wow, what is this?” I was fascinated, and I thought to myself, “I want to do this for a living!” So eventually I got a job at the Australian Record Company. I told my parents about my new position, and they said “Oh no! A government job is very secure!” As well, my school careers adviser had suggested being a train driver, or bus driver instead (laughs). Thus, a lifelong appreciation of the Beatles started for me. Yellow Submarine is one of their more underappreciated albums, but it is still my favorite to this day. I listen to it every few months without fail. The vinyl records at the time were high quality – if you had a good pressing and a good system, it was an amazing representation of what was going on in the performance, and what was meant to be released. Vinyl in those days was capable of very high quality reproduction. Which it still is today.One rare version has been out of reach: the Nimbus Supercut pressing, said to be one of the best. But in the course my research, I came across a lesser-known Australian audiophile release from 1983, the EMI Audio-5. I have come to realize that, from a sound quality perspective, this may be the most valuable and best sounding of them all. And when I worked at EMI in Australia, there was an engineer there who had worked at Abbey Road at that time, named Richard Lush – I think he was the original assistant engineer on Sgt. Pepper’s…. He said everything for the original was done in mono, and fully designed around a mono release. They had spent two to three weeks mixing it for mono, and just as they were sending it off, someone came running down from the office and said ‘by the way, we need a stereo mix.’

Those tapes were one generation from the absolute original, and they sounded so good - clean, quiet - just superb, really. They were very nice to work with. For the half speed, I was able to run the 30ips original at 15ips, so the system worked very well to accommodate the dynamic range and frequency response on the tape.DB – They were quarter inch 30 IPS tapes. I was amazed at how it corresponded with that first record I had been listening to. I thought it would be more open and detailed, but there was very little difference in terms of those early vinyl recordings, which is a testament to how good they were. That’s the thing about this album – how well it was recorded and produced. And how the tape sounded like the original vinyl issue – there was so little difference. The tape was nearly identical. DB – It’s more artistically correct, and quite a nice atmospheric effect. Whereas with the early Rubber Soul it’s an extreme technical pan, and it just sits in place.