Geoff Emerick, the audio engineer responsible for recording some of the greatest albums the Beatles ever made, has died. Emerick suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 72.
Emerick was something of a boy wonder, serving as engineer on the Beatles’ Revolver at only the age of 20. He was 15 when he first starting working for EMI Records, a label where he would become one of the most respected audio engineers in history.
On Revolver’s final song, “Tomorrow Never Knows,” John Lennon requested that Emerick turn his voice into “the Dalai Lama singing on a mountain,” Emerick said in a Variety interview last year. Emerick was instrumental on several of the Beatles albums that came after Revolver, from Sgt. Pepper’s to Abbey Road, despite the fact that Emerick temporarily quit during the famously combative White Album sessions.
RIP @GeoffEmerick one of finest and most innovative engineers to have graced a recording studio. I grew up with him as he worked so much with my father. We have all been touched by the sounds he helped create on the greatest music ever recorded.
— Giles Martin (@mashupmartin) October 3, 2018
Giles Martin, whose father George Martin worked with Emerick throughout the 1960s as the Beatles’ producer, called Emerick “one of the finest and most innovative engineers to have graced a recording studio… We have all been touched by the sounds he helped create on the greatest music ever recorded,” Martin said on Twitter.
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