Quick Review: 'Here, There and Everywhere'

Geoff Emerick’s "Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles" is a must read if you’re interested in the history of audio fidelity and strongly recommended if you’re a hardcore Beatles fan. But beyond that, it’s an uneven biography that will leave casual music fans frustrated. 

Emerick’s story focuses mostly on a remarkable period when he lands at EMi as  a teen-age staffer and within a few years finds himself engineering The Beatles as producer George Martin’s right-hand man. The story is as much about Emerick’s revolutionary contributions to The Beatles sound as it is a look at the growth and dysfunction of the world’s greatest rock band. 

Sounds good, right?

Howard Massey -- author of the “Behind the Glass” series of books on studios producers and engineers -- is a co-writer but I’m not sure what he brings to the equation. The book is rich in detail but there are far too many elements that wreak of what we in the journalism business call “dumping your notebook.” In other words, there’s not much editing or weeding of the weaker stories recollections of minor events that do nothing to move the story along. 

It’s as if it's not enough that Emerick is taking the science of recording to new levels and that Massey keeps pestering him to share anything remotely interesting or confrontational that occurred behind closed doors at Abbey Road Studios. So, John Lennon, George Harrison, Martin -- and, of course, Yoko Ono --- become Emerick’s foils in small disputes here and there over the course of a half-dozen legendary albums. Even-keeled and hard-working Paul McCartney ends up the hero in Emerick's eyes. It’s no surprise he and Emerick collaborated for many years with Wings. 

While “Here, There and Everywhere” is pondersome in spots, Emerick’s meteoric rise from teen apprentice to key contributor to some of the most groundbreaking music in history is nothing to sneeze at. In an age of pristine digital recording on laptops, it's nice to go back in time when analog, mono and adventurous people like Emerick combined to move pop music forward by leaps and bounds.