Blog Notes
Ed laid down a drum track for the uber-collaborative “Austin to Abbey Road.” Kaye, Alan, Bobby, Veg, and Ed each get a verse telling the tale of the gang starting with an idea and ending up at Abbey Road.
Day 3 begins with Bobby on drums as the recording of “From Austin to Abbey Road” gets fully underway. Slight glitch with the instrument rentals - they took back the Höfner bass! Actually, they took everything back, which is fine for everything… except the Höfner bass. Day 3 is also Robert’s birthday, with a bonus strange sensation of being in a country that couldn’t care less that today is July 4. It’s one thing when “we” don’t care beyond the day off work and outdoor grilling and fireworks. It’s rather more strange when you have to explain to people what’s so special about the date.
This song started out as a set of chord changes and melody hastily recorded by Ed into a laptop using GarageBand. Ed wanted to write a song on the flight over to London to capture the joy of the event but he soon realized that the song would be better if everyone did their own verse.
The final arrangement was worked out at Bobby's house in Bishop just before the transatlantic flight. Just before leaving Austin, Ed recorded backing tracks to a click track at 5AM consisting of acoustic guitar, drum beat, bass, and a guide vocal counting out the changes. These tracks were brought to Abbey Road and the crew got together to go over all the lyrics written.
The verses were written, in order, by Kaye, Bobby, Veg, Alan, Veg, and Bobby with Ed singing the refrain. We dubbed in the vocals and Ed added a piano track and then added all three pianos to the section at the end. Bobby laid down a drum track and the last day of recording.
Back in Austin, Ed brought in Brian Standefer to add cello to the song. Les and Ed created the sound effects for the intro and then Ed added a rhythm guitar track. The announcement and piano chord insert were the last bits before doing the final mix done by Les and Ed at 5AM.