Geoff Emerick

Geoff Emerick was best known as the longtime engineer at Abbey Road Studios, where he worked on many of the Beatles' classic recordings. Born in 1946, he began his studio career as a disc-cutter, eventually becoming the assistant of longtime Abbey Road engineer Norman Smith; when Smith was promoted to the A&R department at EMI Records in early 1966, Emerick -- then just 20 years old -- was tapped to fill the vacated engineering position. His relative inexperience was viewed not as a handicap but as a major strength -- without any preconceived notions of how records were "properly" made, he was ideally suited to work with the Beatles, whose musical vision had already outstripped the limits of accepted studio craft. Like producer George Martin, Emerick brought an adventurous and experimental attitude to his work with the group which forever changed the ways in which pop albums are created, greatly expanding the horizons of studio recording and fully exploiting the unlimited potential of contemporary technology.

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