(Credits: Far Out / Associated Press)
Tue 6 January 2026 12:00, UK
The Beatles have played their tunes in bizarre places, on rooftops in front of thousands of fans, in India with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and in seedy underground clubs in Hamburg, but how about a broom closet?
OK, you got me, that might be a slight exaggeration, but their method for recording the track ‘Yer Blues’ included getting as up-close and personal as possible, and the story has trickled down from Ken Scott, legendary British record producer and engineer, who started his career at Abbey Road Studios at the age of 16. The ‘Yer Blues’ incident would turn out to be one of the most bizarre days he experienced at the office.
“We were doing one of George [Harrison’s] vocals on a track called ‘Not Guilty’, which finished up not being used for The White Album,” Scott told American YouTuber Rick Beato. He went on, smiling, “And George was having difficulty getting the feel that he wanted.”
Reminiscing, Scott added, “At one point, we were trying him in between the two speakers, the two monitors, in the control room. I’m standing at the back there with John [Lennon] by my side. I just turned to him and said, ‘Jeez, the way you guys are going, you’re going to want to record in there next!’” In the memory, Scott gestured towards a small room, “bigger than a broom cupboard, but tiny.”
“And then a couple of days later, [John] comes in, and he says, ‘We’re going to record a new song, it’s called ‘Yer Blues’, and we’re going to do it in there,’” Scott laughed. Sure enough, cool as ever, Lennon gestured towards the stuffy annex room, the very same Scott had joked about only a few days prior.
You can quite imagine how tight the set up was, but if your neurons aren’t firing fast enough, Scott ticked off the equipment on his fingers to explain how much of a squeeze The Beatles purposefully put themselves into: “You had the whole band: the drum kit, bass and amp, two guitar amps, and a live vocal, all in this small room. You couldn’t pull up the kick drum without getting John’s guitar up. But, for me, it’s one of the best drum sounds I’ve got.”
Indeed, Ringo Starr famously shared that, though it wasn’t exactly a moment of comfort, it was one of his favourite live recordings ever, with him sharing, “‘Yer Blues’, on the White Album, you can’t top it. It was the four of us. That is what I’m saying: it was really because the four of us were in a box, a room about eight by eight, with no separation. It was this group that was together; it was like grunge rock of the sixties, really – grunge blues.”
In the run-up to the recording sessions for The White Album, The Beatles were facing new tensions that threatened to implode their camaraderie from the inside, and the death of their manager and mentor, Brian Epstein, in 1967 shook the group to their goddamn foundations, while Yoko Ono’s permanent presence wasn’t going unnoticed.
This was exactly what they needed then: To be shut up in a broom cupboard together, no place to hide. To feel the vibrations of their instruments as they travelled through them. To feel, spatially, connected to their roots again, small single-bedrooms and barely enough space to navigate without hitting your funny bone on a pesky amp. It all paid off in the end.
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