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The Beatles always gave it their all when writing and recording songs. And few put as much effort into recording music as John Lennon did.
In 1963 the Fab Four began working on their debut album, Please Please Me, and one of the final songs they recorded was Twist and Shout, a cover of The Top Notes’ song of the same name.
But Lennon was encouraged by the band’s producer George Martin to give it a new spin.
As a result, he really went for it; he screamed through the track that was later described as a “larynx-tearer”.
Lennon himself explained that the vicious and powerful performance changed his voice drastically because he was abusing his throat so much. “The last song nearly killed me,” Lennon said. “My voice wasn’t the same for a long time after.”
Lennon remembered that it was a gruesome experience for him as he tried to get the song right.
“Every time I swallowed it was like sandpaper,” he said. “I was always bitterly ashamed of it, because I could sing it better than that; but now it doesn’t bother me. You can hear that I’m just a frantic guy doing his best.” (Via Far Out)
Sound engineer Norman Smith remembered Lennon’s voice was extremely fatigued.
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“By this time all their throats were sore,” Smith said. “It was 12 hours since we had started working. John’s, in particular, was almost completely gone so we really had to get it right the first time.
“The Beatles on the studio floor and us in the control room. John sucked a couple more Zubes [throat lozenges], had a bit of a gargle with milk and away we went.”
Another engineer, Cris Neal, said: “John was stripped to the waist to do this most amazingly raucous vocal.”
Martin looked back on the tense recording experience, saying: “I knew that Twist and Shout was a real larynx-tearer and I said: ‘We’re not going to record that until the very end of the day, because if we record it early on, you’re not going to have any voice left.'”
The producer said Lennon did two takes and then he didn’t have any voice left at all.
“It was good enough for the record,” he said. “And it needed that linen-ripping sound.”
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