In early 1967, The Beatles had been free from their previously hectic touring schedule for six months and were busily burrowing away in Abbey Road Studios in pursuit of their next album. That forthcoming LP would be released to much fanfare in the last week of May, with the unforgettable title Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
They weren’t the only ones busy on a psychedelic masterpiece, though. In the very next room, a young band from Cambridge who’d been taking London by storm in recent months were working on their album. It was to be the first of many that this group would record in Abbey Road’s Studio 3. The producer of their first record was Norman Smith, a key player at record label EMI who’d work as the sound engineer on all of The Beatles’ studio albums up to and including Rubber Soul.
Thanks to Smith’s connection to the Fab Four, their young contemporaries even got to sit in on a recording session for Sgt Pepper while The Beatles were working on Paul McCartney’s song ‘Lovely Rita’. “They were God-like figures to us,” the guest band’s keyboardist gushed later. “We sat humbly and humbled, at the back of the control room while they worked on the mix.”
They were suitably bowled over by the recording itself, too. “The music sounded wonderful and incredibly professional.”
They returned to their work with newfound inspiration and issued a record that would stand alongside the very best of its era. For those of us who find Sgt Pepper more than a tad overhyped, the album recorded simultaneously in the neighboring studio at Abbey Road trumps The Beatles’ 1967 effort.
So, who was this other band?
Still led by eccentric songwriter and enthusiastic acidhead Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd made their first record, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, between February and May 1967. Their time in the studio at Abbey Road overlapped with The Beatles during a two-month period, which must have been particularly special for the staff working at the studio.
Pink Floyd’s debut album emerged at the start of August, with epic space-age rockers ‘Astronomy Domine’ and ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ blowing the minds of all who heard it. Meanwhile, we can only assume that The Beatles returned the favor and sat in on Pink Floyd’s recording of the track ‘Lucifer Sam’. The riff of this song bears a remarkable resemblance to the hook for John Lennon’s composition ‘Hey Bulldog’, which The Beatles recorded almost a year after the Floyd song.
In any case, we can only marvel at the creativity and ingenuity at play during those spring months in EMI’s studio complex, which resulted in two records worthy of their place in the pantheon of all-time greats. This serendipitous coincidence is perhaps only bettered by the trifecta of Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and The Carpenters all recording side-by-side at A&M Studios in early 1971.
