Norman “Hurricane” Smith, 1923-2008
March 6th, 2008
This is my third, and saddest, post about Norman Smith. My previous posts are here and here.
When I first heard the name Hurricane Smith, I didn’t know it was the title of a 1952 Yvonne DeCarlo movie, and I still don’t know for certain if Smith borrowed it for his pseudonym. But before I knew who he was, or anything else about him, I loved listening this song.
I transferred that from an original 1972 45 rpm single. As Hurricane Smith, Norman scored big with this international hit, ‘Oh Babe, What Would You Say?’ This is the flip side, ‘Getting to Know You.’
It wasn’t until many years later I learned that under producer George Martin, Smith had been The Beatles’ first recording engineer at EMI’s Abbey Road studios. In fact, Norman was among the first studio professionals to hear something special in the Fab Four’s music, as described in this quote about their ‘artist test’ recordings at EMI, from The Beatles Recording Sessions, by Mark Lewisohn.
Paul sang ‘Besame Mucho’, the Latin crooner, then they layed down three Lennon-McCartney originals, ‘Love Me Do’, ‘P.S. I Love You’ and ‘Ask Me Why’. It was during ‘Love Me Do’ that Norman Smith pricked up his ears. “Norman said to me ‘Go down and pick up George [Martin] from the canteen and see what he thinks of this’,” recalls [second engineer Chris] Neal.
Of his first encounter with The Beatles, Norman had this to say.
They had such duff equipment. Ugly, unpainted wooden amplifiers, extremely noisy, with earth loops and goodness knows what. There was as much noise coming from the amps as there was from the instruments. Paul’s bass was particularly bad and it was clear that the session wasn’t going to get under way until something was done about it.
Spoken like a true recording engineer! First step: getting the gear right. In Lewisohn’s The Beatles Recording Sessions, Paul McCartney said…
Norman Smith was a great engineer, we were all so sad when Norman became a producer because we wanted him as our engineer, he was dynamite. Geoff was dynamite too, in fact that was the great thing about all of the EMI guys. Training. Anyone you get who’s been EMI trained really knows what he’s doing.
‘Geoff’ refers to Geoff Emerick, whose second day on the job at EMI happened to be the very first studio session by the Beatles, after George Martin decided to sign them to a recording contract. I previously featured Emerick’s memoir, Here There and Everywhere in this post. Geoff wasn’t at the artist test recording session, but he heard this about it.
Richard [Langham, assistant engineer] had heard good things about the Beatles’ artist test, too, and not just from Chris. Apparently there was quite a buzz around the studio about them…”
Norman Smith was the Beatles’ recording engineer through the Rubber Soul sessions. By then, in his 40’s, Smith wanted to be a full-fledged record producer, and as Emerick recalls…
I can equally understand George Martin’s adamant refusal to allow Norman to receive the promotion and remain as the Beatles’ engineer.
Smith felt he was onto something with his discovery of a new and unusual band called Pink Floyd, and indeed he was proven right. He produced three of their first four albums. It was Smith’s departure that made it possible for Emerick to be promoted to Engineer. From that point on, his recording techniques defined the sound of Beatles records.
This is a recent snapshot of Norman Smith with the authors of the RTB Book: Recording The Beatles, Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan. Before I wrap up, I’ll embed this video of Hurricane I spotted on YouTube.
4 Comments Add your own
1. Jim Gee | June 15th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Good bloke!
2. DOuG pRATt | June 15th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
It was a fascinating and varied career for “Normal,” as John Lennon called him. And once he was out of the shirt-and-tie that EMI’s dress code required, Norman showed that he was anything but normal and typical.
3. RichPhoenix | November 13th, 2008 at 12:11 am
Norman was a great friend and a mentor to many, myself included. What few enjoying his music talents, whether on one side of the studio glass or the other, failed to realise is that here was a man who successfully bridged all of the worthwhile pop music trends of the 20th century. He was a composer and musician, and admittedly could play every instrument but the guitar; and, this was before he became a top-rank studio engineer, producer and chart-topping singer! He thoroughly enjoyed, understood and mastered jazz and was equally at home in the British Music Hall realm. At Abbey Road, he became renowned for his ministering to the Liverpool bands and their musical techniques. He singlehandedly turned around Pink Floyd’s career from a psychedelic club band into a hitmaking studio band, teaching them in his own patient way that the Floyd could even use the classic “45″ as an excellent marketing tool for selling their LPs. Although Norman was primarily associated with the Floyd in their early years, you can hear his melodic influence wafting in and out of even the spaciest moments of their Dark Side of the Moon. Norman and the Beatles? Don’t have enough web space to tell the tale to advantage, but any Beatle book including his “John Lennon Called Me Normal” that successfully captures the band’s phenomenal studio achievements will be more than worth your time and will serve to tell you how reliant they were in their early days on this great man, who was truly a bridge across the many genres of 20th century pop music. Few are aware of this, but in his 80s, Norman was quietly working on a musical that he hoped would debut in the West End. The world doesn’t know what it’s missing! Norman, we loved you and you will be missed by all whose lives you touched in any way!
4. DOuG pRATt | November 14th, 2008 at 7:37 am
Thanks very much for you comment, Rich. Old Norman had quite a musical reach, and it seems he was ambitious, but not aggressive. We could speculate on how differently things would have turned out if Norman had stayed on as engineer to the Beatles — would he have tolerated the nonsense of the White Album sessions? — but I think he took the right path and everything turned out for the best.
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