Posted by Klaus on October 03, 2002 at 22:38:04:
In Reply to: Beatles Music posted by Tom B. on October 03, 2002 at 21:39:00:
I can not provide you the name, but it was one of the London symph greats of that period (not Philip Jones, I would have remembered that name).
In the mid or late eighties I saw a TV feature of the musical technology, that was available to the Beatles, basically only 4 track recorders, where the Beatles themselves took care of 2 or 3 tracks and everything else was squeesed into what was left.
The piccolo trumpet was quite a novelty for that time. So the feature presented the then former Paxman employee, who had built the very short series of the only 6 Paxman piccolo trumpets ever made, one of them brought to eternal fame on Penny Lane.
A few personal notes:
When the Danish brass band, that I played in back in 1967, was hired to perform daily at some large almost week-long combined agricultural fair, equestrian meeting, and marching band's display (and at the stage of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Hall one memorable night), some of us, including me, were quartered close to Penny Lane and Strawberry Field. The people of the district hardly could get their arms down for joy over living in a world famous environment.
When I the next year started at college, my fellow music students told myths sprung out of the album covers, where the Beatles' members had been portrayed with various brass instruments: "Be sure it was John Lennon himself, who played the trumpet licks!" (Which it was not).
A last curl on this topic: In 1994 a third repairman entered the workshop of I. K. Gottfried in Copenhagen, where I have come with increasing frequency since 1961. His name was/is Peter Jessen. He was trained in Denmark, but later on he had made a living for himself in Paris, playing sax in the Metro stations, and in London, as a repairman and freelancer on all kinds of woodwinds.
At the workshop he had been employed together with an elderly repairman, who still was met with general high respect. Because he had built the Penny Lane trumpet!
Full circle from here!
Klaus
PS: Of course I will take the chance to give a link to one of my longer texts, the English translation not by me.
And to present the tech staff of I. K. Gottfried. From left: Martin Kaas-Larsen, Lars Jonasson (owner and a close personal friend of mine), and Peter Jessen.