A heavier bass line than Glass Onion?

I'm assuming it was laid down by Paul (I'm too lazy right now to check
it out), but Man Oh Man, what a heavy bass line in 'Glass Onion'!!

Sounds like Paul is using a rock chip for a pick over 8-guage wire. I
must admit, I haven't heard a heavier bass line from that era and right
after (namely Sabbath, Zeppelin, or Who).

Nowadays, due to advances in recording processes it is easily possible
to make a bass line heavy -- but for 1968, that was pretty darn
impressive!!

Karl Uppiano...

If they wanted to record a heavy bass line in 1968 (or in 1964 for that
matter) they could do any or all of the following in any combination:

o Use some combination of instrument pickups that minimizes the harmonics
and boosts the bottom.
o Add fuzz or distortion in the bass amp.
o Fiddle with the microphone placement to get a particular sound.
o Deliberately overdrive the bass amp, microphone, mixer or tape.
o Skip the bass amp altogether and feed the instrument directly into the
console.
o Use lots of compression to keep the bass at a constant loudness.
o Mix the bass predominantly in the mix.
o Equalize for more bass.

EMI had some official corporate "standards" about how records should be
produced that IIRC, placed some constraints on how much bass could be put on
the vinyl. I don't know if it was for artistic reasons, or for playability
and recording time (heavy bass takes up more room on the record, and large
groove excursions could cause skipping on the portables of the day that lots
of kids used to listen to the Beatles). That was not a problem for the tape
recorders of the day, or for today's CDs (or even today's vinyl and decent
quality turntables).

I don't know if the Beatles ever reached the level of artistic control to
override the vinyl mastering standards at EMI. The actual record
manufacturing process may have been too far beyond the studio for them to
have much control over it (or interest in it as the case may be). I think
EMI manufactured Apple records.

abe slaney...

This link to an interview with Geoff Emerick was posted here a few days
ago. It addresses several of these points. It's *very* interesting.

(I got an error message when I sent, so pardon the duplication if/when
it appears.)