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I can't remember which thread we discussed this in, but remember how we wondered whether Brian took the original 3- and 4-track masters of songs for which the basic tracks were cut at Western, Gold Star, and Sunset, to Columbia and mixed down to one track of their 8-track with the CBS house engineers...or whether instead, he mixed down to 1/4" mono at Western with Chuck, and used THAT tape for a "bounce up" to a single track on Columbia's 8-track? Well, the latter would seem to be the case, at least for two Pet Sounds songs (and, most likely for ALL songs recorded in this manner).

Per a very interesting discussion on the Hoffman board, we've come not only to that conclusion, but identified which tape is being rewound in the mono mix of "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" (from about 0:05-0:09). If one listens to Track 5 of SOT Vol. 14, Disc 1 ("1st lead vocal overdub"), one can hear bleed-through of the Everly Brothers track "(You Got) The Power Of Love" (specifically the bass riff)! That tune was apparently recorded at United studios in early February '66, and the 1/4" mixdown session tape with early mixes of the song was apparently recycled at Western for instrumental dubdowns of "IJWMFTT"! (The final mix of the Everlys tune was obviously cut out of the session tape for use in mastering the record.) In other words, that tape was not properly erased before recycling, and some bleed-through remains on Brian's mono basic track mix (hence, it's not on Mark's 1996 stereo remix of the backing track). Apparently, you can also hear the Everlys mix bleeding through on the mono instrumental mix of "I'm Waiting For The Day", but I haven't been able to detect that myself!

Incidentally - on the same SOT Vol. 14, Disc 1, Track 5 - at the very end, you can also hear Brian demonstrating the "IJWMFTT" vocal hook, and Dennis singing it, from an earlier vocal take (obviously on the Columbia 8-track)! Remember, Dennis was to be the song's lead vocalist, but in the end Brian wiped his lead and replaced it with his own. Sorry if that's already been pointed out on another thread!

Very interesting! For the record, I think part of that discussion was here: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,27135.0.html (http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,27135.0.html)

A few things jump out immediately. First, at least in these instances it confirms Brian was mixing with Chuck at Western for at least the instrumental tracks. So he had to lock those in before adding the vocals on top. If he did that, the instrumental tracks were literally locked in after that point and no effects could be added to individual tracks. If he did go to Columbia for vocals, that engineer at Columbia would probably balance out the vocals and do a mix of those...so the question is did Brian return to give it final touches with Chuck at Western, or even add parts like a guitar solo or an extra vocal part at Western, after leaving Columbia with what would be ostensibly a mix of his vocals down to one track and his previous instrumentals on another, which could free up even more tracks? One description we have of Brian doing what we'd call a final mix or even mastering was done at *Capitol*. Confusing.  :)

The other is reusing tape reels. I just can't believe they'd be reusing tape for tracking sessions like that. 1/4" tape was not that expensive in 1966 to be honest, and it was part of the budget either paid by the artist or the label if used for the tracking sessions. I can't believe United would reuse other artists' tapes in that way for tracking.

Has the possibility been raised that such tape was being reused for the tape delay reel rather than for tracking new material for a client? There is one Beatles tune - can't recall which one - where the tape delay reel ran out while they were jamming, and you can hear the tape op rewinding it on the session. One of the long Helter Skelter or Revolution jams perhaps? Anyway, *that* would make more sense in terms of reusing tape, especially from a totally different client.

Not saying the audio isn't there as evidence, but it's the way it was being reused that I'd question. Consider the tape delay machine option...and I'm sure some clients might be pretty upset if their discarded tapes were being reused for tracking other artists, not to mention the artist who was paying for reused tape with compromised sound.

Very interesting.

Just an addendum to the Western process which I was reminded of watching Joe Osborn interviews on YouTube this week: According to Joe, for Mamas and Papas sessions at Western, they would have two separate 3-track machines in the room. They'd record to the first 3-track, then bounce down to the other 3-track to open more tracks for overdubs, and possibly even bounce more after that. So Papa John and Bones and whoever else was there for those sessions in 65-66 were using multiple 3-tracks for their sessions, and as Joe said doing these bounces would cause a loss in the treble frequencies which the engineers would compensate for to some degree, but in Joe's case his playing style and tone (Jazz Bass with pick through Fender guitar amp) helped his bass lines jump out of those mixes because his tone already had an extra boost in the high end.

Just an aside semi-related.

Here's what I'd like to know:

Is/are the ghost sound/sounds in question:

On an initial reference mix to the 4th track of the original session tape?

or

On the new mono track from the 8-track CBS reel?

or

Neither of these?


We could discern what stage the sound was locked into the mix.  Mark Linett????

Well, that would mean that tape delay was used on the instrumental sub-mix...I don't detect any on the final 1966 mono mixdowns, and I don't notice any missing from the 1996 stereo remixes of the instrumental tracks (just the missing "artifacts" like the screeching rewound sound mentioned).

Can I just say… I am not nearly as technologically inclined as all of you in this thread, but I immensely enjoy reading all the nerdy talk about this subject. Grateful for conversations like these.

Maybe one day I will get more educated about the technical stuff and be able to understand it all better. Actually, that might be a pretty cool video that somebody could make, the beginners guide to understanding all of the intricate methodologies of BBs tape recording of the era. I'm sure it's a lot to injest, no doubt. A Dummies book is perhaps needed.

Nope, because the track breakdown for "IWFTD" is this:
1 - FI & E. Hrn
2 - FBs & Dr. Piano w/reverb
3 - Bs, org, piano, guitar
4 - vln ss at end

And "IJWMFTT" was cut on 3-track, so there is no 4th track.  :)

Great, so next we'd need to consult the mono backing track mixes from the CBS 8-track multis.


Let's not rule that out yet, though.

Well, those unintentional sounds are clearly there - since they're on the final mono mixes. And, they're present on the S.O.T. tracks (including the aforementioned "1st lead vocal overdub"), which were sourced from the 8-tracks.

Well, that would mean that tape delay was used on the instrumental sub-mix...I don't detect any on the final 1966 mono mixdowns, and I don't notice any missing from the 1996 stereo remixes of the instrumental tracks (just the missing "artifacts" like the screeching rewound sound mentioned).
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Let's not rule that out yet, though.
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That would mean that the tape used for echo was being rewound after the mix had started - I can't imagine Chuck or whoever the tape op was (Winston Wong?) not stopping the mix and saying, "Hey, I wasn't ready yet!".

But they could conceivably not be on the mono track mix and gotten added at the final mix stage.  It's unlikely, but plausible.

It wouldn't have to be rewinding, in fact I think it's pretty clear the ghost sound is playing roughly at pitch.

But they ARE on the mono track mix, since they're present on the S.O.T. boot, the mix of which is just the mono backing track and lead vocal overdub(s), mixed from the 8-track.

Oh, good call.  OK, so then here's another question -- since there's no reference mix on a non-existent 4th track, and the sounds exist on the mono backing track as it exists on the CBS originated 8-track...then either the sounds were picked up at CBS *OR* there was another intermediate dubdown between the backing track three-track and the CBS tape.  If the latter scenario is not the case, how would the Everly's end up getting mixed into the Beach Boys AT CBS?

Probably the heads of one of the Columbia machines were misaligned versus the others. It is possible that when they've made the mono mix of the backing track there was nothing wrong with it, as the heads of this machine and the one used for erasing were in alignment with each other. But when they transferred it later at Columbia, that machine's heads caught the remnants of sound from the incompletely erased tape. And it was too late to cancel the Columbia session because of this imperfection.

That would make the most sense, it seems - meaning, the dubdown from 3- and 4-track was done to 1/4" mono at Western, with no discernable anomalies present (no ghost artifacts from the Everlys mix session - the tape of which came from United and was recycled at Western, since the two studios had joint ownership/management). However, when it was "bounced up" to 8-track at Columbia, those sounds became evident on mis-aligned heads. I think we have a winner!  :)

Actually, this needs to be thought up in more detail. Obviously the sounds from the erased tape were caught up by some other machine, one at Columbia or the second one used for bouncing at Western. So: the machine at United used for THE EVERLYS RECORDING was misaligned, thus remnants of the original sound remained on the tape. And if that tape received the 1-track mono mix at the second one used for bouncing at Western, I wonder if the engineer had to listen to the result of that bounce, to ensure there are no dropouts before taking it to another session at Columbia? or did they just rely on the overall quality of their machines and tapes. As an owner of a domestic reel-to-reel some decades ago, I remember well the left channel of my stereo was always a pain in the ass regarding the possibility of a drop-out, because that's where the corresponding head was, against the very edge of the tape. Probably the studio engineers, minding this, transferred a mono backing track to a track not on the edge? But, had they a listen to the result or not?

P.S. Not "the machine at United used for THE EVERLYS RECORDING was misaligned", but a machine that was used for ERASING that tape.

More observations - as I stated, I can't hear bleed-through on the final mix of "IWFTD", but I DO hear the same Everlys track on the SOT presentation of the vocal overdubs for that song, again mixed from the Columbia 8-track. But regarding that - the mono instrumental dubdown present on the 8-track also seems to include a layer of backing vocals (the "ahhs" starting in the second verse, which really seem locked-in with that band track). Which seems to indicate that those vocals were done at Western - possibly as the instrumental tracks were dubbed to 1/4" mono - and then doubled (or tripled) at Columbia, on their own discrete tracks...interesting!

Regardless, I'm not hearing any extra tape delay that's not present on the un-dubbed instrumental tracks as presented on SOT (earlier takes, or final takes). The only instrument I really hear that on is the Fender bass (for the "tic-tac" effect) - it's readily apparent on the multiple takes of "IWFTD", and less so on "IJWMFTT", but on the latter song, I don't hear any more added to the dubdown on the 8-track...I think it's just that they used a slightly longer delay time on the Fender bass for "IWFTD" than on "IJWMFTT". So, even if they did use tape delay for that first layer of vocal "ahhs" on "IWFTD" when dubbing it down to mono, there's no use of it (that I can hear) on the mono dub of "IJWMFTT". So again, I'm inclined to think of zaval80's theory of tape head mis-alignment as the likely culprit.

That's a lot of supposition.  Lots of questions we have to answer before a winner can be decided.  First, if that's what happened, why and how did a tape from United by a different artist get reused?  Second, IF the sound got picked up at Unite Western, this requires the fairly bold assumption that they did a mix essentially for no reason, sacrificing a whole tape generation in exchange for what?  Portability?  I'd be more willing to buy that if we knew of some 4-track reels with a bunch of the mono backing tracks.  

And then there's the whole issue of how professional engineers are letting this happen.  CBS seems very unlikely to have misaligned machines--they probably had boffins do that every day (as I'd expect U/W did, despite being more of a mom & pop kinda place.)

Lots of important questions -- not really to find out about an isolated ghost sound, as interesting as that is, but to gain more insight into the working methods of the 3- and 4-track era.

It could be that they caught the problem at Columbia, and an engineer did a temporary alignment change of the heads on a Columbia machine, the 4-track one, so they'd be able to rid of the unwanted sound.

Huh? The unwanted sound is there on the final mix, do I don't think they got rid of it...

If the Everlys cut out their final mix off that tape, as C-man suggested, the rest of the tape most likely was binned for less important uses.

I've rethought my initial suggestion. It was not the Columbia machine but some machine that was used for erasing the United recording by the Everlys.

Oh, I've meant, they caught the problem in time for "IWFTD". In what order were the songs recorded?

Well, regardless of the why and how, it seems fairly clear that this DID happen - I don't know how else to explain the presence of the Everlys song bleeding through. And, as to why they did this mix at Western, sacrificing a whole tape generation - this seems to answer our earlier question of whether Brian did his instrumental dub-downs at Western with Chuck, or relied on the Columbia engineers to get it just right. Since he knew and trusted Chuck to get the sounds he wanted, that seems to explain it. And it seems Brian was less concerned about generation loss as he was about getting the "right" sounds, especially as everything was being dubbed down to mono anyway (I'm trying to think like he did here). And, as zaval80 theorizes, the Columbia engineers would have noticed the bleedthrough (I'm wondering how easy it was to align a 1" 8-track head stack exactly the way a 1/4" mono machine would have been), but Brian told them not to worry about it, and press on. To me, that makes sense.

The bleed-through is also present on the 8-track session tape for "IWFTD" - it's audible on the S.O.T. boot before the song starts, I just don't hear it in the final mix.

Again, these are pretty evidence-less assumptions.  Do we really know what it would take for old tape to get reused?  I imagine there was some amount of tape recycling done, but on the other hand, depending on the situation, studios may not have had the right to do that with everyone if the record company claimed ownership of all materials.  That's not to say they always did, nor that intellectual property rights were always honored.  The Everly's are a pretty big act, as are the Beach Boys.  Would the studio really deem a Brian Wilson project "less important" and not worthy of a new reel?

I don't know the answer to any of these questions, but we can't close the book on this without better evidence.

Like you, I wonder if the management allowed the engineers at Columbia futzing with the fuddy-daddy brand-new 8-track machine just to save somebody's mix...but most likely so in the case of a common 4-track one. Could it be the SOT bootleg represents the results before the Columbia session?

If the tape was erased - and it was, just not perfectly - it was marked for a "lesser use", say for a recording by an unproven act, so the act could've save a bit of the money on the tape which wasn't brand new, and the studio was efficient in saving on their expenditure. The only question is, how that binned tape ended up used not by nobodys, but the BBs.

I agree that engineers would have noticed it, but Brian, as usual, didn't care about how the end product sounded--I doubt he'd care if the whole thing sounded like a giant raspberry by the end.  The generation loss question was less about Brian caring about it, but more about the engineers caring.  And I still don't think there's enough evidence to conclude they did an additional transfer.  I mean, sure, he liked Chuck, but some of those mixes and transfers would've been by Bowen David, right?  Unless they had a seperate, undocumented session to do mixes at Western to bring over to CBS?

And, there are lots of other ways for something to end up on a track other than a misaligned head, as plausible as that might be.  All I'm saying is that we can't say "this is definitely what happened."  We can say, "this very well may have happened."

There is no proof that a studio as big as United/Western reused tape for clients for tracking (especially!) or mixing, in fact due to the issues like bleed-through and loss of fidelity, it would be illogical to assume they did. Not to mention the clients themselves might have an issue with their work being given, essentially, to other artists in some way so their unreleased music could be heard or taped over by other acts. TV stations reused 2" video tape because it was so expensive. Audio tape in 1966 was not as expensive. And clients would pay for the tapes used, eventually in the billing process, not the studio facility.

So if the theory hinges on accepting that United/Western was reusing tape for other clients' sessions, and compromising the quality of the recordings in any way, I think it may have to be rethought. The one use I could accept for reused tape would be for the tape delay machine. If there is proof that by 1966 they were reusing tape, then I'll stand corrected. But I doubt United's staff would go into a Sinatra session with stacks of reels that had already been used by other clients and do a session or mix using old tape.

I just saw the Hoffman board's topic(s), and it looks like a member named Mal had this mystery noise identified back in 2007! And yes, listening to the Everlys track, that does sound like the Hammond organ from that song on Brian's tracks too. I'm wondering now if this was on the "official" radar in terms of the archival projects and unless I'm just not remembering, I do not recall seeing this mentioned in any of the official releases or interviews surrounding any Pet Sounds or other archival releases since at least 2007 when this person posted it on Hoffman. I think fans beyond the BB's bubble would have been fascinated to learn that an Everly Brothers track ended up on Pet Sounds! Anyone recall any mentions of this apart from the Hoffman board in 2007?

And it becomes a question too of how and why it ended up there, but expand that a bit and ask if Brian intentionally put it there.

I have *zero* doubt that Brian at this exact time (and even prior in a few cases, like 'Wendy') was into "found sounds" as an aesthetic and artistic choice. And I do not mean sound effects, which go back as early as 409 with Usher's Chevy revving up on tape, but found sounds and audio verite showing up on his productions in the form of snippets of conversation, noises, accidental audio, etc. We all know how jazzed Brian was listening to Rubber Soul, the shorter American version. And *that* has the famous false start of McCartney flubbing the guitar intro on I'm Looking Through You, which The Beatles were not happy about but which I think tapped into the audio verite thing for guys like Brian who heard that and were loving it, especially on a Beatles record. Dylan did it too, listen to Bob Dylan's 115th Dream on Bringing It All Back Home where he blows the vocal, then laughs, and the guys in the booth are cracking up too...and they left it on the album! No accident there. The entire Party! album is in that vibe. Mamas & Papas "I Saw Her Again...", they blew a vocal entry and left that mistake on the track - huge hit. Hey Jude, one of the biggest records of all time, has McCartney unleashing an expletive during the song that anyone can hear if they know where to listen - and they left it as part of an in-joke. The Monkees' Daydream Believer - another one of the biggest records of the era - has that whole studio conversation between Davy, Chip Douglas, and Hank Cicalo left on the beginning. No accident there, it was a choice to leave it.

I know - and we have evidence - that Brian was into this more heavily during Smile. At the same time you have Zappa doing needle-drops of old records, Van Dyke Parks doing the same thing on Song Cycle, and in general that more loose vibe of capturing audio by chance (or by mistake) and including it as part of the composition was showing up on various pop recordings.

I think it humanized both the records and the artists to some degree. On some, yes, perfection was the goal. For some, like Zappa, it was part of the sound collage as art ethos. But I do feel that an element of lightening the mood especially on a heavy song was in the air as part of an artistic movement at that time, and not just in music.

So did Brian intentionally leave this mysterious or accidental Everlys sound in his mix? Or...was it put in on purpose? Who knows. But since such things were being done elsewhere in the upper echelons of artistic pop music in 65-66-67, would it be out of the ordinary to suggest it was done on purpose? That's perhaps a more extensive debate, but one for which we already have other examples.

And again, if a major studio (yes, major considering Sinatra and the Reprise crew was almost exclusively recording at Putnam's facilities in the 60's after Frank split from Capitol and helped bankroll those facilities...) was in fact reusing old tapes for new sessions, I'll stand corrected if evidence of this practice exists. But I just cannot see how the staff at United/Western - all of them top-flight pro engineers - would let this go considering the reduction in quality that could be an issue.

Well, we know that multi-track tape was often reused during a session - there are several Beach Boys 3- or 4-track reels that start with takes from later in the session, and end with takes from earlier in the session - meaning, they might fill up a tape with, say, 10 takes, then rewind and start from the top of the tape with Takes 11 and up, erasing the first few takes in the process - so there is a precedent, at least for reusing tape during a session with the same artist (which is a different situation then with the Everlys and Beach Boys of course, but defeats the argument that the engineers at Western would never do that).

Also, it might be worth mentioning that, in 1963-'64, at least, whenever the BBs recorded outside Capitol's own in-house studios, the band (or Murry specifically) would pay for the studio time and recording tape on the date of the session, then submit paperwork through the AFM to pay The Beach Boys and any sidemen who were utilized. Capitol (with executive approval from either Karl Enegmann or Voyle Gilmore) would then buy the master tapes from the Beach Boys and pay the musicians through the union at a later date. Not sure if that was still the case by the time of Pet Sounds, but when this did happen, it's not as though the label would have the right to feel "ripped off" by paying in advance for reused tape - they were buying the final product, i.e. the mono (and/or stereo) masters, from the BBs - and wouldn't know any difference if a reused tape was employed at some point in the production process.

And of course we all wish they didn't tape over the session tape!

This would be a really fascinating avenue of study per se, the study of the sort of de facto intellectual property protection practices at a studio.  Presumably de jure, whoever it was that had the rights to the masters, be it the label or the artist, would have to sign off on any erasure and reuse of tapes that they not only owned physically, but also had copyright protected material thereon.  This could certainly be as simple as an authorised agent saying, here, studio, we will donate this used tape to you to sell to somebody else provided you erase it completely first.

In the case of Brian reusing his own session tape, there's obviously implicit permission given to erase his property when the engineers says, "we are running out of tape, can I go ahead and rewind it and reuse it if you don't think there's anything usable in what we've done so far."  But that sort of assent couldn't be assumed in the absence of something fairly explicit by the rights-holder.

All of that is, of course, assuming that these people were scrupulous about IP rights--I'm sure it'd be very easy to cut corners without people caring much.  But it is still hard to see where this would fit in in the day to day operations of a studio.  I agree with GF Craig that the only way it'd make clear sense to reuse old tape would be for delay set-ups, where it's kind of silly to break out a new reel just for that.  But otherwise, I still think it's a stretch.  But I'm perfectly willing to stand corrected if someone has a quote from an engineer from that time saying they got artists to sign off on donating their used tape to the studios to sell to other artists.

I would think that the laws of intellectual property as they pertain here would apply to an actual recorded performance only, not the media on which it was recorded - and if the recorded performance was erased, and no longer in existence, then we'd only being talking about laws governing physical ownership of the tapes (meaning, whoever paid for the tapes, not whoever owned the copyright of the performance that no longer exists because it was erased).

So if, for instance, Everlys producer Dick Glasser (who worked directly for Phil and Don's label, Warner Bros.) told the engineers he wasn't interested in keeping mix outtakes from a 1/4" reel, and so they could erase and reuse them if they want - he would have the authority to do so, as he was director of Warners' A&R department. So perhaps that's what happened. But little did anyone know there would be a tape head alignment issue when the tape was taken to a non-Putnam studio, and people would be talking about the mostly obscured and barely audible artefacts over 50 years later....!

That's correct, the intellectual property rights reside in recorded performance.  And indeed, if an agent of Warner's gave consent to erase the IP on the tape, then the IP nature of the rights is gone and we are talking about straight property rights.  These would of course have to be dealt with similarly, by an agent of Warner's either consenting to make a gift of tape, or making a contract with the studio to sell the tape for an agreed upon sum, thereby passing title to the studio to do what they pleased with it.

But at the moment we have no evidence that this ever happened, and in fact common sense points to it being unlikely.  To be clear -- I don't think it's impossible, I just think it's unlikely.

Now -- if it was an accident, then maybe I could see it; used tape accidentally avoiding getting sent to the Everly's (or Warner's) storage facility, and somehow finding itself used, with someone thinking it's new tape.

But in any case, it's all baseless speculation at this point.

I’ve done a cursory review of this thread and the Hoffman thread, and unless I’m missing something: this makes it extremely obvious to me that Brian took the 3/4-track tapes to Western to mix the backtrack to 1/4” mono, then took that tape to Columbia. Whether there was another reason to be at Western that day, who knows (maybe it’s as simple as they ran out of time at Gold Star and took the tape and did some dubdowns later).  Which opens the door to the theory that this was a standard working method for the era.

I’d also refer to this as *incomplete erasure* to avoid confusion with issues of crosstalk, head alignment, etc. I would also call into question blindly trusting SOT tapes to be 100% always raw transfers of each track as on the tape (though this seems to generally be the case).

The situation would go something like this:

Everly Bros. Session at Western mixed to 1/4”. *Tape was re-used in this era - there’s other evidence to demonstrate this elsewhere*

“Times” 4-track Tape is brought to Western and  is mixed to reused Everly 1/4” tape on mono. Decks of this era often have incomplete erasure issues - the machine needs a calibration tweak on one of the bias pots.

The mono tape is transferred to 1 track on the 8-track at Columbia prior to vocal session.

This clears up A LOT!

Studios provided tape and Billed it to the label. Physical reels deemed unneeded were likely left at the studio after the sessions and likely tossed or re-used. If the Everly Brothers used a bunch of reels to get that mix, they would leave behind the Non-master/working tapeS, and it would be forgotten about by the artist or producer. *not saying it always worked this way, but it happened. More likely something like certain reels being labeled “master”, etc, others being throwaways. Not sure if Brian would leave w the tapes or if they were sent to Capitol by the studio or what.

Physical tape has no correlation to the intellectual property on the tape. Possession is 9/10 of the law. If I own a reel of tape and you record your song on it and leave, then I erase the tape - no copyright concerns there, the content is gone. This is akin to you leaving a paper with a poem written on it and me throwing it away. Certainly there were studio terms of use clients agreed to, etc.

Well, we know for sure that many of Brian's "work tapes" were left behind at studios, including Columbia. We're lucky that many weren't!

I would like to see some sort of contemporaneous evidence of the process.  I just find it hard to believe that all of the things necessary for it to happen this way happened.  The Everly's would have to abandon some tape they had used, the studio would have to take possession and put it into the supply, then it'd have to get resold to one of the biggest clients at the time who can easily, easily afford only the freshest, shiniest, and newest tape, plus the bad erase job, plus an unnecessary extra mix.

One or two contemporary quotes from engineers or studio personnel saying that kind of thing happened and I'll shut up!   :-D


Incidentally, and it has no real bearing on the topic, but I hardly ever get to use my law degrees, so forgive my pedantry; Possession is not 9/10s of the law.  True, having physical possession of some chattel (or real property for that matter) can make it easier to prove title, and can practically speaking make the presumption of ownership in the possessor a hard hurdle for other claimants to get over, possession would be just one aspect of the legal determination of who an owner is (if there is some question.)

And of course, so much of the law is about enforcement.  Hard to enforce my property rights in a written poem I left somewhere, because nobody will go to court over that.  Slightly more plausible to enforce the property rights of a big fish like the Beach Boys or the Everly Brothers on a forgotten tape, but even then, but that was before a real culture of IP urgency had developed (in a way...)

Perhaps there would be a clause in the contract between the artist and the studio that any tape abandoned for 3 days became property of the studio, or something.

Something to research for the PhD in the sociology or LA Studios 1963-1968, I suppose.

Whatever the reason for its use, it would seem for certain that the Everlys' tape was badly erased...if it was employed only for a slap-back echo effect on the mono instrumental sub-mix, wouldn't the machine spinning it be in "record" mode, not "play" mode?

Side question, I know I've previously read a little bit about how the SOT tapes came into the possession of bootleggers, wasn't it a fellow working on An American Band surreptitiously copied the tapes? And this was done on early, lossless DAT?

I'm just wondering if anybody has more interesting details on the whole story. It does seem to be a fascinating tale of espionage, for which we are all grateful to have this incredible music at our fingertips for historical purposes. Even if it the motivation was purely done for monetary gain, which I'm assuming, but then again I have no idea. Wouldn't it have taken a ridiculously long time to copy as many tapes as he did and get away with it? Or did he just have full access for an indefinite amount of time to the vault? And how would someone like that peddle their wares to bootleggers during the era?

It feels like it must've been something like a drug deal, or Watergate. Fascinating to picture this happening so long ago, amongst the backdrop of 1980s with mullets everywhere. And how much money must this person have made off of the deal? This was a hell of a lot of music. I can't imagine the surprise the band/Capitol must've had when they found out. I certainly remember the days of silver bottomed bootleg CDs in used record stores.

Didn't mean to derail the fascinating conversation, although I guess this is part of the story, tangentially speaking.

Both, actually -- the signal is recorded by the record head and then played back a few milliseconds later by the repro head.

This is what I've been saying too.

My issues and questions and doubts are not about property rights as much as quality control. If you're a pro engineer on the level of the people we're discussing, and you're running a session where a reel of tape that was used from another artist has that artist's tracks on that recycled reel and it starts bleeding through to the *new* client's tracks you're recording and being paid to do so...wouldn't the 99.99999% reaction from that pro be "Hold the phone! We can't use this!". It's their name and reputation on those tracks too. Or taking the process further: Let's say engineer John Smith was doing a project for client Band X, and Band X simply *nails* a perfect take and is excited beyond words...then either they play it back or later their bosses at the label play it back and hear bleed-through from a Mattel toy commercial in the middle of a perfect take that can't be replicated...There would be hell to pay, to put it mildly. And engineer John Smith would probably be looking for a new job.

Am I missing something in that aspect of this discussion regarding reused tapes?

This is why I wrote all that about this particular case with the Everlys track being perhaps a deliberate, aesthetic choice to have it in there. However it happened, that possibility, along with hearing bleed from a delay reel, seems to be the shortest line between the two points.

I just cannot see people working at this level in the industry re-using tape to this degree: Yes, they would use the same client's same reel if necessary as described, but to bring in someone else's reel of tape from weeks or months ago that could have been damaged or stretched or wrinkled or recorded over who knows how many times during that first client's sessions...it just doesn't seem like the level of quality control these people and these facilities operated within. And opening up the possibility of a client's work suffering and being affected negatively to save a few bucks by using other clients' recycled reels...I just can't see it.

Like I said before, if there is evidence this was done regularly, I'll stand corrected. But I just can't see it among people in an industry who take so much care in getting the right sounds and maintaining their equipment to where they'd roll the dice and use old tape from other clients to record important sessions.

Over the years, I’ve encountered many examples - audio evidence, quotes from people, researching studio practices - and I accepted this was done long ago. I don’t have any immediate “evidence” or quotes, and I don’t believe this was an “official” policy or anything - just a practice that definitely occurred. I’ve also had possession of studio master tapes and original machines, etc, so I have intimate personal experience ... but to be honest I didn’t pay close attention or document these kinds of experiences in this regard. I’ll see what I can come with to present my case - but be assured re-using of tapes definitely occurred fairly regularly on 1960s and ‘70s studio sessions (take or leave my word in it until I find evidence). This practice still occurs to some degree with any studio using tapes (look up tape-based studios that have their policies posted online, for example).

Re: possession is 9/10 law - just using it as a figure of speech. Main point is: if you wrote a poem on a piece of paper that belonged to me, then I threw that paper away - I think you’d be hard pressed to make a case against me if I tossed the paper in the trash after you left.

We have audio evidence of incomplete erasure of a previous track (most notably the part near the coda of “I’m Waiting for the Day” when you can clearly hear a completely different song playing in the background. This indicates: 1- The machine was not calibrated properly; 2- No one noticed and/or cared; 3- Tape was recorded on, then erased recorded over again. This is all the evidence I need. Does it really matter if the tape that was being recorded over was a previous take of the same track or an Everly working reel left behind that the label/producer/artist didn’t care to keep?

Additionally, there is no plausible scenario here in which there are crosstalk issues that caused this - unless someone is implying that “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” used the same 4-track tape that the Everly Bros. used, and/or the Everly Bros. tape somehow ended up on a Columbia 8-track. If so, let me know the details that theory because I can’t wrap my head around it.

In a nutshell - With this new info, there is no doubt in my mind that the backtrack for “I Just wasn’t made for these times” was mixed to 1/4” mono at Western, then the mono tape was taken to Columbia and transferred to one track on the 8-track.

Seems like you guys are taking issue not with reuse of tapes (that 100% definitely did occur, no question), but with the reuse of a tape that included ANOTHER ARTIST’S work. What if Chuck and/or Western personal we’re simply using the Everly tape to test the machines, etc after that session?

... listen to the mono mixes of “I’m waiting for the day” and “I just wasn’t made for these times”.

From around 0:05-0:09 on “times”, you can hear tape rewinding (squeals) in the background (some people think this sounds like some kind of high pitched organ).

On the quiet string breakdown on “waiting” - particularly leading into the drum rolls, you can hear a completely different song playing faintly in the background.

Autistic lawyers don't do figures of speech!  I get what you're saying, though -- I could easily make a great case against you, the problem is enforceability and the inadequate value of whatever restitution you could provide, not the law itself.




It matters in the sense of getting a complete picture of what was going on and how it happened.



Agreed.


I think it points pretty heavily to that, too -- but the question remains of: why do this?  I'm not sure that comfort at Western is a great answer, since he'd just have to go over to CBS and mix the 8-track there?


For me it is both the fact that it's not just another artist's work, but the Everly Brothers, who presumably had/have a major label behind them who would potentially have some interest (in the legal/custodial sense of the word) in the tapes.

I think the main sticking point for me about tape reuse is, even with the uncomfortably unsubstantiated idea that the Beach Boys would have used used tape, to accept that it happened this way amost requires an entire paradigm shift in the way we think about the studio.  These were not in fact, gifted engineers, working for one of the great technicians of sound, Bill Putnam, to create hi-fidelity records.  These were hacks doing bad, hurried work, pumping out teenage crap that didn't matter.  At least the Studio Musicians pretended to like it so they sounded good.  But imagine the colossal lack of care all around that this stuff slips by EVERYONE.  Either they didn't care, or there were a bunch of people who weren't great at their jobs.  OR, as GF says...Brian put it in there on purpose.  OR!  Brian's own impatience and loss of interest drove these people to take shortcuts.

Donny, you're bypassing a few issues. If I can find it I'll post it, but hasn't Mark Linett said the reason why the original tapes sounded so good 50 years later was because they used new, high quality tape for the sessions and they held up with excellent fidelity? If Mark said that, wouldn't that negate the reuse/recycle element?

Alongside that, let's say they were reusing tape on PS. We have the original tape boxes showing the branded tape - Are any of them crossed out, as in "Everly Brothers" with all the markings from that crossed out and the Pet Sounds info written underneath? I doubt they had a supply of Scotch empty reel boxes laying around new or unused to give clients. As far as standard practice goes, when a client left with a tape it was put in the box with all the session markings and info.

As someone who has worked with tape, what would you say is the approximate "shelf life" in terms of reusing a reel of tape for a session? As I mentioned, if you have a piece of tape that has gone through the process with other clients, how many times can you expect to record and rerecord over that same tape, and how many winds and hard stops could you get before you see stretching and drop-outs and wrinkles and the like?

Again, not saying it didn't happen, but is it feasible for a studio to have someone on their payroll on the clock checking over a stack of old tapes to reuse and recycle versus simply buying new reels for clients like Brian Wilson in 1966 since the studio didn't pay for the reels anyway?

Just trying to wrap my own head around the process.

Having read numerous accounts from people who were both there at the time and people who worked with the tapes later, I think it actually is one of the key answers. Brian preferred to work with Chuck at Western for a variety of reasons, and as early as some of the Vosse articles and his "Fusion" piece on Smile, Vosse specifically cited this reasoning because Chuck gave Brian more freedom than some of the union guys at CBS/Columbia would allow. That's pretty much set in stone, and that practice continued even a few decades later to where I heard Phil Ramone say he would run into issues with the union engineers who would get very upset if Phil tried to touch something, and this is Phil Freakin Ramone years after 1966.  :)

They used Scotch 201 and 203. While 203 has held up fairly well, 201 is a 1.5 mil acetate tape and has most distinctly not held up particularly well over the years.

203 is poly so it’s better but is also 1.0 mil - which was actually designed for and used for consumer-machines as it’s thinner/longer running fine.

201 is mostly unusable now. 203 is fine but is fragile IME.

Doubt anything would be scratched out. Because 1 - it was likely a working Everly tape without anything written on it, 2- I also doubt the box that containing the dubdown from 4-track to 1/4” then to 8-track even exists anymore - that was a working tape/step along the way and was likely tossed or even re-used again.

Shelf life for reusing is more or less indefinite IME. I’ve used tapes well over many hundreds of passes, and most of my own recordings were mixed on vintage 1960s tapes, some used.

What issued am I bypassing ?

[duplicate post]

Would you say the same thing about H. Bowen David?  Because he presumably did the IWFTD mix.  I don't think we should tie things to Chuck because he wasn't always there.

I would say yes - I'm thinking it had more to do with the culture at an independent studio versus a larger more corporate-based studio like Columbia. I doubt there were union reps regularly dropping in on sessions at Western 3 to make sure no one but the engineer was working the board. And I think the management on a daily level was less corporate at the indies like Gold Star or Western. If a guy like Brian who could work the board wanted to work the board, he could do so more freely at Western, I think that's been established.

The issue of what Mark said about the original tapes, again sorry I don't have it handy to repost, as it would suggest they were using new tapes for these sessions. And if the boxes were not marked or labeled, how would the studio be able to ID them so they didn't wipe or trash something accidentally?

I'll ask another point a different way: If you had a client recording on a recycled/erased tape, and you noticed previous sounds leaking through, would you continue recording that client or would you get a new or different reel of tape?

I'm just asking because I still cannot imagine engineers who worry about the most minute details and noises allowing a session to continue if such a thing were to happen from a reused tape. I'm just trying to connect the possibility that these sounds we're discussing could have been left intentionally. And I'll reference Sinatra again since he was using the same Putnam studios: What would happen if Frank was cutting "All Or Nothing At All" in 65-66 with a full studio of the best players in town, and he nailed a vocal...then they go back and hear a toy commercial jingle bleeding through during a quiet section? Hell to pay puts it mildly lol. :lol

Well, sure there's more freedom.  But we do have Brian on film freely twiddling knobs at CBS.  To me it just seems like such an unnecessary step considering how little actual mixing would have been involved.  No wonder those final masters are so murky.  Not only could there be up to five or six generations of tape, but they were using old tape that no-one bothered to erase!

Maybe Brian liked the sound of Western's and Putnam's equipment and monitors more than he liked those at Columbia for mixing instruments? No doubt Putnam's gear had some signature sounds that Columbia could not get because Putnam made or designed a lot of his own equipment, as did the guys at Columbia. That's another factor to consider, maybe he simply liked the sounds he got and could get at Western for instruments whereas stacked vocals were not the same concerns. And there's the difference in echo chambers too.

If those are among the reasons, we'd also need to rethink our conception of the mix at that time.  If it made that much of a difference, was Brian adding additional effects at this stage?  Were they running things through additional 176s?  If, as I've usually thought, "mixing the track" at this point would've been setting three (or four) faders -- because the majority of the mixing was done live -- I can't see a reason to add a tape generation.  But if he's actively adding effects and processing, OK.

I think the question is: why not reuse tape? Tapes are routinely reused. Let's say whoever produced the Everly tape went through tons of attempts at final mix, the 1/4" mono deck was rolling continually let's say they went through 3 reels of tape. At the end of the session, they get the master, the third reel is marked MASTER and either given to the Producer or marked to ship to the label. Producer and artist say thanks and split. You now have two perfectly good reels of tape - literally "one pass" - why wouldn't you use that? You could even argue tape that has been through a pass performs BETTER than on the first pass. The issue is not that a tape was reused, it's that the machine was not calibrated correctly to erase the tape.

Well I've never run a studio, but I have in fact dealt with this issue. My old late-'60s Ampex 440 mono deck had an issue with incomplete erasure. I did actually let it go personally, because it was not particularly noticeable and did not detract from the music when I discovered it was in fact present on the final mix.

There would be no way for Mark or anyone to know if they had reused tape along the way. Remember we are *not* talking about the final 1/4" mix tape. We are talking about the tape in step #2 of this process:

1 - "Times" 4-track tape cut at Gold Star
2 - Backtrack mixed from 4-track to 1/4" mono at Western on *reused Everly tape*
3 - 1/4" mono tape brought to Columbia then transferred to 8-track
4 - *1/4" TAPE TOSSED
5 - Vocals overdubbed
6 - Final mix at Columbia to 1/4" BRAND SPANKING NEW tape

This was not a FINAL MIX, it was a step along the way. Of course it's on the table they just use a scrap tape or something laying around. In fact, I'd say it could be the reel w. the original Everly mix on it but cut out to be spliced onto the Everly album or something.

Can someone summarize in simple terms what the other theories are as to how an everly Bros song ended up on Pet Sounds?

The revelation here is that we now have evidence to suggest Brian mixed the tracks at Western - not on the 4th track of the multi as I've mentioned before, but 1/4" mono. Though I still entertain the possibility that that 4th track "reference" track could be the finsl mix - even transferred to mono. Only examining the actual multis would provide answers.

Well, I wouldn't use it because I'm a slave to ethical and legal considerations and would not like to risk destroying someone else's property.  I realise most people are not as allergic to doing something wrong as I am. (Tremendous Superego, Freud might say.)

Assuming their consciences were clear, and a client didn't have a problem using used tape, and was properly given a discount, then sure, why not?

But if you're the Beach Boys, why bother with it?  Does Elon Musk wait to buy his monthly papayas until there's a sale on them?  Were the studios, in addition to being very bad at their jobs, and not caring about the sound of the finished product, also hucksters selling used tape at full price?

Here's a scenario -- The Everly's and the Studio Musicians record You Got the Power of Love on February 3rd.  Brian is around, likes the track, and asks for a dub so he can cut a mono to bring home.  By the time the engineer who did Power of Love gets around to giving Brian a copy, it's about a month later.  Brian brings the reel into the mixing session for the intermediate IWFTD track mix, planning to cut an acetate after he's done, and that's how it somehow accidentally gets used without getting erased.

Just as speculative as the other ways, but leaves out the byzantine process and ham-fisted engineering of some of the other hypothesis.

Ha that theory sounds crazy to me, but sure? I mean, the tape was reused is my point. I don’t really have any hang ups about how. I can tell you that tapes were and are routinely reused in studios. Artists and producers go through tons of work tapes - these were reused mostly to save the studio $$$. Can’t find it now, but there’s an interview somewhere with someone who worked on Tim Buckley’s Sefronia (1973) was complaining about the label treating Tim poorly - and used the example that the studio was reusing tape and you could hear the previous artist not completely erased in the headphones.

Yes, I think we can objectively say that a tape was reused here.  But until you can present evidence, we will have to agree to disagree that the Beach Boys (or any other massive client) would as a matter of course use used tape.  That is the crux of my problem.  That one of the top ten most important clients at United Western would be given used tape to use when there was stacks of new stuff that they could charge them for.

Are you saying that studios would pay for artists to use tape out of their (the studio's) own pocket?  Why would they not bill the label or the artist for any tape at all that they used?

And then, if this is a matter-of-course recycling, you are not only saying that the engineers Brian worked with were hacks, but one could conclude, with that Tim Buckley anecdote, that the studio was in fact treating Brian badly.

Main points re: tape being reused -

1 - I don’t think there’s much of a functional difference in using lightly used or one pass tape vs new tape - so long as the machine was calibrated correctly. We have evidence in this case that it was not.

2 - My assumption is that if tapes were reused, they would be bulk erased prior to use. I don’t know if bulk erasers were readily available quite yet - but they exist for this exact reason, to reuse tape on a regular basis. This is a fact that studios reuse tape. As to in what each scenarios in the 1960s, I can only speculate.

3 - this would depend on studio policies. Most studios have a very particular set of terms regarding pricing for tape, and whether or not the studio or client owns the physical tape. This likely would include some section regarding “abandoned” tapes.

4 - whether or not the studio charged full price, included the cost of tape in their rates, or had a particular rate for used tape (50% off etc - the assumption in the Tim Buckley anecdote is the label was being cheap and this was the case) is unknown.

I accept all that.  I guess there are just too many unknowns elsewhere in the scenario.

And I think the most important part is supremely unanswerable, regardless of the mechanics of how it got there, it's there.  But whether it's there because of shoddy work, impatience, greed, or intentionality, it certainly rocks the myth of Brian being a perfectionist with able engineers working with him.  (Unless it's intentional.). If it's unintentional, it's almost shocking what a bad job they did.

And, I'm very curious as to the veracity of Steve Douglas's statement that when Brian first played him what Brian thought was going to be the final mixes, they were even more noisy than they ended up, such that Steve couldn't believe how sloppy they were and made Brian go back and try again.

I'm not sure how that would fit in to the timeline and the documentation we have, but it speaks to it not being intentional.  So what gives? 

One more thing:

If You Got the Power of Love is on both IWFTD and IJWMFTT, are we saying that Brian did his intermediate Western Track mix of both songs on to the same tape at the same time?  Do we have any paper corroboration of that?

To me, this is not a shock, nor does it reflect on Brian’s penchant for perfection in terms of PRODUCTION. Pet Sounds and 1960s pop/rock recordings in general can be considered sloppy, lo-fi, or unprofessional today. There’s tons of distortion on “Here Today”, there’s background noise etc. The erasure issue is just another one (one I’ve always noticed on “Waiting for the Day” and just assumed it was erasing over a previous mix attempt).

I think to understand why these issues were accepted and not noticed is to think about what they were doing — they were making a RECORD, primary audience listening on LP or AM radio - both formats with a higher noise floor (particularly on Capitol LPs) and distortion characteristics than any of the issues apparent on Pet Sounds. Sure it’s someone’s job to pay attention to this stuff, but if some mistake happened, with clock ticking, etc ... you accepted these artifacts as inconsequential. One man’s opinion.

... one example: putting the entire backtrack on 1 track of the 8-track is a pretty unusual way to go. To me, this is strictly workflow with less regard for technical sound quality.

Steve Douglas:

"I remember when Brian turned in Pet Sounds ...It was full of noise. You could hear him talking in the background. It was real sloppy. He had spent all this time making this album and zip, dubbed it down in one day or something like that. [When we said something to him about it], he took it back and mixed it properly. "


Here's a guy whose job (contemporaneous to these recordings) was to develop product, that is, records, to sell, and he thought it was sloppy.  And that's an earlier version -- what we have is presumably better.  I think we can't discount his testimony when it comes to questioning why some of the Beach Boys mixes are so shoddy.

Such things simply weren't done. That's a violation of the very thing you value, the intellectual property. Probably a contract violation as well. Most producers/artists were against the notion that the others may get ideas from their work, so letting somebody other than producer/artist to take a copy home was the gravest violation imaginable. The asker would feel himself a fool were he to entertain the idea.

The person who'd be able to make a copy for his personal use, other than the producer/artist, would be an engineer. But I doubt this would have been the case in the first half of the sixties - no general need for this and stricter workplace discipline.

I agree it's not legal or likely.  But I assume Brian and the Everlys were friends or at least cordial acquaintances and it seems more likely to me that a tape of theirs would be transmitted to Brian through a casual but personal and real connection rather than by chance.  Plus we have a couple of instances of Brian talking about running off acetates of stuff, on tape.  The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is offering to run off acetates of How to Speak hip for session musicians at the...I think it's the Hang on to Your Ego track session.  Which is admittedly different because How to Speak hip had been out for years.  And Brian definitely ran off monos of his stuff for friends.

Most likely, the Everlys tape was disregarded / binned / whatever, because it wasn't needed by them or their producer. Erased (incompletely, as it turned out) and tossed to the heap of other such tapes. Then somehow it got picked up. And even when the unwanted sounds got onto another tape, of a valued client, that was not a huge "crime". Worst things happen in the studios - valuable tapes get mangled, erased partially or completely, just because the machines or people sometimes malfunction.

I recall hearing that a big hit of the '70s - I believe it was either "Afternoon Delight" or "Moonlight Feels Right" - was recorded on used tape. Not sure if that was the multi-track or the mixdown tape.

I seriously doubt Brian intended to purposely incorporate this Everly Brothers track into his productions of two different songs as a "found sound".
 
As for the Western engineers not saying anything about it - well, they couldn't if they didn't notice it, and they wouldn't have noticed it if it was improperly erased on the very mono machine they were using, and that happened to be misaligned to the mono machine at United that it was recorded on. Or, if both the United and Western machines were identically aligned (which is a more likely scenario, considering both were Putnam studios, and the machine model was probably the same), but the mono machine used at Columbia was aligned slightly differently (and possibly a different model). Only at Columbia would it have been noticeable, and Brian in his haste and disregard for "minor" background noises said not to worry about it. Truthfully, it's MOST noticeable prior to the start of both "IWFTD" and "IJWMFTT" on the S.O.T. boots, not on the actual released mixes. When it IS noticeable on the final mixes, it's that squirrely sound between 0:05 and 0:09 of "IJWMFTT" - and honestly, I've always liked that sound, as it seems a bit mysterious and otherworldly when you don't know what it is! Fits the music perfectly, IMO.

Whether it's Chuck or Bo Henry who did the mono instrumental dubdowns with Brian on these two songs, the thought over on the Hoffman forum is that both were indeed done at the same session, which explains why the Everlys track appears on the mono dubdown for both. The Badman book details the March 6th string overdub on "IWFTD" (which was engineered by Bo, just like the basic track was earlier that day), and also indicates that, after the strings were added, a vocal overdub was recorded, and that work was done on another, unknown, song that same evening. Well, for one thing, a vocal overdub was NOT added to the first-generation 4-track for "IWFTD", because that's filled with three tracks of basic and one track with the string overdub. However - remember how I mentioned that on the S.O.T. presentation of the mono track with lead vocal overdubs, there is a layer of background vocal "ahhs" seemingly locked in with the mono track? I mean, the level and positioning of that is such that I wonder if Brian added those "ahhs" while the mono dubdown was being made to 1/4". Seems unlikely at first thought, since he knew he'd have another seven tracks to add vocals at Columbia - and in fact, the 8-track notation implies that Track 7 wasn't even used -  yet those "ahhs" sure seems to be locked in there with the instruments, in mono. And, this would explain Badman's detail about a vocal overdub being added to "IWFTD" and work on another song (mono dubdown of the instrumental tracks for "IJWMFFT"?) being done that same evening - all at Western. So this would have been Bo Henry's work (it was a Sunday, and Chuck was apparently off on Sundays at this point in time). Not that it was Bo's fault if the machines at the Putnam studio were aligned differently than the one at Columbia - that happens, which is why overdub engineers working with a tape from another studio typically spend a bit of time aligning their machine to the test tones recorded at the start of the tape by the first studio's engineers, before they begin recording. But if Brian - in his haste to start getting vocals laid down - told them not to bother, then there you go.

Bo Henry...is that what Henry Bowen David's friends called him?  That is quite interesting--I'd love for Linett to pop in here to confirm whether there are indeed vocals on the mono backing track on the CBS 8-track.  That would be fairly significant addition to the knowledge-base about how things were done.

As is the discussion here.  As much skepticism as I have about all the scenarios, it has to be one of them!  Thanks for caring, friends.

Yeah, H. Bowen David was known as "Bo" by friends and family. I actually emailed back and forth with his daughter many years ago, and she sent me a scan of a Western Recorders newsletter with a photo of him. Bo was still living at the time (I don't know if he is now or not), but his daughter said he was losing his eyesight. She told him I had inquired about him, and said it made him happy to know people were interested in the work he'd done, and still listening to those records.

That's great.  Not many photos of him around.  I hope he's either still with us, or resting in peace.

Er, I made a mistake - should have referred to him as Bo David, not Bo Henry. But "Bo" is his nickname of choice.  :)

I figured! 

And interesting that, in any case-- but especially if the scenario of preparing bunch of mono track mixes at Western that Sunday night holds water -- We can't forget that it wasn't always Chuck engineering Brian's sessions at Western.

I think I've found a good example of a most famous master recorded on a partially erased tape. The Doors, "Light My Fire". At the very start, roughly 5 seconds in, a female voice says something like "appeasingly". It's heard most clearly in the single mono mix, and (less so) in the mono mix. Stereo mix has it as well, but it's really subtle there. This means, it's on the 4-track master. Though it was the mono mix that was paid the most attention by Paul Rothchild and Bruce Botnick, they weren't able to do much in mono.

There is also unique stereo remix from the 4-track master made by Steve Hoffman, on the Audio Fidelity 2014 release "Legends / Get It On". This subliminal thing is still there, but oh-so-subtly. (Haven't checked yet the "Perception" remix by Bruce Botnick, as I am aware that some subtle noises are cleaned there.)

We know now it isn't Carol, as she recognised the fact herself  ;D

Here's a little snippet I put together.
Basically you have the reduced mono backing track of IJWMFTT on the left channel and the corresponding part of the Everly Brother's Power of Love on the right channel.
It seems like only the track with the bass guitar and Hammond organ remained on the tape, whatever clue that holds.
Anyway, this pretty much proves that the weird noise is in fact part of the organ solo.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HNKIOKEs2Vnb7kCRzO853Ms78u1EUDrF/view?usp=sharing