rockyraccoon.co.uk

Besame Mucho

Written by Consuelo Velázquez
(c. 1932-1941) 1

Table of Contents

Decca Audition Version

Recording Details

Decca Recording Studios, London – Studio 2
Recorded: 1 Jan 1962

John: ***
Paul: ***
George: ***
Pete: ***

Lorem Ipsum

Instruments

John Lennon

1958 Rickenbacker 325 Capri with Bigsby vibrato 2

George Harrison

1957 Gretsch PX6128 Duo Jet with Gretsch Bigsby vibrato

Paul McCartney

1961 Höfner 500/1

Pete Best

1960 Premier Marine Pearl (14″ x 22″ bass drum/ 8″ x 12″ rack tom/ 16″ x 16″ floor tom/ 5.5″ x 14″ “Super Ace” snare); Zyn cymbals (16″ crash/ 18″ custom “sizzle” ride)/ Zildjian cymbals (18″ crash/ 14″ hi-hats) 3

Releases Overview 4

Mono/Stereo?

Release
Year

Remaster
Year

Format

Release(s)

Recommended
Listening?

Abbey Road Studios Version

Recording Details

EMI Recording Studios, London – Studio 2
Recorded: 6 Jun 1962

John: guitar
Paul: lead vocal, bass
George: guitar
Pete: drums

Besame Mucho was the first song The Beatles ever recorded at EMI Recording Studios (Abbey Road). This was the beginning of an unparalleled legacy consisting of over 200 songs recorded in just over seven years.

The aim for this session was to record their first single and producer Ron Richards had shortlisted four songs for recording, from which the final two would be chosen. These were Besame Mucho, Love Me Do, P.S. I Love You, and Ask Me Why in that order. It was typical for producers to start with the most promising song and so Richards must have thought highly of their take on this 1940s classic (assuming it was played in the preceding un-taped rehearsal).5
It was after all a song that was previously chosen for their Decca audition on New Year’s Day 1962 and had long been a part of their live sets in both Liverpool and Hamburg.6 However, the session didn’t get off to the smoothest start as engineer Norman Smith recalls:

“I had problems with their equipment … I must say, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. There were so many extraneous noises coming from their instruments, I thought there must be something wrong with our mixer!” 7

Ken Townsend, on duty in the technical department, had to create a new bass rig for Paul by soldering an input jack onto a spare preamp, connecting this to an amplifier and then hooking this up to a speaker borrowed from Studio Three’s echo chamber. This makeshift set-up performed so well that it was used by Paul up until March 1963.8 It wasn’t just Paul with equipment issues though.

“We actually had to tie string around John Lennon’s guitar amplifier to stop the rattling. There were also problems with Pete Best’s drums – his cymbals, I believe. But we eventually got everything sorted out and finally we started to record.” – Norman Smith. 9

Besame Mucho was recorded to twin-track EMI BTR3 and mono EMI BTR2 tape machines simultaneously.10 Only one take was recorded11 before the band moved on to Love Me Do.

Instruments

John Lennon

1958 Rickenbacker 325 Capri with Bigsby vibrato 12

George Harrison

1957 Gretsch PX6128 Duo Jet with Gretsch Bigsby vibrato 10

Paul McCartney

1961 Höfner 500/1 10

Pete Best

1960 Premier Marine Pearl (14″ x 22″ bass drum/ 8″ x 12″ rack tom/ 16″ x 16″ floor tom/ 5.5″ x 14″ “Super Ace” snare); Zyn cymbals (16″ crash/ 18″ custom “sizzle” ride)/ Zildjian cymbals (18″ crash/ 14″ hi-hats) 13

Releases Overview

Mono/Stereo?

Release
Year

Remaster
Year

Format

Release(s)

Recommended
Listening?

Besame Mucho
(Take 1)

Mono

1995

1995

CD/Vinyl

Anthology 1

❌14

Besame Mucho
(Take 1)

Mono

2011/2016

2011

Digital/Streaming only

Anthology 1 (Remastered)

✅

Besame Mucho
(Take 1)

Mono

2017

1995 15

Vinyl (DeAgostini)

Anthology 1 (Remastered)

❌

Besame Mucho
(Take 1)

Mono

2025

2025

CD/Vinyl/Streaming

Anthology 1 (Remastered)

References:

  1. I have seen sources that claim 1932, 1940 and 1941. Wikipedia says 1932 but then the NYTimes article linked as a source says 1941 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9same_Mucho ↩︎
  2. ↩︎
  3. ↩︎
  4. Please note this is not an exhaustive list. Thank you Maul for your incredible The Beatles The Complete Studio & Home Recordings pdf (last updated 2023) which compiles several major sources into a fantastic resource listing released versions of every Beatles studio and home recording ↩︎
  5. Lewisohn, Mark, 2013, Tune In (pp. 667-668) ↩︎
  6. Hammack, Jerry, 2017, TBRRM: Vol 1 (p. 29) ↩︎
  7. Ryan, Kevin & Kehew, Brian. (2006). Recording the Beatles (p. 348) ↩︎
  8. Hammack, Jerry, 2017, TBRRM: Vol 1 (p. 29) ↩︎
  9. Ryan, Kevin & Kehew, Brian. (2006). Recording the Beatles (p. 348) ↩︎
  10. Ryan, Kevin & Kehew, Brian. (2006). Recording the Beatles (p. 350) ↩︎
  11. From the tape box The Daily Beatle (Archived) via the-paulmccartney-project.com ↩︎
  12. Hammack, Jerry, 2017, TBRRM: Vol 1 (p. 29) ↩︎
  13. Hammack, Jerry, 2017, TBRRM: Vol 1 (p. 236) ↩︎
  14. The wise folks over at the Steve Hoffman Forums have determined that the 2011/2016 remasters are different, newer transfers than the 1995 versions. The general consensus also seems to be that the 2011/2016 remasters are preferable and lack the amounts of “amateurishly applied noise reduction” the originals have ↩︎
  15. According to users of the Steve Hoffman Forums It would seem as though the 2017 DeAgostini vinyl pressings use the original 1995 masters and aren’t an improvement over them ↩︎