Recording, mixing, editing: You Know My Name (Look Up The Number), What’s The New Mary Jane

Room 4, EMI Studios, Abbey Road
Producers: Geoff Emerick, John Lennon
Engineer: Mike Sheady

This session was booked by John Lennon to prepare what he hoped would be a Plastic Ono Band single: ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’, with ‘What’s The New Mary Jane’ on the b-side.

Towards the end of 1969 it looked as though both these old recordings would remain unused by The Beatles. ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’ had been begun back in May 1967, while ‘What’s The New Mary Jane’ was a relatively newer song from August 1968.

The 7pm-3am session began with a copy made of the third mono mix of ‘You Know My Name’ made on 30 April 1969, the day the song’s vocals were recorded by Lennon and Paul McCartney. The copy was then edited from 6’08” to 4’19”.

What’s The New Mary Jane had been mixed on 14 August 1968, 26 September 1968, 14 October 1968 and 11 September 1969. A new mix, numbered stereo remix four, was made on this day, followed by a fifth that included simultaneous vocal and noise overdubs by Lennon, Yoko Ono, and EMI and Apple employees who were present in the studio.

Parts of this new mix was copied onto a new tape, alongside a playback of remix stereo four, resulting in a new mix that had different parts of the song playing out of sync. It was then edited for release, and Apple announced a release date of 5 December 1969.

This never happened. Instead of being issued as a Plastic Ono Band single, this day’s edit of ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’ became the b-side of ‘Let It Be’ in March 1970. ‘What’s The New Mary Jane’, meanwhile, remained unreleased until Anthology 3 in 1996.