Recording, mixing, editing: Working Class Hero, My Mummy’s Dead by John Lennon

Studio Three, EMI Studios, Abbey Road
Producers: John Lennon, Yoko Ono
Engineers: Phil McDonald, Andy Stephens

The 12th and penultimate studio session for John Lennon’s debut solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, took place on 25 October 1970.

Two songs were worked on: ‘Working Class Hero’ and ‘My Mummy’s Dead’.

Twelve takes of ‘Working Class Hero’ had been recorded on 27 September. However, Lennon was unhappy with the results and recorded another three on 15 October.

Eventually he settled on take 9 from 27 September as the best. However, it omitted the verse beginning ‘When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty odd years’. That verse was recorded on this day, before mixes of both takes and the edit were made.

When I sang it, I missed a bloody verse. I had to edit it in. But you do say ‘f*****g crazy,’ don’t you? That’s how I speak. I was very near to it many times in the past, but I would deliberately not put it in, which is the real hypocrisy, the real stupidity. I would deliberately not say things, because it might upset somebody, or whatever I was frightened of.

The second song to be worked on was the album closer, ‘My Mummy’s Dead’. This was the only song not recorded at Abbey Road – it was recorded on a cassette tape by Lennon at 841 Nimes Road in Bel Air, California, where he and Yoko Ono stayed in the summer of 1970 while undergoing Primal Therapy with Dr Arthur Janov.

All these songs just came out of me. I didn’t sit down to think, ‘I’m going to write about my mother’ or I didn’t sit down to think, ‘I’m going to write about this, that or the other.’ They all came out, like all the best work of anybody’s ever does.

During this day’s mixing session, Lennon’s home recording was slightly sped up and treated with EQ to make it sound as though it was coming from a small radio speaker.