Under The Mersey Wall

‘Under The Mersey Wall’ is the opening track on George Harrison’s second solo album Electronic Sound.

Harrison’s Moog IIIp synth arrived in London in early February 1969, and was initially installed at Kinfauns, Harrison’s Esher bungalow. Bernie Krause, an early synth exponent and Moog representative, was summoned to help him learn to use it.

The Moog synthesizer was set up on a table. Understand, he had just got it delivered that afternoon. It had just arrived. He said, ‘I want to play you something.’ After supplying the requisite amount of smoke he put on this tape. Now, one thing I have is a really good memory for sound, and I remembered what we had done back in California in November – and here it was on that tape! Harrison says to me, ‘Well, I’m putting it out as an album. If it makes a couple of quid I’ll send it to you.’ I said, ‘Not without my permission you’re not, that’s Paul and I’d stuff.’ And then he said, ‘Trust me, I’m a Beatle.’ Trust me, I’m a Beatle! I said, ‘Yeah? Call me a cab, I’m going home, and don’t use my stuff.’ He said, ‘When Ravi Shankar comes to my house he’s humble,’ and something else about Jimi Hendrix. Then he asked me to patch him a bagpipe sound. Perhaps he was more conscientious about his behaviour at other times. Maybe it depended on how much you genuflected.

‘Under The Mersey Wall’ was recorded at Kinfauns. The title was a reference to ‘Over The Mersey Wall’, a column by another George Harrison which was published by the Liverpool Echo.

All I did was get that very first Moog synthesizer, with the big patch unit and the keyboards that you could never tune, and I put a microphone into a tape machine. I recorded whatever came out. The word avant-garde, as my friend Alvin Lee likes to say, really means, “’Aven’t-got a clue!” So whatever came out when I fiddled with the knobs went on tape—but some amazing sounds did happen.

The sleeve notes for Electronic Sound credit ‘Under The Mersey Wall’ to “Rupert and Jostick The Siamese Twins”, references to Harrison’s cats.