The Beatles are well-known for experimenting with tape recording techniques throughout their career, from multi-track recording to reversing, looping, flanging, varispeed and artificial double-tracking, many of them pioneered alongside producer George Martin at Abbey Road Studios.
In 2026, tape has largely gone the way of the dodo when it comes to studio recording, long since supplanted by digital tools. Not for Paul McCartney, though, who has maintained a fondness for working with tape, even decades on from his time with the Fab Four.
In a new interview with Reverb, McCartney’s longtime studio engineer Steve Orchard reveals that the sessions for Macca’s latest solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, saw the former Beatle and producer Andrew Watt make liberal use of tape machines that reside in McCartney’s private studio, Hog Hill Mill.
Orchard, who joined McCartney’s team in 2014, reveals that despite the bulk of the recording being done in Pro Tools, he still finds a way to incorporate vintage tape machines into the creative process, driven by McCartney’s ceaseless desire to experiment. “We're always doing interesting stuff like changing tape speeds and recording things in different octaves,” he says. “There's never two days the same, you know what I mean? There's always something cool going on.”
Hog Hill Mill transitioned away from a tape-based workflow in the early ‘00s, but thankfully kept their tape machines, Orchard says: “We've got the Studer J37, which is fantastic. There’s the fabulous valve four-track, but we've also got two A827s… Everything's sort of plumbed in. I've got the studio kind of set now, so we can do virtually anything at any time straight away.”
It was the Studer J37 – a legendary four-track tape machine that was used for numerous Beatles albums in the mid-to-late ’60s – that caught producer Andrew Watt’s eye. “Andrew saw it when we were doing the session here and he was like, ‘We’ve got to do a song on that,’” Orchard recalls.
The Studer ended up being used to record We Two, a loping and nostalgic cut that many have speculated reflects fondly on his relationship with John Lennon. With Watt on guitar and Paul on drums, the trio landed a take they were happy with, before realizing that there was a slight tempo drift towards the end.
Working with tape, of course, meant that fixing the recording after the fact wasn’t quite as simple as it might’ve been in Pro Tools. Orchard decided that they would record a pickup – a short section recorded separately to fix part of a take – and splice it with the original. Splicing (the act of physically cutting and joining tape to edit takes together) was once routine, but has since become something of a lost art in the age of the DAW. “I hadn't done a razor blade edit for over 20 years,” Orchard admits.
As if being two decades out of practice wasn’t bad enough, Orchard was waylaid by an unexpected observer moments before putting razor to tape. Not just any observer, though, but Elton John himself. “I queued the tape up and got the edit points marked up on the head on the tape. Andrew's phone went off and suddenly he was like, ‘Oh, hi Elton,’” Orchard laughs.
“He was FaceTiming Elton John. I had Andrew and Elton on one shoulder and Paul on the other whilst I was doing this edit. I was thinking, ‘okay, better get this right. No pressure then.’ But thankfully it worked out perfectly.”
Read the full interview with Steve Orchard on Reverb’s website.
