If you were a young-adult Beatles fan in the 1960s, a recording artist, and fortunate enough to find yourself in the legendary Abbey Road Studios, you would probably feel like kid in some kind of surreal candy store. That was the exact scenario facing soul-rock band Simon Dupree & the Big Sound in the latter part of the decade, after signing to The Beatles’ home record label, Parlophone. Big Sound singer Derek Shulman, the future front man of spin-off prog-rock act Gentle Giant, details their hilarious experience in a YouTube video promoting his upcoming memoir, Giant Steps.
"Our manager got us an audition in front of George Martin, Geoff Emerick, Alan Parsons, Norrie Paramor, and 12 other high-level producers and engineers at EMI," he recalls. "They had us play a whole set, like a mini-concert, and most of them didn’t smile the whole time. When it was over, they said goodbye, and we were sure they didn’t like us. Two weeks later, we got a record contract." Through their association with Parlophone, The Big Sound were able to record at Abbey Road. And given that this was The Beatles’ regular stomping grounds, The Fab Four left their instruments scattered throughout the place. Simon Dupree wound up using that gear on their own recordings—a totally thrilling experience that they didn’t happen to share with the music stars. "We picked up these amazing guitars like George Harrison’s 1957 Gretsch Duo Jet and John Lennon’s Rickenbacker 325. We even borrowed the prized mellotron they used on 'Strawberry Fields Forever' for a few of our songs."
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From there, they got even more brazen. According to the video, they arrived to the studio one day and found that "John Lennon had dragged his king-sized bed into the main room." With the glee of children bouncing on a trampoline, they hopped all over the mattress—that is, until its owners walked in and scolded them. "We were having so much fun, jumping around like idiots, that at first we didn’t see them," Shulman notes. "Then John became quite agitated and said, 'Jesus Christ, what kind of bullshit is this?' And Yoko screamed, 'Get the fuck off our bed!' I immediately blamed [brother and bandmate] Phil [Shulman], even though it was a [group] effort, but John and Yoko didn’t care who was at fault. I can only imagine how they would have reacted if they had seen us playing their guitars."
This anecdote from Giant Steps—which comes out October 7, 2025 via Jawbone Press—isn’t specific about the dates of their encounter. But Shulman is likely referring to early-mid 1969, when The Beatles were recording their swan song LP, Abbey Road. According to Beatles Bible, Lennon and Yoko were involved in a car crash on July 1 of that year while on holiday in Scotland with his son Julian and her daughter Kyoko. The Beatle was reportedly hospitalized for five days; Ono injured her back, while she, Lennon, and Kyoko all sustained facial cuts that required stitches. In order to keep an eye on her as she recovered, Lennon had a bed installed at Abbey Road.
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In his 2006 book, Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles, engineer Geoff Emerick wrote about this unusual setup—and how it affected those around them. "[F]our men in brown coats began wheeling in a large, heavy object," he recalled. "For a moment, I thought it was a piano coming in from one of the other studios, but it soon dawned on me that these were proper deliverymen: the brown coats they were wearing had the word 'Harrods' [the name of a British department store] inscribed on the back. The object being delivered was, in fact, a bed. Jaws dropping, we all watched as it was brought into the studio and carefully positioned by the stairs, across from the tea-and-toast setup. More brown coats appeared with sheets and pillows and somberly made the bed up. Then, without saying a word, Yoko climbed in, carefully arranging the covers around her. I’d spent nearly seven years of my life in recording studios, and I thought I’d seen it all…but this took the cake…[Out] of the corner of my eye I could see that Paul [McCartney], Ringo [Starr], and George Harrison were as gobsmacked as [I was]."
Emerick added that Lennon requested a microphone be placed near Ono so that they could hear her on headphones. "For the next several weeks, Yoko lived in that bed," he wrote. "Her wardrobe consisted of a series of flimsy nightgowns, accessorized with a regal tiara, carefully positioned to hide the scar on her forehead from the accident. As she gained her strength, so too did she gain her confidence, slowly but surely starting to annoy the other Beatles and [producer] George Martin with her comments. She spoke in a really tiny voice, and she always referred to the Beatles in a peculiar, impersonal third-party way: 'Beatles will do this, Beatles will do that,' never failing to leave off the 'The.' That used to really irritate Paul. On occasion, he’d even try correcting her: 'Actually, it’s The Beatles, luv,' but she persistently ignored him."
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