All of this was very impressive indeed so I said that I would present all the information to Geoff Emerick with a view to employ him, which I did. Geoff said he seemed to have a track record which would suit us and we could put him on a month’s trial and see how he gets on with the staff and the job.

About two weeks later Danny the tape operator came to me and said that he wasn’t too sure about John Mills as he had asked Danny to set up the microphones on a session exactly as Geoff would do, also to use the same microphones as well. This is unusual as each engineer has their own particular way of working. It seems that every time John was working he asked Danny to do the same.

With this in mind I thought I’ll do a little checking on him and I telephoned Tamla Motown Studios asking the guy there about an English guy who had worked for them. The first thing the guy said was “What colour is this engineer?” When I told him White, the guy said “Sorry we have only had coloured engineers here.”

So I thought I’d better ring Olympic Studios and Pye Studios too. When I spoke to Anna at Olympic (I knew her as she had been working there years), I mentioned that we had taken on an ex engineer from her studio. She asked who it was and when I said John Mills she immediately said “Not that little shit. He never engineered here at all. He did some tape operating and he wasn’t any good at that either.”

I thanked her and then I rang Derek Strickland at Pye Studios asking the same questions. He replied, “That twit never engineered here, he was a useless tape op’, and not even any good at that.”

So when we got some quiet time I confronted Millsey about what I had found out and he had the cheek to have a go back about me checking up on him. It got very heated to the point of a couple of the Studio staff grabbing hold of me to stop me from punching him. I normally wouldn’t lose my temper but this person had found all the right nerve ends and words to stir up my inner volcano.

After that he had mentioned to some of the tape operators in the Studio that his girlfriend who lived outside England was coming to stay with him for a long weekend and he was going to have a long weekend off from work and give her his best shot in bed. Oooooh! I thought this is God-given. He has to be stitched up, no matter what. So on speaking to the boys in the Studio we found out from one of them that Glenn had a sister who worked in a chemist shop. I asked to see if she could get some Bromide which we could put into his tea every day, which Glenn did.

I told him not to put too much in at first, just slowly build it up day by day, which he did. John went off for his long weekend with his girlfriend and when he returned to work was quizzed as to how his long sexual weekend had been. He told the guys “It’s really very strange, I felt really knackered all weekend and sadly could not rise to the occasion at all. I just don’t understand it at all.”

Well, we were all giggling like little kids and were so proud of ourselves. Then, when we heard that the Beatles Christmas party this year was to be held on The Sloop John D on the River Thames, I said “Right, we haven’t finished with Mills yet, there is more to come.”

All the guys in the Studio were sworn to keep it a secret. The plan was to present Mills with an award at the Christmas party. This was to be called ‘A Grummy Award,’ loosely based on the Grammy Award, which two of our engineers Geoff Emerick and Phil McDonald had won.

Our award was to be a Bent and Buckled twelve inch acetate sprayed gold, set into a box with a small lamp with cable, and, of course a plaque with presentation words on it which read “This Grummy (to be a bit mumbled) Award is yet to be presented to yet another of our engineers, to John Mills.”

At the party John Mills came up for the presentation to collect it from me as I was to do the speech at this presentation. From a distance the Award looked very good. The light on it made it look very professional: a gold disc with a plaque all lit up. John’s face showed that he knew nothing about it and it did look pretty good. 

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