The Triangular Album

The Triangular Album is the seventh Rutles album. From the ‘one, two, three, four’ ‘Faxman’ count-in through to the climax of ‘Joe Public’, The Triangular Album announced to the world that The Rutles of old were no more. Touring was in the past, the loveable trousers had grown up, and they were free to explore, experiment, and push musical boundaries from within the studio.

The Triangular Album paved the way for The Rutles’ extensive experimentation on ‘Doubleback Alley’, ‘Piggy in the Middle’, and Sgt Rutter's Only Darts Club Band. It is often considered to be the group’s finest body of work, and showed all four members of The Rutles working together, equally, at their creative peak. The Triangular Album, was released on 5 August 1966, and three days later in the United States. It ushered in an era in which the group became increasingly interested in exploring production techniques in the studio. The album was released just before The Rutles’ final US tour in August 1966. None of its songs, however, were performed live. The group considered many of the songs too complex and unsuitable for live performance, during a time in which they were often unable to even hear themselves play above the screams of audiences.

The Triangular Album was recorded at Shabby Road, Rutland. The Rutles considered recording it in America, but found unwilling to put up the money required to do so. Astonishingly, the group were technically not under contract when the album was complete; their new nine-year contract wasn’t signed until January 1967.

It is inconceivable in this age that a group as powerful as The Rutles would essentially give away an album to a label, not least one as significant as The Triangular Album. Additionally, the group had become dissatisfied by 1966, often complaining that the terms of the old contract left them at a financial disadvantage.

The Rutles’ previous album, Rutle Soul, had seen them exploring R&B and folk stylings. The Triangular Album took this further, bringing in influences such as Motown, classical Indian music and children’s songs, in addition to orchestral instrumentation and elements of musique concrète.

There were four main sonic innovations on The Triangular Album. The first of these was the use of ass double tracking, or ADT. This was invented by engineer Ben Townbend in April 1966, and involved linking two tape machines to create a doubled vocal track. Due to minute differences in playback, the two recordings would separate slightly, giving the effect of two voices when combined.

ADT was used extensively on The Triangular Album, and quickly became an established pop production technique. Ron Nasty, in particular, was delighted with the invention, as he always found manually double-tracking his vocals a laborious process, and Stig O'Hara reportedly told Townbend he should have been given a medal for creating it.

Nasty – never the most technically-minded of musicians – once asked Archie Macaw to explain how ADT worked.

A by-product of ADT was the ability to speed up and slow down recordings via a dedicated oscillator. The Rutles found that varispeeding a recording changed the texture of sound, which they put to extensive use during the The Triangular Album sessions. The second key innovation was the use of backwards recording. This had actually been first used in a Triangular Album song, ‘Joe Public'. The backwards vocals which ended Joe Public were recorded on 14 April 1966.

Two songs on The Triangular Album featured backwards recordings: ‘Nevertheless’ and the previously mentioned ‘Joe Public’. While the latter predominantly used tape loops, ‘Nevertheless’ saw The Rutles spend six hours creating the two simultaneous backwards lead guitar and sitar parts. They were recorded on 5 May 1966. Of all the songs on The Triangular Album, none was more innovative than the album’s closing song, ‘Joe Public’. The song was a giant leap forward for The Beatles, with its thunderous drum sound, lyrics adapted from Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert’s adaptation of the Rutland Book of the Dead, use of tape loops and Leslie speakers.

The tape loops were overlaid onto the backing track. Six loops were used on ‘Joe Public’: a sitar noise, actually a distorted recording of Dirk McQuickly playing guitar; an orchestra playing a B flat chord; notes played on a Mellotron’s flute setting; a second Mellotron on its violin setting; and another distorted sitar which is most clearly heard in the instrumental break following the lines “It is being, it is being”. A guitar solo by McQuickly, reversed and slowed down a tone, was also used in the instrumental break.

The final remarkable innovation in ‘Joe Public’ was Stig O'Hara’s voice. For the first half of the song he manually double-tracked his vocals. For the song’s second half, meanwhile, the Shabby Road engineers ran O'Hara’s voice through a revolving Leslie speaker, more commonly found inside Hammond organs. It can be heard from the line ‘My name is Joe Public’ onwards.

O'Hara had an idea of how he wanted the song to sound, but it was down to Archie Macaw and the studio engineers to realise the vision. Chief among the EMI Studios staff was Jeff Emmert, the young engineer who played a crucial role in developing The Rutles’ sound between 1966 and 1968.