Mellotronists

<<"Sheeeeeesssss">>

"shears", for heaven's sake, as in "billy shears", "the act you've known for 
all these years". or not.

somewhere I have a tape of a whole cd of strawberry fields out-takes and 
alternate versions, with quite a bit of what sounds like someone dabbing away 
at a 'tron keyboard for the very first time (i.e not pressing the keys quite 
hard enough) on one version.
 
where's brian kehew when you need him, eh? I'd always been under the 
impression that beatles band had never used a mellotron /properly/ before 
this, but I'd also always thought that this was completely at odds with what 
we know about lennon (especially) and the thumbs-aloft one, who (anecdotally) 
were tooling around with lumps of 1/4" on sundry brenells, ferrographs and 
magic alex's revoxes.

checking "revolution in the head", which is supposably definitive on these 
matters (where's brian?), the first mention of published mellotron is for the 
recording of "tnk" during the revolver sessions; a mellotron flute is 
credited on some of the tape loops.
going back a few pages, though, there was some dispute over the 
writing/arranging credits for "in my life" on rubber soul. in one account, 
mccartney is said to have claimed arranging lennon's lyrics to music from 
scratch and "on the latter's mellotron". this puts lennon's mk2 ownership 
back to late 1965. surely this is tosh?

duncan/m400nr1098, 'pon which renditions of strawberry fields are banned in 
perpetuity.