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On the hornlist recently a most interesting video has been noted, the recording session for the Beatles song “For No One” as depicted in the 1984 movie Give My Regards to Broad Street. First, the video:
I am not certain of the identity of the hornist in this clip [UPDATE: It is Jeffrey Bryant, see the comments], but several things are obvious. The hornist is playing a Paxman descant horn and switches to the high F side above the staff. The fingerings all work, right up to the high D. Also I strongly suspect that they are “lip syncing” this; from the studio work I have done the noise of the horn player assembling the bell and getting the newspaper out of the case would have been picked up very substantially in the audio. It is still a great clip.
There is a story behind this scene in the movie. The year was 1966 and the hornist was Alan Civil (1929-89). The version of the story on the Artist Direct website lays it out well:
Alan Civil played classical horn for decades, but is most renowned for one evening of session work. He was the principal horn player in the Philharmonia when George Martin called him to ask if he could provide the French horn obligato on a Beatles song. For the instrumental break of “For No One,” Civil played the melancholy French horn solo, something he recalled as difficult to come up with since the Beatles weren’t clear about what they wanted, and because the track had been taped in the cracks between B-flat and B-major. Still, he did his job well, and is also heard briefly in the background near the end of the song. It was actually the third studio session he’d played on that day.
That Civil unpacked the horn and played the interlude less than 60 seconds later may be a bit exaggerated but the story is that the version released was in fact the first take (see Jasper Rees, A Devil to Play, pages 256-57 for example).
Finally, what type of horn did Alan Civil play on the session? I am not sure, but according to his obituary
In his orchestral work Civil played on a modern German Alexander double horn, but used a single model for concertos and other solo works and also had a collection of natural horns which he used for early music, in which he had a special interest.
