Once upon a time……
We met a nice young boy who played Beatles music on his guitar ‘between the curtains’ during Beatlesmeetings in Leiden (NL) ages ago.
He had a great voice and sang every song in full dedication, so we met and started to follow him, because he’d make it somehow, when the time was right.
Little did I know about a band he already had called The Hype that recorded one album and when I heard that album I understood this had a real ‘Beatles-inspired’ sound. 
Everyone who knows the name of this Dutch singer/songwriter and huge Beatles fan Yorick van Norden also knows that he fulfilled his greatest wish: record an album in the famous Studio 2 in Abbey Road.
He recorded several albums during the following years and became a well-known musician that could play anything with anybody, also had a tremendous amount of knowledge of the music from the ‘60’s.
Whenever a TV programme now wants to know about anything in the music we grew up with (he is born in 1986!) they call Yorick. And every time he amazes everyone with this knowledge to the detail.
Somewhere in 2018-2019 his ‘Abbey Road’ adventure began to sink in and slowly but surely he started preparing.
All plans have been carefully build up, a successful crowdfunding had been set up and soon Yorick was able to announce that he and his mates were set to go to London in 2020.
How big the disappointment was that Covid entered our world and made it impossible to go so there would be a delay of 2 years so finally he got the green light and Studio 2 had been booked for a couple of days in September 2022.Just after the passing of the queen.
Yours truly had been supporting him and was invited to spend a day with the band on the holy grounds during the recording sessions in Studio 2.
Never in my life would I NOT accept that invitation. The only problem though was, that Yorick’s time in London had been booked during my holiday in the South of France that year.
Terrible, terrible, terrible, so what to do now? I just couldn’t stay away, it would be their last recording day so I booked a plane ticket from Carcassonne to London for Monday September 12th.
And after several cancellations/changes by devious airlines I found myself on a direct flight that day. Return flight would be on Wednesday 14th from London via Porto back to Carcassonne.
Yes quite a journey. But for my ‘chance of a lifetime’ to witness something I’d probably never see again, I’d do anything. Jim picked me up from the hotel next morning and there we were.
Got a ‘day pass’ to enter ‘all areas’ and met a proud Yorick and spent a whole day listening to also Yorick playing on the old real Beatles instruments,
like ‘The Fool On The Hill’ on the same piano as Paul played it.
And it really sounded the same, shivers down my spine, and that wouldn’t be the only time I experienced those shivers. Also being upstairs in the control room and get a look at the old panel the Beatles had used.
They gave me a headphone set, a chair and sat and heard basic recordings of what would become the album that finally saw the lights of day in the Autumn of 2025.
All day taking pictures and thinking ‘OMG, John, Paul, George and Ringo have done their magic in this same room, George Martin looking down to those lads from Liverpool through the slanted window up in the control room, working with them and helping them to change their lives, as well as his own but also everybody else’s life who loves the the music they created. Even in the far future.
And now I was climbing those stairs! And step into that control room, being warmly welcomed by Frans and the rest of the gang, wow! Then back down the stairs again to make some more music.
What struck me particulary was Frans (the producer up there) telling me to stay put on that one chair because a slightest change (to another chair or using another headphone) would be heard as a change of atmosphere in the control room.
We had lunch in the garden where Paul McCartney once recorded his acoustic 'Backyard' set in the ‘One Hand Clapping’ period. Time flew fast while I deeply enjoyed and absorbed everything that was happening.
I heard 14 backing tracks towards the end of the day and I must say I don’t recognize one of them on the album haha. So that’s how music develops in a composer’s head. I had no idea, thought they’d do several takes of a recognisable song and finish it later.
But nonono haha. Now Yorick had to do post-production, filling in other instruments, orchestra parts and whatever he was thinking what was needed. That would take almost 3 years.
But I looked back to the most wonderful day in my life, being in Studio 2, climbing up and down the famous stairs, walking through the building where so many famous people have been before me.
A special thank you to Jim for driving me to Luton airport after the after-party (staying sober just for me) from where my flight would take off the following morning and after getting back I could lay back on the beach quite satisfied and grateful for the opportunity to have been experiencing a full day of real recording sessions in the Abbey Road Studios.
Thank you Yorick, for making the album, for sending it to me, for the best adventure ever.
The recording sessions resulted in the album Do It Now, released in November 2025 on Excelsior Records, Excel96840 for the vinyl vesion, Excel96841 for the CD version,