the success of the beatles meant that emi gave them "carte blanche" access to the abbey road studios—they were not charged for studio time and could spend as long as they wanted working on music. starting around 1965 with the "rubber soul" sessions, the beatles increasingly used the studio as an instrument in itself, spending long hours experimenting and writing. the beatles demanded a lot from the studio; lennon allegedly wanted to know why the bass on a certain wilson pickett record far exceeded the bass on any beatles records. this prompted emi engineer geoff emerick to try new techniques for "paperback writer". he explains that the song "was the first time the bass sound had been heard in all its excitement ... to get the loud bass sound paul played a different bass, a rickenbacker. then we boosted it further by using a loudspeaker as a microphone. we positioned it directly in front of the bass speaker and the moving diaphragm of the second speaker made the electric current."