Oh, Babe What Would You Say

This recording was a demo of a song that Smith had written for a different artist to record. When he played it for Mickie Most, the record producer was impressed enough to tell him to release it as it was.

Smith said about this song: "The melody was happy and simple. It was the producer in me that designed the lyric to recapture the era I grew up in. It's almost a true story of my life. I would go to a ballroom, but I was so shy I couldn't even ask someone to dance. I'd walk home imagining a romance when I'd never even reached first base. 'Oh, Babe' was about those fantasies."

Born Norman Smith in northern England, he took up the "Hurricane Smith" moniker from a 1952 film. Smith worked as an engineer on all the Beatles' sessions between 1962 and 1965 when EMI promoted him to producer. The last Beatles album he recorded was Rubber Soul. In the late '60s Smith produced Pink Floyd's early albums and one of the first rock concept albums, The Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow. Smith later appeared on albums by Teardrop Explodes and Julian Cope. He died on March 3, 2008.