The drum solo on 'The End' was recorded in a stairwell.

Yes, in the stairwell at Abbey Road Studios — not the main studio room.

Ringo wanted a big, natural reverb for that solo, so engineer Geoff Emerick miked up the stairwell outside the control room. The stone walls and echoey space gave it that cavernous, live sound they couldn’t get with artificial reverb at the time.

It’s one of those happy accidents that made the solo iconic. If they’d used the standard studio setup, it would’ve sounded flat