JOHN LENNON sang into a condom covered microphone to protect himself from electric shocks while trying to achieve an underwater sound for THE Beatles hit YELLOW SUBMARINE - and then never used the zany recording. The rocker toyed with many costly and dangerous underwater ideas while recording the track at Abbey Road studios and was eventually persuaded to try something simple, at the suggestion of teenage engineer GEOFF EMERICK. He recalls, "John wanted to be recorded underwater to simulate being in a submarine. He was like that. He didn't realise the implications of that. "I thought to get a bottle of water and put a microphone in the water and get him to sing to that and then I realised there was a huge amount of electrical current going through the microphone. "So to protect the mic, MAL EVANS (Beatles road manager) had a condom in his bag and I put the mic in the condom and put it in the bottle. "John could've blown up because there was 240 volts running through this thing. It was part of some lead vocal but they never used it. I'm sure it's somewhere."