Like from the enchanted “Get Back” the last album of the Beatles became
It should be the return to your beginnings: Rock’n’roll like in Hamburg Star Club times instead of concept pop, as performing it in “Sgt. Peppers’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.
Rather, however, “Get Back” became a stress test for the Beatles. One at the end of which the band’s swan song was: the very last album of the Fab Four, “Let It Be”.
1968 was considered the fate year of the Fab Four. Manager Brian Epstein had suddenly died. After his death, the Beatles had founded their own record label, “Apple Records”, but no idea about business. And Epstein was much more than just a businessman: he kept John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo rigid together, because between the former four Liverpool friends, deep ditches had been created over the years. Lennon and McCartney argued on the musical direction of their band, the victim were their second guitarist George Harrison and drummer Ringo rigid. In particular, the sensitive Harrison, who was rarely able to live out his talent as a composer in the Beatles, became the victim of McCartney’s anger attack.
Actually, John, Paul, George and Ringo always celebrated a big community Christmas with their families and friends, but in 1968 everything was different after Epstein’s death. And since three quarters of the band Yoko Ono could not suffer, she and her partner John stayed away from the celebration.
No desire for live
However, the Fab Four met again on January 2, 1969 to work on a new album. Programmatic working title: “Get Back”. It was mainly McCartney’s idea to return to the roots. Idea two: Work on the record should be filmed. Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who previously headed the promotional clips for “Paperback Writer” and “Hey Jude”; The production was taken over by band assistant Neil Aspinall.
According to Paul’s idea, this “Get Back” film should end with a live gig. But all other Beatles didn’t want to play live. They had not appeared for three years, on the one hand because the complex studio versions on stage with four musicians were no longer reproducible. But also because the most famous band in the world at the height of the Beatlemania was simply cried down by her fans, her own instruments could no longer hear. All band members found this traumatic.
McCartney did not seem to see the seriousness of the situation in 1969. The Beatles were at the end, but he stoically held the reins in his hand, came with new ideas and whipped his colleagues through the songs. Even Harrison burst his collar, so that he simply left the film set and only came back days later. Harrison is legendary in the video documented attempt to calm your colleagues while playing: “I’ll play what you want. Just tell me what” – irritated face in the middle of Maccas. Meanwhile, Yoko Ono had a bed placed in the “Apple” house. Ono’s silence, observing participation in the sessions drove Paul, George and Ringo on the palm. But nobody wanted to freak out.
The legendary Rooftop Gig
In the end, McCartney got his concert. On January 30, the Beatles played their first gig since 1966, on the roof of the Apple House in the Saville Row, London. It should go down in history as a “Rooftop Concert”: no spectators, only the band, a few selected guests and the film team. And more and more passers -by on the street, who wondered what was heard up there, where music could be heard. McCartney said: “It was already a strange place to perform. In addition, we hardly had any audience up there, just a few people. So we literally alluded to that. It was only the sky in front of us. It was nice.”
The gig is legendary, not only because of the rootop idea, but because the dispute was not noticeable to the band members who played eleven pieces together with organist Billy Preston. The recordings for “Get Back” tend to be unusable. For the predecessor plate “The Beatles”, known as the “White Album”, the musicians were still able to file on their songs in the seclusion of their Indian pilgrimage in Rishikesh, during their three -month visit to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. For “Get Back”, the four threw themselves into their Jams without compositional preparatory work.
“The Long and Winding Road” without an orchestra
The Fab Four went separate paths after a few days. In March 1969, Lennon and McCartney commissioned the beat producer Glyn Johns to complete the album. He searched the endless sessions and demos for useful material, and at the end of May he presented the first version.
In this version, the album contained fewer pieces than “Let It Be”, but also “Teddy Boy”, which was to end up on Macca’s first solo album in 1970; In addition, “Rocker”, “Save the Last Dance for Me”, as well as alternative versions of “Don’t Let Me Down” (later B-side of the song “Get Back”), “Dig It” (four minutes instead of 58 seconds) and “The Long and Winding Road” without orchestra.
A hit was needed!
It continued in the stop-and-go process: the work on the film and album was stopped again, and the Beatles were still not satisfied. It was only when the money became scarce and Apple recorded losses with his projects (feature films should expand the portfolio) that John Lennon tried to give the Beatles new impulses. A hit was needed! With Paul McCartney he went to the studio to record “The Ballad of John and Yoko”. George and Ringo were also convinced of the result. In July 1969, the Beatles came together again, and finally the collaboration seemed to work again.
Harrison presented McCartney “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something”, his two most beautiful pieces to date, and he worked with a healthy obsession on new songs. “Abbey Road” should be legendary primarily because of his configuration of the second LP page, which was created in close cooperation with producer George Martin: The Beatles presented eleven songs as a medley without a break, an extraordinary assembly service for the time. Everyone was satisfied. So “Abbey Road” appeared in 1969, for many fans the favorite Beatles plate-without the material of the “Get Back” sessions before.
“I me mine”
It was only when the associated film was finished that the Beatles came together on January 3, 1970 to record overdubs for the old recordings-and to set up the new Harrison composition “I Me Mine” because the work on the song was documented in the film, but was not available. Again, Glyn Johns compiled an album – but this version could not satisfy the musicians either.
Ultimately, Phil Spector was hired, the most famous producer at the time. It should now finish “let it be”, as the album was now called to McCartney’s piano ballad. The result of the result is legendary: McCartney was not informed by the commitment of Spectors. The producer, known through its multi -layered arrangements called “Wall of Sound”, added orchestral and chorale parts and mixed up many numbers. Although this was the version of the album that was ultimately published by fans, McCartney had not forgotten that it had been over. He kept his bill with Spector open for years.
Let it be … naked
The Beatle finally got to work in 2003 and published “Let It Be … Naked”. Songs without strings, but ultimately no reconstruction of the previous versions. So nobody still knew how “Get Back” originally should have sounded. “Let IT BE” was then completed with Spector’s help in April 1970, the work was released on May 8, 1970.
The “Blue Album”
Why is the rumor so persistent to this day that the Beatles “Get Back” wanted to publish? Both McCartney and George Martin vehemently deny that the plate should ever see the light of the day. Perhaps McCartney was completely enough for the idea of a film in which songs are allegedly allegedly. When the documentary finally appeared in 1970, she also bore the name of the record: “Let it be”.
Even more famous than the idea behind the songs of “Get Back” is the cover of the plate. That is in millions of record cabinets. It is the famous photo of the Beatles that the visibly mature musicians drawn by the hippieesk Summer of Love shows musicians in the same pose as on their first album “Please please me” from 1962. Ultimately, the motif was then used in 1975 for the best-of-album “The Beatles 1967-1970”. Better known than the “blue album”. The late publication, five years after the band was dissolved, suggests that the now separate Beatles did not want to separate themselves from their lost work. Or at least not someone who could remember the photo session.
“Get Back” marks the way to the finished album “Let It Be”. It had no existence as an independent work.
But what if the Beatles did not want to publish the “Get Back” pieces on an LP for a completely different reason? The Fab Four were not only the first artists to make the album format popular. They continued to publish exclusive singles that were never intended for albums. “Hey Jude”, for example, appeared as a single after the “White Album” in 1968 and before the start of the “Get Back” sessions. Who knows, the band would have lifted this song for their unfortunate jam session-“Get Back” was in our hands today. The piece of the same name, sung by McCartney, was a number one hit.