The Beatles Get Back

It was fifty years ago this month that the Beatles embarked on their ill-fated Get Back project, from which the Let It Be album emerged.  Originally Paul McCartney's effort to rejuvenate the group and to get his bandmates to rediscover the joys of playing live, it instead accelerated the group's disbandment.

After the White Album sessions proved that the Beatles were growing apart, as they were always fighting over what would be recorded, Paul suggested that the group return to live performance and to basic rock and roll and acoustic music by staging a concert comprised of new songs that would be aired globally on live TV.  The concert would be recorded and the resulting LP - to be called Get Back - would be released as a followup to the White Album. 

So, on January 2, 1969, the Beatles assembled at Twickenham Film Studios on London to rehearse new songs as well as some old ones for the show.  Paul had arranged for Michael Lindsay-Hogg - fresh from having filmed the Rolling Stones' own ill-fated TV special, "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" - to film the rehearsals for a TV documentary about the concert.  The group then set about choosing songs for the concert.  

There never was a concert, of course.  John Lennon was so stoned on heroin at the time that it could be argued that playing interfered with his drug taking.  George Harrison, tired of not being taken seriously by John and sick of being pestered by Paul, quit the group eight days into the rehearsals, never having been in favor of a live show in the first place.  He returned a few days later on the condition that they scrap the concert idea.  The other Beatles agreed, and Paul - now the leader of the group in the wake of John's withdrawal and Brian Epstein's death - quickly adapted by suggesting that they record their new songs, along with some possible covers, live in the studio - with no overdubbing - with Lindsay-Hogg's cameras documenting that as well.  The film footage from the Twickenham rehearsals and recording sessions would later become the third movie they owed United Artists, after A Hard Day's Night and Help!; Yellow Submarine didn't count because of their minimal involvement in it.  The group quickly repaired to their new studio - Apple Studio, in the West End of London, built by Apple Corps' electronic "expert" Alexis "Magic Alex" Mardas - but it turned out that the studio itself needed repairing.

It was on this day fifty years ago, January 22, 1969, that the Beatles began recording songs for what became Let It Be.  They had actually planned to start two days earlier, but the studio Mardas had built with them was totally amateurish.  The mixing board was haphazardly built and put together with bits of wood and metal, and it only produced hiss and hum.  (It was later sold for scrap for five pounds, or about twelve American dollars.)  To makes matters worse, Mardas had forgotten to put soundproofing on the walls, which meant that the hum from the heating vents could be heard on recordings.  So the group had to borrow from EMI a mixing board and soundproofing material, along with other equipment, in order to make a proper record.  George Martin was still producing the Beatles, but he'd become passive as the Beatles gained more control over their output.  The great engineer and producer Glyn Johns - fresh from having co-produced Family's second album - was on board as an engineer for the Get Back project and more or less assumed a production role.  And joining the group to provide a fifth instrument was Billy Preston on keyboards.  The Beatles had known Preston since 1962, when he was Little Richard's organist and they got to meet Little Richard in Liverpool during one of his European tours.  George Harrison saw Preston perform with Ray Charles in London in early 1969 and met up with him, inviting him to come down to the Apple studio at Savile Row.

For the next ten days, the Beatles and Billy Preston played several new songs and a few rock and roll covers, jammed a bit, and continued rehearsing songs, taping everything.  (The rehearsals at Twickenham were recorded for the film soundtrack but not for disc, though those recordings have been the source of several bootleg albums.) Preston's enthusiasm and Johns' professionalism helped moved the project along, as did the adulation of their crew's resident fan - tape operator Alan Parsons, who would later be the engineer for Pink Floyd and for the Hollies and would become a recording artist himself with his group, the Alan Parsons Project.  Thanks to Preston's input, they came up with the perfect rendition of the intended title song - "Get Back" - with a keyboard solo that Preston always took credit for.

Eventually, though, Paul got his show - an outdoor performance on the rooftop of the Apple building, on January 30, 1969.  The Beatles thought it would be a blast to play some of their new songs for the pedestrian crowds on the avenues and streets of the West End.  Those lucky enough to see the show from adjacent rooftops and office buildings appreciated the show, and so did passersby at the ground level who could at least hear the music. ("Nice to have something for free in this country, isn't it?" one man told one of Lindsay-Hogg's film crews.)  The Beatles managed to tape the bulk of what became the Let It Be album in both this performance and in a studio performance of their quieter numbers a day later.  (The album and movie were eventually renamed Let It Be, after Paul's ballad about his mother, because by the time both were ready for release in the spring of 1970, the song "Get Back" had been on release for a year and so was inappropriate to be used as the theme of a "new" Beatles project.)  

The great irony of the Beatles' efforts is that the movie and the record depicted a band whose members had grown apart form each other and were ready to move on, even as they tried to get into the music.  Despite Preston, Johns and Parsons egging them on, the Beatles later admitted that, for them, the Get Back/Let It Be project was, as John later recalled them, "the most miserable session on earth."  The Beatles would have to violate their no-overdubbing rule to make the tapes sound better.  It took so long to make a presentable album out of the tapes that Glyn Johns failed twice in his efforts to make a Get Back album, and finally Phil Spector was brought in to make Let It Be shortly thereafter.

For a moment, though, on that cold, windy roof, the Beatles found their groove.  After the rooftop concert - cut short, incredibly enough, by policemen sent to end the show after complaints from people in neighboring office buildings - an audiotape caught the Beatles and George Martin taking pride in the performance, with the group discussing possible shows for the future.  It would have been something, seeing and hearing the Beatles play live again in places like Earl's Court in London or Madison Square Garden in New York after a long hiatus from the concert stage.  But it was a mirage.  For all of their efforts to regain the magic of the old days, the Beatles never would get back to where they once belonged.     

Apples To Apples

The news out of London today was a surprise. The idea of it happening was written off earlier, and no one thought they had the intestinal fortitude to go through with it, but the union of the century was in fact announced.

The Beatles are on Apple Computer's ITunes!

Oh yeah, and Prince William got engaged. But I'll save that for later. As for Beatles songs now available on ITunes, this is a big story because until now, it's never been possible to buy their songs off a computer and download them onto your own PC or your IPod, thanks to an agreement between Apple Corps and Apple Computer. Whole albums from the group are already being downloaded in droves.

It should be understood that die-hard Beatles fans normally don't buy bits and pieces of the group's recorded work. They buy the whole thing. And they buy it in the form of the long play recordings the Beatles issued in the sixties, when the album became the primary medium of expression for rock and rollers. The Beatles were a big reason for that, crafting collections of songs that fit a thematic whole and sounded like they belonged together. Contrary to what John Lennon once said, every song on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band could not have been on any other album; the special effects, the complex arrangements, and the poetic lyricism of that LP mark those songs as a common, shared vision of the group that has nothing to do with personal folk rock of Rubber Soul or the introspective mind games of Revolver. Most fans probably couldn't conceive of a collection of random Beatles songs played in no particular order on a PC or an IPod. Baby Boomers might be able to, if only because the Beatles's pre-Sgt. Pepper work was diced up and repackaged in that manner. But for ninety-nine cents each, some casual fans will be happy to buy only the songs they like.

The Beatles themselves have long been technophobes, and Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are still very much old-school, so that explains why they were so reluctant to do this. It also explains why they had to be dragged kicking and screaming to appreciate stereo when they were together, and it explains why they were the last artists from the vinyl age to re-release their long players on compact disc. Ironically, the CD format and the technology applied to it have allowed them to reintroduce themselves to new audiences since; the Anthology collections, the Yellow Submarine Songtrack album, the 1 album, and Let It Be . . . Naked were all made possible by digital audio. Most of these posthumous releases benefited from enhanced remixing. As for the 1 album, which did not, its twenty-seven tracks, running seventy-nine minutes, could never have fit on one vinyl long player. (And on vinyl, on which they were released in a limited edition, the Anthology collections were triple albums.)

The Beatles's music has entered yet another era, so soon after the CD re-issues of last year, and the early success on ITunes tracks (especially the whole album downloads) insures that, four decades after they broke up, their music will continue to be heard and to inspire.

The Beatles On CD . . . Again

When the Beatles' catalog was first issued on compact disc in 1987 - seems like a long time ago, huh? - EMI righted a wrong that had long gone uncorrected, restoring the Beatles's first seven albums to the way they had been issued in the United Kingdom (Capitol in the United States padded them out to ten titles). Paradoxically, the Beatles were among the last artistes from the vinyl age to be reissued on CD. And although posthumous releases of previously unreleased Beatles material in the nineties and two thousand zeroes made the most out of the format (especially the Anthology series), the original catalog was never remastered with the most advanced technology, making the audio quality of the 1987 issues seem stale.

Until now. Apple Corps has announced that on September 9, 2009, the entire Beatles catalog will finally be remastered for a new generation of fans. The CDs will be packaged with the artwork from the original U.K. releases (plus the Capitol-compiled Magical Mystery Tour album, which gathered all of the tracks from 1967 outside Sgt. Pepper), along with new liner notes to complement original album notes, rare photos (there are Beatles photos we haven't seen yet?), and, for a limited time, embedded documentary films about each of the original albums. The Past Masters CDs, which gathered the 33 nonalbum tracks the Beatles recorded, will be merged into one.

The albums were remastered by of engineers at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London over four yeas, using the latest recording technology and 1960s vintage studio equipment to maintain the sound of the original releases to ensure the highest fidelity possible. All fourteen albums will be issued in stereo, hence the first four Beatles albums (Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night, Beatles for Sale) will be in stereophonic sound for the first time. The stereo releases will be gathered n a box set along with a DVD compiling the miniature documentaries. A second box set will compile the original Beatles mono releases as well, for those who prefer the mono sound of the earlier records (and truth be told, audiophiles prefer the monophonic versions of the first four albums and the earlier singles).

This is the most ambitious issue from Apple since the Anthology series, maybe even since the original Beatles CD issues. A splendid time will indeed be guaranteed for all. :-)

The release date - September 9, 2009 - is appropriate. It's the ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year of the century.

John Lennon always considered nine a lucky number. :-)