The Beatles on the Roof

by Tony Barrell

  George was also acting on an instinct that Billy would be warmly received by his bandmates, which he was. Not only was he remembered as a friend from the Hamburg days, but also The Beatles knew and loved his 1965 album Billy’s Bag, on which he played funky R&B Hammond-organ instrumentals. Now his cool and intelligent electric piano-playing gave their sound a lift, and they enjoyed the results.

  The Beatles wanted a new instrument for Billy to play, and Paul specified a Fender Rhodes electric piano, well regarded among jazz and rock musicians for its distinctive mellow sound. The Fender company in America was alerted, and two pianos were loaded on to a transatlantic aircraft (John had added an extra piano to the order, for himself), but they were diverted to Sweden owing to foggy conditions in London. After they finally arrived at Apple, Paul realised that the Rhodes actually didn’t make the sound he had imagined: he’d been thinking of a Wurlitzer. But, having spent around $8,000 and waited so long, they made do with it.

  Between rehearsals of their new material, they were still fooling with cover versions, such as the thirties standard ‘You Are My Sunshine’, ‘Milk Cow Blues’ (as performed by Eddie Cochran and Elvis Presley), Chuck Berry’s ‘Little Queenie’ and ‘Queen Of The Hop’ (a 1958 Bobby Darin hit). Sometimes the old and the new were mashed up, as when they started playing The Drifters’ ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’ and suddenly burst into the chorus of ‘Don’t Let Me Down’. ‘Dig A Pony’ was still developing, with John discarding nonsense words and substituting new ones – a likely reason why, when it came to the public performance of the song, he wasn’t able to recall the lyrics he had finally settled on. The words “Dig a pony” were fixed in place now, and phrases such as “Dig a skylight” and “Con a Lowry” had been tried and discarded.

  John amused his colleagues with a mock stage announcement that renamed the song yet again. “I Dig A Pygmy, by Charles Hawtrey and the Deaf Aids,” he proclaimed. “Phase one, in which Doris gets her oats.” The lines were later slapped incongruously on the front of the Let It Be album, before the song ‘Two Of Us’. Charles Hawtrey was a famous comic actor, known for his round “granny” spectacles, and a stalwart of the shifting team that appeared in the Carry On series of British film comedies. Hawtrey’s original name was George Hartree, but he had adopted the name of a successful stage actor from the Victorian era. His most recent big-screen outing was Carry On Up The Khyber, released in 1968, in which he played Private Widdle.

  After one performance of ‘Dig A Pony’, Paul joked that as a band, The Beatles improved with time like a fine wine, and compared them to a 1962-vintage Beaujolais.

  On that first day down in the basement, The Beatles also returned to ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’, which was to be the second-most-played song of all their January sessions, after ‘Get Back’. Instead of just discussing the previous evening’s television viewing as they had done several times that month, they incorporated it into this song, with Paul and John giving impressions of the late Martin Luther King, whose “I have a dream” speech of 1963 had featured in an ITV documentary, Deep South. King would get another name-check, of sorts, during their final concert.

  When Melody Maker hit the newsstands on Thursday, January 23, it reassured the music-buying public that all was well again in the Beatles camp. The foursome were now reconciled, it said, quoting an Apple spokesman (most likely Derek Taylor) as saying: “They are all friends again, together, strong as an ox as they have to be.”

  The paper’s front-page lead story noted the increasing popularity of home-grown, blues-influenced rock music, confirming that The Beatles’ plan to bring a raw, stripped-down sound to the world was in tune with the times. “Britain’s blues-based groups are happening in America!” it screamed. “While Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac are still packing them in on their Stateside tour, Ten Years After this week became the first British blues or pop group to be invited to the world’s top festival, the Newport Jazz Festival.”

  Fleetwood Mac’s latest big hit was something of a departure for the band, however. ‘Albatross’, then at number two in the UK charts, was a blissful, swooning electric-guitar instrumental. The record was being kept off the top spot by a cover of The Beatles’ ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ by the Scottish band Marmalade. During the January sessions, Paul had noted with amusement that Marmalade had failed to use the word “bra” in the chorus as The Beatles had done.

  Back in the basement at Apple on Thursday, January 23, the group made several more attempts at ‘Get Back’, and a sensible decision was made to drop the contentious verse about Pakistani immigrants. Billy Preston was now adding considerable musical interest to this simplistic song with flourishes of electric piano. John had opted to play lead guitar on the song, but was struggling with the quality of his playing.

  The recordings from The Beatles’ Get Back project would be extensively bootlegged, finding their way onto endless roughly packaged vinyl LPs and, ultimately, CDs, and the early references to “Pakistanis” in this song would be seriously misunderstood. People would miss the satire and accuse Paul McCartney of straightforward racism. Decades later, he was still defending lyrics he hadn’t even included in the finished song. “There were a lot of stories in the newspapers then about Pakistanis crowding out flats – you know, living 16 to a room or whatever,” he explained in 1986. “So in one of the verses of ‘Get Back’, which we were making up on the set of Let It Be, one of the outtakes has something about ‘too many Pakistanis living in a council flat’ – that’s the line. Which to me was actually talking out against overcrowding for Pakistanis… If there was any group that was not racist, it was The Beatles. I mean, all our favourite people were always black. We were kind of the first people to open international eyes, in a way, to Motown.” Paul might also have added that The Beatles had consistently opposed the idea of playing concerts to segregated audiences in America, and that they refused to play in apartheid-era South Africa.

  Thursday continued with The Beatles having a nostalgic but half-hearted go at ‘I’ll Get You’, one of their B-sides from six years before, and Paul remarked that he thought he had Hong Kong flu – apparently a joke. John’s sharp, ambiguous riposte was that he should take drugs.

  Hong Kong flu was another of the big scare stories in the news at that time. It had made its first appearance in the British Crown colony (as it was then) in July 1968. The H3N2 virus responsible for the outbreak quickly spread to Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, India and Australia, and it entered the United States as a by-product of the Vietnam War, carried by American troops as they returned home. It had infected Britain by late 1968, and had now reached London. Most of the people affected by the pandemic suffered only mild symptoms, and British newspaper advertisements advised that if you were stricken with “Mao ‘Flu’” you should take Aspro, the aspirin that “overpowers pain fast”. However, the flu was fatal in thousands of cases. The Hollywood actress Tallulah Bankhead had died in December after suffering from H3N2, and the American double-bass player Paul Chambers, a sideman for jazz stars including Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, was reported as a victim that January (though his cause of death was later believed to be tuberculosis).

  West of Savile Row, in Charing Cross Road, a cautionary showbiz tale was unfolding as an American singing legend attempted a comeback. Judy Garland was playing a residency at the Talk Of The Town, on the same stage where Billy Preston had recently performed for the BBC cameras. Due on every evening around 11.30 p.m., Judy was often late to appear, and sometimes failed to appear altogether. The star’s health and voice had noticeably deteriorated, and she was drinking heavily and dosing up on amphetamines and barbiturates.

  On January 19 the singer made an additional unscheduled TV appearance on Sunday Night At The London Palladium, filling in for the singer Lena Horne, who was unable to perform. Many viewers noticed that Judy appeared to forget the words to her first song, and telephoned the London Weekend TV studios to enquire and complain about it. Interviewed by a journalist the ne
xt day in her suite at the Ritz Hotel, Judy complained about having an “awful cold” and claimed that the fluffed lines were “all part of the act”.

  On the evening of Thursday, January 23, Miss Garland seriously tested the patience of the Talk Of The Town audience, who chanted and sang “Why are we waiting?” as midnight arrived without any sign of her. Dancers launched into an impromptu routine to placate them, and when Judy finally appeared, warbling ‘I Belong To London’, she was booed and had bread rolls, crackers and cigarette packets tossed at her. A heckler told her she ought to show some respect for the British public and appear on time, and the catcalls and jeering continued as she sang ‘Get Happy’ and ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’. A man from the audience jumped on stage and grabbed her microphone, and after Judy announced that she’d had enough and walked off stage, someone hurled a glass that smashed behind her.

  That Friday, Mal Evans was pleased to hear The Beatles busking the old Liverpool folk song ‘Maggie Mae’ in the skiffle style, and scribbled in his diary: “Beatles really playing together. Atmosphere is lovely in the studio – everyone is so much happier than of recent times.” Before Billy Preston arrived for the session, John tabled the serious suggestion that Billy be allowed to join The Beatles as a permanent member – an idea that was gently vetoed by Paul. In a nostalgic mood later that day, they tried out some of their own juvenile compositions from the fifties, including the earliest song Paul ever wrote, ‘I Lost My Little Girl’ – sung by John in a Dylanesque vocal style – before returning to ‘Get Back’.

  They also romped through a selection of Chuck Berry songs, including ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ and ‘School Day’. Just over a mile away, in the Aldwych, there were scuffles as students protested outside the London School of Economics. The LSE had been a hotbed of student protest since 1966, when Dr Walter Adams was appointed as the college’s director. Adams, previously the principal of the University College of Rhodesia, was seen by student activists as a supporter of the despised regime of white supremacist Ian Smith. Now the students were angered by steel security gates recently installed to allow parts of the LSE to be sealed off during protests. After they wrecked the gates using heavy tools, including sledgehammers, 25 students were arrested by police and the college building was closed.

  That night, Judy Garland was unable to appear as billed at the Talk Of The Town. Stepping into her place was Lonnie Donegan, the British musician whose skiffle music had been inspirational to The Beatles in their youth.

  That weekend was a potentially exhausting time for rock fans, bringing two super-long gigs of the kind that were popular in the late sixties. Dragging on for hours and featuring multiple bands, these events weren’t routinely called “festivals” as they would be now, and were often staged indoors with minimal facilities. There was a “Midnite Rave” beginning after midnight on Friday at the Lyceum in London’s Strand, which saw Status Quo sharing the bill with Joe Cocker, the blues-rock band Bakerloo Blues Line, and a trio called The Gun. The gig continued until 7 a.m. on Saturday, and advance tickets cost just £1. Even longer was the “non-stop pop concert” at Reading University on Sunday, clocking in at eight hours, though the bands were more obscure: The Liverpool Scene, Cannery Row, Modern Art Of Living and Levee Camp Moan. A short-lived rumour suggested that The Liverpool Scene were The Beatles playing under an alias, but knowledgeable punters knew they were a poetry band whose first album had been produced by the DJ John Peel.

  More motivated now, and aware that Ringo didn’t have many more days before he joined the production of The Magic Christian, The Beatles motored on into the weekend rather than taking a break. On the Saturday, their old Liverpudlian friend Cilla Black married her manager and longtime partner Bobby Willis in London while the group carried on toiling in the basement, trying out ‘Two Of Us’, ‘For You Blue’ and ‘Let It Be’. With Cilla’s devout Catholic parents absent from the Marylebone Register Office wedding, The Beatles’ business manager, Peter Brown, gave the bride away. Bobby’s best man was the tailor Tommy Nutter, soon to open his dazzling new shop in Savile Row, and the matron of honour was former Ready Steady Go! presenter Cathy McGowan. Cilla and Bobby held their reception at the Ritz, where Judy Garland was still in residence.

  Romance was in the air again on Sunday, when Richard Burton splashed out £23,000 on a unique piece of jewellery for his wife, Elizabeth Taylor. Sotheby’s auction house in London was selling La Peregrina, a weighty pear-shaped pearl with a serious history. Originally given by Philip of Spain in 1554 to his bride, Mary Tudor, Queen of England (and Henry VIII’s daughter), it was subsequently worn by Spanish royalty and then taken by Napoleon Bonaparte’s elder brother Joseph when he abdicated the Spanish throne in 1813. La Peregrina continued its travels (the reason for its name, “The Wanderer”) when it was sold to a British aristocrat, the Duke of Abercorn, whose family had now put it up for sale.

  The Burtons were in Las Vegas, where Elizabeth was being filmed for the movie The Only Game In Town, but her husband put in a remote bid for the pearl and won the auction, outbidding a Spanish prince keen to return it to his homeland.

  Meanwhile, 1,400 miles east of Vegas, Elvis Presley entered American Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, to begin the recording sessions that would produce hits such as ‘Suspicious Minds’ and ‘In The Ghetto’. He was clearly enjoying himself in the studio more than The Beatles were, telling the media: “As far as I’m concerned, this is the place to record. And the musicians here are fantastic.”

  Back in London, The Beatles’ working Sunday began with George and Ringo arriving at Apple to find John and Paul both absent. George picked up his acoustic guitar and went through some recent compositions, performing ‘Isn’t It A Pity’ and ‘Let It Down’, both of which would end up on All Things Must Pass. He also played the Harrison rarity ‘Window, Window’ – “I once knew a beautiful girl/She had long blonde hair in a curl…” – which would never be properly recorded, perhaps because he was unsure of its merits. Before demoing it again for producer Phil Spector the following year, he admitted it was “a bit silly”. He may have disliked the rather vacant, window-gazing lyric, though the song’s first 16 notes were infectious and promising.

  Ringo tried out the number he had started writing in Sardinia, ‘Octopus’s Garden’, and George went on the piano to help him develop it – a scene preserved in the Let It Be film. John and Yoko arrived in the basement as they progressed with the song. Ringo was now on piano, and when John asked what instrument he should play, Ringo laughed and suggested the drums. As the three Beatles played the number with John whacking the kit, Paul turned up, with Linda and her five-year-old daughter Heather in tow.

  A series of loose jams and oldies later, John, back on guitar, began a spirited three-chord improvisation in the key of F, singing the title of Bob Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ to a different tune before calling out a series of names of organisations and celebrities, creating another one of his “list songs”, like the ‘Get Off!’ jam they had played 17 days earlier at Twickenham, in which he and Paul had traded lists of names. For this Sunday performance, the list included the FBI, CIA and BBC, as well as BB King, Doris Day and Matt Busby. Busby’s name probably rolled off John’s tongue because the Manchester United manager had announced 12 days before that he would be retiring at the end of the football season. John then repeated a phrase he had been using lately, “Dig it”, and this off-the-cuff jam became part of Beatle history when an edited version was sequenced among the proper songs on the Let It Be album.

  They enjoyed themselves with some old rock’n’roll numbers, including ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’, both of which Elvis had played during the informal jam section of his Comeback Special. More Beatle jams brought this Sunday session to an end, this time with Paul moving to Ringo’s kit.

  At some point that weekend, a momentous idea took shape at Apple HQ. Michael Lindsay-Hogg remembered that on the Saturday he lunched with The Beatles at the conference table: �
�Nice girls who did the cooking would bring in a first course, to be followed by roast chicken, vegetables and potatoes, with red and rose´ wine, and something macrobiotic for John and Yoko.” Michael was troubled by the structure of the film they were close to finishing, which had a beginning and a rather long middle, but no ending. He remarked that they needed to find a conclusion for the movie. There followed a debate with Yoko about whether conclusions were important or necessary, and Paul asked what sort of ending he would suggest.

  Michael replied that they didn’t have a big concert in Tunisia to serve as the finale, “smiling at George to signify no hard feelings (although they weren’t quite soft yet)”. But he had an idea for a place that might just work. “Why don’t we do it on the roof?” he asked. Suggesting it made him feel like Mickey Rooney in one of the Andy Hardy movies, when he decides “We can put on the show right here.” Michael was unsure that they’d go for the idea. “I put this forward believing that it could work but without a lot of confidence that they’d go for it. They were interested in their songs but I was interested in the film. To my surprise, they began to paw the idea, sniffing at it, knocking it from one to the other, to see if it was safe to take a bite. After lunch, Paul and Mal, Tony and I, Ringo, a few others, went up on the roof and had a look around. I was seeing where the cameras would go.”

  Cameramen captured the exploratory visit to the roof for posterity. In one shot taken by the Get Back project’s stills photographer, Ethan Russell, we see Paul and Ringo standing at the back of the roof, surrounded by Glyn Johns, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Kevin Harrington, Mal Evans and two cameramen: Les Parrott, pointing a hand-held movie camera, and Paul Bond, who was working as focus-puller on the camera.