On February 28, a mixing session took place at Abbey Road for the track “For You Blue,” produced by Malcolm Davies. The song was never released.
“Let It Be,” backed with “You Know My Name (Look up the Number),” was released on March 6, 1970, in the U.K. and on March 11 in the U.S.
“Instant Karma” had been a turning point not only for the Beatles, but also for its producer. Phil Spector had fallen on hard times. The single he produced of Ike and Tina Turner doing “River Deep-Mountain High,” released in 1966, fared miserably. Spector felt at the time that it was one of his best-produced works (which it absolutely was). Its failure cast a pall over the man and his methods, and after one more single in 1966 and three in 1967, he had retired from the music business. He then made a deal with A&M Records in 1969, which resulted in his producing five singles that year, which continued his further plunge into obscurity. “Instant Karma” became his resurrection.
How Spector had ended up in London at this fortuitous moment is unclear. Chances are that Allen Klein, who had become a strong force in the Beatles’ business affairs, had summoned him to London. An alternate possibility is that Spector went in search of Klein so Klein could hook him up with the Beatles. Who knows? Perhaps Klein had promised to deliver Spector to the Beatles during his meeting with John and Yoko back at the Dorchester Hotel in January of 1969. One can almost see the scene: Klein, talking straight, making Lennon feel comfortable with his working-class roots. Then, knowing how much Lennon admired Spector, saying to him, “How would you like to have Phil Spector produce your next record, John?”
Peter Brown thought for sure that Klein brought Spector in. He remarked:
Klein was determined to prove that he was not just an accountant and a clever businessman, but that he was sensitive to the music values and that he would bring in his great friend Phil Spector to fix it [Let It Be]. Now, Phil Spector wasn’t exactly at the peak of his career, at that time—so he [Klein] wasn’t bringing in some hot producer. Phil’s “wall of sound” had become a little old by that time. It was Klein’s way of saying, “I’m brilliant, I could do all this and this is my guy.” Everyone liked Phil and admired him, so there was no resistance to him.
The Beatles had truly admired Spector’s immense talents. The records he had produced for the Ronettes and the Crystals, among others, were the American musical Holy Grail to the Beatles. Of course, the Beatles knew Spector. They had toured with the Ronettes and Spector had even accompanied the Beatles on their first visit to America, flying with them from London to New York in February of 1964. Certainly the idea of Spector producing the Beatles was a dream for them. (One wonders why they would need Klein as an intermediary.) Now, Spector had come to Lennon’s rescue and in one night made a recording of one of John’s songs that was arguably as good as anything George Martin had ever done.
Klein and Spector both criticized Martin, referring to him as “that arranger.” Of course, their characterization of Martin was way off the mark. Martin had served the Beatles well and their relationship had been a perfect match. Did they want a little space from him for a time? Yes, they did. But that didn’t diminish the success he had had with them and the tremendous talent he possessed (and still possesses to this day).
Spector was a legend, though, and an American legend to boot. The records he had made had been at the top of the charts and began a string of hits that came before Beatlemania had its first blush. The relationships born during “Instant Karma,” would help John and George make some of the best solo music they would ever make and would result not only in John’s albums, but in George’s All Things Must Pass. Years later, in 1981, Spector even produced Yoko’s excellent Season of Glass.
Spector’s work began on March 23 in Room 4 of Abbey Road, with Peter Bown as engineer and Roger Ferris as second engineer. Also in attendance were Spector’s bodyguard and, occasionally, George Harrison and Allen Klein. Spector got right down to work mixing the upbeat rock numbers “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “Dig a Pony,” “The One After 909,” and “I Me Mine.” The lone slower-tempo track he worked on was John’s “Across the Universe.” Martin Benge, who had a long, distinguished career with EMI working on Beatles sessions, and who eventually became vice president of EMI Studios worldwide, had worked on the earliest version of “Across the Universe” in 1968. He related his memories of the song:
The session I worked on was the first recording of the song to my knowledge, which at the time had a very raw, simple, John Lennon guitar-and-vocal structure when the session started, as I recall. There were various versions that followed, but this was the first of several sessions for “Across the Universe.” The day became enshrined in recording folklore when John decided to invite a couple of girl fans waiting in the street outside the studio to come in and sing backup vocals.
Spector took out the backing vocals, which were sung by the two girls, for the final mix of the track. Benge admitted, “As for the later versions, personally I still like the original; but then I would, wouldn’t I!”
Two days later, further mixing was done, this time on “For You Blue” and, finally, on two McCartney songs, “Teddy Boy” and “Two of Us.” The next day mixing continued on “The Long and Winding Road,” “Let It Be,” “Maggie Mae,” and “Get Back.” On March 27, mixing was done on “Dig It” and on bits of dialogue, illustrating that even Spector had not discounted the idea of the album having something of an audio-vérité approach.
April 1 was a key date in the saga. At Abbey Road, in Studio One and in Studio Three, Spector worked on “Across the Universe, “The Long and Winding Road,” and “I Me Mine” with recording engineers Peter Bown and Richard Lush. Also in attendance was Ringo Starr. Lush, an engineer who had worked on many Beatles sessions over the years, remembered Spector saying that day, “I wonder what Paul will think when he hears it,” referring to his remix of “The Long and Winding Road.” It has been reported that Ringo was trying to temper Spector’s hand on the mixing that day. Ringo’s concern was genuine, as Spector had assembled 50 musicians to create the dramatic orchestral backing of the track. With Richard Hewson on hand to conduct the orchestra in following his arrangement of the song, “The Long and Winding Road” became the kind of sweeping Wagnerian musical epic that Spector loved. For all of Paul McCartney’s disdain for the track that Spector produced, it’s curious that he still uses it in concert as a reference point by following the big arrangement that Hewson wrote and the big, orchestral sound that Spector created.
April 2 marked the last day of work on Let It Be. With the assistance of Peter Bown and Roger Ferris, Spector completed his work. Mixing on “The Long and Winding Road,” “I Me Mine,” and “Across the Universe” was finalized.
The last press release to be issued by Apple Records, written by press office manager Derek Taylor, came out on April 10. It read:
Spring is here and Leeds play Chelsea tomorrow and Ringo, and John and George and Paul are alive and well and full of hope.
The world is still spinning and so are we and so are you.
When the spinning stops—that’ll be the time to worry. Not before.
Until then, The Beatles are alive and well and the Beat goes on, the Beat goes on.
On April 17, after much arguing over release dates, Paul McCartney’s debut solo album, McCartney, was released. A Q&A sheet, with questions asked by Peter Brown, accompanied Paul’s album. The answers to a few of the questions effectively stated that Paul had quit the group and that the Beatles were over. Although Paul seemed to indicate that the album was the start of a solo career, he also characterized it as just a rest from the Beatles. At the same time, in answer to whether the Lennon and McCartney songwriting partnership would continue, he said, “No.”
The news headlines around the world announced the inevitable: “The Beatles Break Up.” There was then, as there still is today, much speculation about why they broke up. Peter Brown, with nearly 34 years of hindsight, speculated on the actual cause of the bre
akup:
I don’t think anyone broke them up, but themselves. John wanted out, and until Yoko came along, I don’t think he knew he wanted out. Yoko encouraged him to be out. I don’t subscribe to the thing that Yoko broke the Beatles—she clearly had her own agenda, which wasn’t the Beatles, and John wanted to go along with that. John wanted to do his own thing, and I don’t think he wanted to be a Beatle any longer. Yoko was just the way he managed to do it, and I don’t think Yoko or Linda were the reasons [for the breakup].
While Paul would go on to state that Spector’s reproduction of the Let It Be album, particularly on “The Long and Winding Road,” was “an intolerable interference,” the album was not what broke up the Beatles. Throughout the research on this book, there were many people I interviewed who suggested that Allen Klein, more than anyone else, was responsible for the breakup of the group. Many felt that while it was not Klein’s goal to break up the group, his heavy-handed tactics ran counter to the more restrained English approach of conducting business that the Beatles were used to. Klaus Voorman had a different take on Klein, in regard to his handling of Apple. He stated:
I thought it was time for somebody like Allen Klein to come [in]. I think he did right in firing lots of people. I won’t say if each person was right or wrong, but all together it was right to fire people, because the whole Apple thing was completely out of control. Lots of money went down the drain. Allen Klein was the savoir. It was just crazy, like in the Rutles film. Somebody had to come and save this place and I think Allen did exactly the right thing.
As for the breakup, Voorman said, “There was lots of talk of ‘Let’s do something separate.’ It really started developing during Sgt. Pepper because everybody had their own interests, and people were developing in different directions. The personalities were so strong they had to eventually go their own ways.”
Alistair Taylor explained how brutal Klein’s firing of so many Apple employees was, but also pointed out the complicity of the Beatles in the bloodbath:
I was sacked by Allen Klein, a man I never met. I was at lunch with a visitor when I got a phone call from Peter Brown. He insisted that I come back to the office at once. He had a list supplied by Klein. It contained the names of a dozen or so people to be sacked. My name was at the top. I rang each of the Beatles, but they wouldn’t speak to me. To this day, I don’t know the reason for my dismissal.
The album Let It Be was released on May 8, 1970, in the U.K., as a deluxe box set that included a lavish booklet. It was not made available without the box and booklet in the U.K. until November. David Dalton, who, along with Jonathan Cott, wrote the text that accompanied Ethan Russell’s magnificent photos, talked about the evolution of what at the time was the most lavish booklet ever to be issued with a record album. “They gave us the Nagra tapes and rented us a Nagra tape recorder,” Dalton stated. “It seemed like we were listening to this audio for days. It was very repetitious.” The two then typed out some of the conversations. Dalton recalled the creation of the booklet:
It was kind of constructed as a work of art rather than as a journalism project—a kind of poetic project. It wasn’t written as a documentary journal. It was almost a collection of aphorisms. It was meant to be a parallel little project—a sort of literary project. It was a little spacey. It was influenced by the pharmaceuticals that were available at the time.
Dalton indicated that there was very little input from the Beatles. “They pretty much left us alone,” he stated. Dalton recalled one section that was taken out, a piece by John Lennon called “Why I Wear Glasses.” In it John Lennon said: “I used to masturbate in my English classes and I can tell you it doesn’t make you blind, but it makes you very short-sighted.” Dalton said, “Yoko made me take it out and momentarily I argued with her. I said, ‘Weren’t you on the cover of Rolling Stone nude last week?’ and she said, ‘That’s different.”’ Dalton continued: “Ringo made us take out that he was chewing gum, although you can see quite well in the film that he is chewing gum. The things that were objected to were personal things. We were trying to be profound and hip, in the style of John Lennon’s more aphoristic, inscrutable statements. We put it together and they thought it was appropriately inscrutable.” Aside from the two aforementioned deletions, Dalton concluded that “Nobody interfered.” Dalton also remembered that Allen Klein was very generous in what he paid him and Cott to write the text.
Alan Smith, writing in the New Musical Express under the headline “New LP Shows They Couldn’t Care Less,” called the album “a cheapskate epitaph, a cardboard tombstone, a sad and tatty end to a musical fusion which wiped clean and drew again the face of pop music.” Most of the other reviews were equally vitriolic.
Smith’s critique had some points, but the released album was nowhere near as bad as everyone made it out to be. It began with the sweet, acoustic “Two of Us,” which showed the glorious, affectionate interplay between John and Paul. “Dig a Pony” was filled with John’s empowering sentiments, which were a hallmark of such songs of his as “Power to the People” and “Instant Karma.” “I Me Mine” wasn’t one of George’s best songs, but it did rock. Even the short throwaway “Dig It” had great charm and appeal. Of course, “Let It Be” was a fitting epitaph for the Beatles and the 60s. “Maggie Mae,” another throwaway, had some of the appeal of “Dig It.” “I’ve Got a Feeling” was a fine rocker and gave Beatles fans one of the last true Lennon and McCartney co-writes. “One After 909,” as stated before, gave fans a brief, last look at the rockin’ Beatles at their best. “The Long and Winding Road,” for all its syrupy strings and overblown production, was appropriately sentimental. Although McCartney prefers a stripped-down version of the song, Spector keenly understood the weight of the song and his production only underscored the significance of that terribly underrated song. “For You Blue,” was again not one of George’s best, but it was a fun blues ditty, highlighted by John’s superb guitar work. A concise pop-rock tune, with John’s quip tacked onto the end, “Get Back” closed the album in perfect fashion. Was the album in the same league as the group’s best work? No, it probably wasn’t. Yet, any album that includes “Two of Us,” “Let It Be,” “The Long and Winding Road,” and “Get Back” can’t be all bad.
The single “The Long and Winding Road,” backed by “For You Blue,” was released on May 11 in the U.S. only. May 13 marked the American film premiere of Let It Be in New York. The Let It Be album, without the box and booklet—the last Beatles album of new material ever to be released—was issued in the U.S. on May 18, 1970. Unlike all previous Apple albums, the apple on the label was red, not green. For the Beatles’ American fans, the 60s, the Beatles, and the dream were now indeed over. In early May, an invitation went out from the directors of the United Artists Corporation to attend a gala premiere of Let It Be at the London Pavillion, in Piccadilly Circus. The invitees were asked to R.S.V.P. by May 13. The Beatles obviously never received their invitations, as none of them attended.
Whatever anyone thought of the album, by June 3 it had hit number one. After it later fell out of the top spot, it charted at number one two more times in the U.K. By mid-June it was number one in America, where it remained for four weeks. Worldwide advance orders of the album were 3.7 million, the largest advance order for an album ever at that point.
On August 29, 1970, one of England’s premier music publications reprinted a handwritten letter by Paul McCartney in answer to a letter sent to a magazine by a music fan. In it Paul stated, “… my answer to the question, ‘will The Beatles get back together again,’ … no.”
On December 31, 1970, Paul McCartney legally sought to end the Beatles. He filed a lawsuit in the London High Court seeking dissolution of the partnership The Beatles & Co.
In Los Angeles, on March 16, 1971, Let It Be won a Grammy for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture. Paul McCartney accepted the award from John Wayne. And at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles on April 15, 1971, “Let It Be” won an
Oscar for Best Original Song Score.
Chapter Five
Kum Back
The bootlegs of Beatles recordings drawn from the “Get Back”/“Let It Be” project constitute the most widely bootlegged period from the group or from any recording artist in popular music. More than anything, the nature of the project and the way it unfolded led to its being so heavily bootlegged. First and foremost, the filming and the recording of corresponding synch-sound that began virtually from the moment the Beatles arrived at Twickenham Film Studios resulted in nearly two full weeks of recorded music that has never been officially released. Also of interest to bootleggers were the recordings of songs that would be properly recorded later for the Abbey Road album and for Beatles solo recordings. In addition, there had been several albums based on the project in various stages of conception that offered a range of possible representations of what the album could have been.
To get an idea of the voluminous number of bootlegs that have been released from the period, it’s helpful to understand how bootleggers have chosen to classify them. One of the easiest ways to comprehend the full breadth of the bootlegs from the period is to listen to the various multi-volume bootleg sets that cover nearly everything that was recorded at Twickenham and at Apple. Most of these sets consist of nearly every second of time that the Beatles were being filmed and/or recorded at both Twickenham and Apple throughout the 20-odd days of January 1969. There are, of course, some bootlegs that represent either all the Apple or all the Twickenham taping. What is distinct about the two is that the Apple tapes, aside from the rooftop concert, more closely follow the standard pattern of recording studio work, with some exceptions. The Twickenham tapes, on the other hand, feature countless jams and covers, along with versions of Beatles songs that differed from the official release and/or which showed the evolution of a particular song. As such, they are the ones that have most attracted bootleggers. In addition, the Twickenham tapes also feature endless hours of dialogue amongst the Beatles, those that worked on the film, and their inner circle. Bootlegs that simply represent the entire rooftop concert unedited are available as well.
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