Hi folks: it's been a long time coming, I know, but even though I have had a lot to say – always a fault of mine – I just couldn't get to the lap top.
I am on here now as I am bursting with hope and energy after watching the three part Beatles documentary, Get Back.
If you haven't heard about it you may be in the Antarctic but here is my take on it in any case. Regular readers on here will know that I was a great fan of The Beatles – The Beatles, that is, but not necessarily after the individuals left the group. I was a fan of John Lennon after he left and up to the LP Imagine and possibly the odd song from the others, especially George Harrison, but it was The Beatles in their day where I am a big fan.
There is an argument that they were geniuses which would be very hard to argue either for or against. Musical geniuses of the past usually created in their formative years and both Mozart and Purcell spring to mind, both dying at 36.
Is that the top age of a Genius? – discuss. Einstein??
There's a very strange moment at the start of part two in this documentary when a meeting was arranged to discuss the fact that George Harrison had left The Beatles. At the meeting only Ringo turned up – Ringo Starr, known by the group (The Beatles) as Rich. After a while, Paul McCartney turned up with Linda – his girl friend or wife – and they, mainly Paul, discussed John and Yoko. Paul said that if it came to the push and John had a choice between Yoko and The Beatles, he would choose Yoko. He seemed puzzled by it.
The thing was, Paul said he couldn't write with John because Yoko had to be there and he was looking for a compromise with Yoko turning up. At this point they had lost their manager, Brian Epstein, who was found dead in his London flat.
There are two conversation which take place with three of The Beatles. The one with John missing had Paul talking about Epstein referring to him as their 'dad' and what's going to happen next.
And then we had John talking about someone he knew taking over the management of the group; Alan Klein. Back then we were in a state of confusion, when we heard this, as we had been working with Alan Klein. He wrote What a Crazy World and we wondered how this little cockney kid would do it and then we found out – there was another Allen Klein (spelt that way), an American businessman. John loved him and Paul hated him.
That, I think, had something to do with The Beatles splitting and then when John asked Phil Spector to put strings on Paul's song The Long and Winding Road without Paul's permission – officially the song was written by both of them but you know what I mean.
Paul would also bring Linda to the recording sessions and, in fact, at the sessions neither woman interfered with the work as they all seemed to get on well together but when at least one Beatle was missing the others, very politely, would talk about him.
If they had any disagreement Paul would resort to a joking kind of approach. When John arrived at this meeting he discussed their relationship with George who was really unhappy because he felt like a junior Beatle, the seniors being John and Paul as they are (were) the song writers.
Paul, in this documentary appears to do all the talking and suggesting how he would like the song played. That would mean telling Ringo how many beats he would like Ringo to play on the drums and George what to play on his guitar.
Whilst George was away, not being a Beatle any more, Paul and John never really believed that George had left and that he would be back.
One surprise to me was how good John was playing lead guitar on the song Get Back! The other thing Ringo, sorry, Rich, like all drummers could tap dance and play boogie woogie on the piano.
Many years ago I would do voice recording in Denmark Street and I heard chatting one day by the studio manager who said that The Bee Gees would rent the studio for weeks on end and write their songs when they were there. Now that was a new thing as most song writers, over the years, would do all their song writing at home. Looking at this film we can see that Paul liked writing in the studio. Like most guitar song writers they would find a group of chords, say C, Am, F, G and keeping playing them till they put a tune to them – that's it.
In this Paul messes around on the piano playing a song called 'Woman' – the song ended up with Peter & Gordon but he talks of Peter and Gordon and the fact that 'Gordon' could not get the high notes and dear old faithful Mal taking the words of a particular song down and this time it was on 'Get Back' which is the name of the documentary.
They recorded on 4 track machines – two of them – so that when they are together there are 8 tracks. You can double these as well by bouncing from one to the other which means playing one into another like when you sing along at home to a recording.
These days you can use hundreds of tracks.
Throughout the whole documentary it's nice to hear the group called a group and instead of using words like 'covering a song' they sing them. They sing lots of standard rock'n'roll classics as they mess around looking for tunes. For instance they play and muck about with a Chuck Berry song School Days then go in to Stand by Me (Ben E King) and without skipping a beat they go into Two of us going nowhere which is on the Let It Be! album – in those days an LP.
Sometimes they sing a song that we know but you have to realise at that moment they didn't – they're writing it, making it up.
One time John sings a song 'On the road to Marrakesh' which might sound familiar to Lennon fans and is, in fact, Jealous Guy from the Imagine' album, which I seem to remember Brian Ferry recording too.
The first episode is set at Twickenham Film Studios where Ringo – Rich to the group – was due to appear in a movie around February 1969, and was available to film The Beatles at work by the film maker Michael Lindsay Hogg. After a while they moved to the Apple offices in Saville Row – where the best clothes in the world are sold and I think, it was the headquarters of either MI5 or MI6 – might be wrong on that but it rings a bell.
I was surprised that when they were playing about someone mentioned Bob Wooler; he was a deejay at The Cavern and when the Beatles first started, at a party, he had accused John of having a gay affair with Brian Epstein on holiday in Spain. John was drunk at the party and beat up Bob Wooler, as he was antagonising John about it; which was all over the British press at the time. It was said that the reason Epstein was interested in managing The Beatles, in the first place, was Epstein's obsession with John. I remember the fight being reported on the back page of The Daily Mirror and it wasn't long after I had seen them at The Ritz in Kings' Heath for the second time.
Another big thing about the documentary was 'Mal.' He was the one banging the hammer in the song Maxwell's Silver Hammer and would also assist in taking down the words Paul or John wrote a line. He was also the man counting – and you can hear him if you listen carefully on Day in the Life on the Sgt Pepper LP. The sad thing about Mal is that he was shot and killed by the police in Los Angeles. They thought he had a gun and shot him on his doorstep, I believe.
Most people have seen some of the third part of the three part series where they sing Get Back on the roof of the Apple Building. If you cannot see this documentary but can only see that last performance by The Beatles you must see it.
The first thing about it is they are NOT lip syncing – or miming as people call it – it is all live. There are various parts in the series where a caption gets into the picture letting us know that a particular 'take' is used on either Abbey Road or Let it Be.
There is a lot more for me to write about this but I think that's it.
