Unlike listeners during the 1960s, we now know how close the band came to breaking up during the production of the two final albums over the first nine months of 1969:
McCartney upset the other three by timing the April 1970 release of his first solo album right alongside the group's Let It Be and its documentary feature film (also entitled Let It Be, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg)
many critics maintain that the Beatles reached their collective peak during their last work together, the Abbey Road sessions
Let It Be (the "Get Back" project) was recorded before Abbey Road, but the order of their releases was reversed (Abbey Road in 1969 and Let It Be in 1970)
Many factors contributed to the band's breakup:
Lennon's increasing obsession with Yoko Ono (and his growing distance from McCartney as a songwriting partner)
Harrison's creative ascendancy (becoming a very fine songwriter, at times equal to McCartney & Lennon
the natural evolution of four distinct human beings over a period of a dozen years
the myriad disagreements about how to oversee their joint ownership rights and the Apple Corp concern
The White Album continued to receive high praise, despite its unusual content, broad range of musical styles, and the fact that not a single track was released as a single!
"Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" became a late-1968 no. 1 hit for the band Marmalade in the United Kingdom
Events of 1969: veering between hangover & tenuous expectancy
June: New York City police raid on a Greenwich Village gay bar kicked off the Stonewall rebellion, and, with it, the gay liberation movement
July: the moon landing
August: the Woodstock rock festival
August: the Charles Manson Family murders in Los Angeles
a consequence of Manson's deranged fantasy of an impending race war (during which one of his followers notoriously wrote the Beatles' song title "Helter Skelter" on a refrigerator in the blood of one of the victims)
December: the murder of a black man, Meredith Hunter, who was stabbed in the neck by members of the Hell's Angels
the Rolling Stones had foolishly asked the Hell's Angels to provide security for their Altamont rock festival!
year-end: members of the Black Panther Party were murdered (all unarmed, some sleeping) by the Chicago police, following months of shootouts in the streets
Perhaps because of the enormous contradictions in their culture, the Beatles avoided topical references in their last projects, aside from the unusually biographical "The Ballad of John and Yoko."
Joe Cocker paid them the highest compliment by honoring their material through ingenious renovations, as in his bluesy rendition of "With a Little Help From My Friends," a Woodstock standout performance.
1969-1970 Beatles releases:
LP: Yellow Submarine (rel. Jan. 17, 1969)
Side 1: "Yellow Submarine" / "Only a Northern Song" / "All Together Now" / "Hey Bulldog" / "It's All Too Much" / "All You Need is Love"
Side 2 [excerpts from George Martin's orchestral score for the film]: "Pepperland" / Medley: "Sea of Time" & "Sea of Holes" / "Sea of Monsters" / "March of the Meanies" / "Pepperland Laid Waste" / "Yellow Submarine in Pepperland"
Single: "Get Back" / "Don't Let Me Down" (rel. Apr. 11, 1969)
Single: "The Ballad of John and Yoko" / "Old Brown Shoe" (rel. May 30, 1969)
LP: Abbey Road (rel. Sep. 26, 1969)
Side 1: "Come Together" / "Something" / "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" / "Oh! Darling" / "Octopus's Garden" / "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"
Side 2: "Here Comes the Sun" / "Because" / "You Never Give Me Your Money" / "Sun King" / "Mean Mr. Mustard" / "Polythene Pam" / "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" / "Golden Slumbers" / "Carry That Weight" / "The End" / "Her Majesty"
Single: "Let It Be" / "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" (rel. Mar 6, 1970)
LP: Let It Be (rel. May 8, 1970)
Side 1: "Two of Us" / "Dig a Pony" / "Across the Universe" / "I Me Mine" / "Dig It" / "Let It Be" / "Maggie Mae"
Side 2: "I've Got a Feeling" / "One After 909" / "The Long and Winding Road" / "For You Blue" / "Get Back"
The "Get Back" Project (became the Let It Be album & documentary)
Paul McCartney wanted to retake the concert stage.
the Beatles started 1969 with grandiose hopes ... perhaps playing at the pyramids of Giza or aboard a ship in the Mediterranean
George objected to anything that invited Beatlemania complications
any hopes for a publicized concert disappeared when George quit for more than a week on the seventh day of filming
the January plan, spearheaded by Paul, was to rehearse and perform the oldies from their early career
cameras captured weeks' worth of full-day practice sessions in hopes of a made-for-TV film (an antidote to Magical Mystery Tour?) of the group progressing toward a performance in front of a live audience
you will get a chance to experience this for yourself, when you watch the 3 volumes of Get Back toward the end of the semester!
ultimately, the TV format would be scrapped and replaced by a feature-film documentary, and the cover songs were quickly overtaken by new songs that would be recorded with editing as well as a few overdubs
though one of their own "oldies" ("One After 909", an unrecorded Lennon-McCartney duet from their earliest days) was included on the album
the charm of reviving one of their unpublished songs, rescued from oblivion after it was scrapped in March 1963, seemed to shift the Beatles back into "friendly" mode
The Beatles had all but disintegrated, and much of the time in the studio was spent propping up weary morale.
McCartney had enough motivation and work ethic for the other three combined ... watching Let It Be or Get Back, you get the sense that, if he didn't steer this project, nobody would!
filming the entirety of very raw and largely aimless rehearsals undoubtedly added tension to the situation
with Harrison's new compositions being pushed aside by an openly insulting Lennon and with McCartney ignoring his disdain for live performance, George walked out
he rejoined the band on the conditions that they must move from the cavernous sound stage to the cozy new recording studio being installed in the basement of their Apple headquarters and drop any plans for a concert
just as he'd done with Eric Clapton the previous year (remember his solo on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"?), George returned with another guest, Billy Preston, the keyboardist they had met back in Hamburg when he played for Little Richard
Preston brought mutual respect back to the studio, and his continuous involvement added major contributions to the "Get Back" project ... and then to several tracks on Abbey Road
during these sessions, the Beatles performed part of at least 249 identifiable songs in the course of the month, but they also introduced 52 new compositions!!
rather than performing at the Pyramids or on a cruise ship, they settled on performing on the roof of their central London offices on January 30th, playing a 45-minute set for finale of the documentary
the rooftop concert, aided by Billy Preston on the trendy Fender Rhodes electric piano, featured only unheard originals: "One After 900" and four others -- "Get Back," "Don't Let Me Down," "I've Got a Feeling," and "Dig a Pony"
three additional acoustic numbers ("Let It Be," "The Long and Winding Road," and "Two of Us") were completed in the basement studio on January 31st before Ringo was obligated to begin a film shoot of his own in February
After the "Get Back" sessions, the voluminous audio tapes were examined for months, picked over, and shelved again and again
only after recording their entire next album, Abbey Road, did the Beatles return to the "Get Back" material
they hired Phil Spector, the American girl-group mastermind (and composer of "To Know Him is to Love Him," a Beatles standby in 1960-63 performances) to put the Let It Be album together
Spector's "wall of sound" aesthetic added syrupy orchestra and women's chorus to "Across the Universe," "I Me Mine," "Let It Be," and "The Long and Winding Road"
Spector would go on to produce George's triple-album debut, All Things Must Pass
McCartney was outraged by the additions Spector made to his work without his approval, but his entreaties to remove them were ignored
Lennon's assessment was a bit more sympathetic: he felt Spector "was given the shittiest load of badly recorded shit with a lousy feel to it ever, and he made something out of it.... When I heard it, I didn't puke."
Although mostly recorded before Abbey Road, the album and movie -- both ultimately named Let It Be -- finally appeared together in May 1970, in the wake of a stunning announcement from Paul McCartney: he was leaving the Beatles!
Tellingly, John, in Denmark, failed to appear for what was to be the group's final job!
”Two of Us”
The topic of running away with your fiancée appears in several McCartney songs. In "Two of Us," Paul turns this modest precept into an elegy for the Lennon-McCartney partnership."
open mic portion is classic Lennon silliness
Can you hear the "aab" form of this verse?
Can you hear the "aab" form of this verse?
Can you hear the "aab" form of this verse?
”Dig a Pony”
Lennon's stylistic development traces two distinct but congruent arcs:
the first follows traditional, Chuck Berry-like narratives that tweak familiar patterns ("I Call Your Name" and "Revolution")
the other extends further and further outward into experimental realms ("Tomorrow Never Knows" and "I Am the Walrus" towards "Revolution 9")
"Dig a Pony" combines these two threads: it's a clever combination of errant lyrics on top of old-school patterns, with arpeggiated riffs supplanting offbeat chords.
Listen, for example, to the
. Can you imagine another way to make the verb "syndicate" sound vaguely flirtatious? Think of it as Lennon's take on Dylanesque irony: nonsense flirting with the tangible.
Can you hear the "aab" form of this verse?
Guitar solo is over the "a" section of the verse Can you hear the "aab" form of this verse?
”I've Got a Feeling”
You will have a chance to watch the entire Get Back documentary toward the end of the semester. Regarding Let It Be (the Michael Lindsay-Hogg documentary, released in 1970), the first two-thirds of the film show the Beatles in dog-tired rehearsal, working up arrangements from fragments and lapsing into oldies when they simply can't be bothered to spruce up their own original ideas. In the final third of the movie, brilliant excerpts of the "rooftop concert" set -- numbers that failed, going limp during rehearsal -- suddenly rise up and breathe life back into their ensemble. Somewhere, off-camera, they've pieced together a marvel!
"I've Got a Feeling" comprises a farewell collaboration sung in tandem, a relay until the end when both sections pile on top of one another for an
(at 2:46 in the track) with both Paul & John singing their verses at the same time!
this track lays two melodies on top of each other, like the quodlibet of "Paperback Writer" / "Frère Jacques," two lenses sharpening an otherwise blurred view neither could bring into focus individually.
the materials of each section -- we'll call them "Verse A" (Paul) and "Verse B" (John) -- work separately, like the vocal lines in "If I Fell," but each part also works as an unlikely fit for the other, a synecdoche for the Lennon-McCartney partnership itself
Lennon's reference to a
in Verse B1 would have been known by his audience to refer to the fact that Yoko had suffered a miscarriage less than two months previously. At the beginning of Verse B2, interestingly, he refers to it as a
.
Can you hear the "aa'b" form of this verse?
Can you hear the "aa'b" form of this verse? Lennon sings his own melody over the verse in contrast to McCartney's, which has been sung three times (so far).
This verse combines the McCartney and Lennon melodies into a duet of countermelodies.
”One After 909”
This track is particularly interesting, given the way it serves the "spirit" of the Get Back sessions, since it is one of their own "oldies" that Lennon-McCartney co-wrote back in 1960!!
the song captures a nostalgia for teen fantasy itself, the glory days of Elvis, hula hoops and the steam trains of skiffle, a celebration of the heights of their musical feeling before fame
the distance between what the singer describes in the lyrics and his clearly overjoyed sensations make you wonder about his sincerity; if missing the train would spell disaster, why does he sound so happy?
Musically, it is interesting to notice that the lyrics clearly describe disappointment, but the music cruises jauntily down the tracks!
The Evolution of Paul's Bass Lines
By the time of A Hard Day's Night (June 1964), McCartney began adding nice little bass riffs in Lennon's songs. [Everette & Riley (2019) refer to them as "(very brief) bass solos," but they are not really substantial enough to constitute a "solo," so I prefer to refer to them more appropriately as bass "riffs" or "licks."]
As you play the excerpts below, focus your listening on the low-pitched instrumental lines, paying special attention to Paul's bass lines. Dr. Lipscomb is a bass player who greatly admires Paul McCartney's innovative bass playing.
"I'll Cry Instead" (bass at 1:34-1:36 in the original recording):
"I'm Only Sleeping" (bass at 0:33 in the original recording):
"I'm Only Sleeping," excerpt 2 (bass at 2:00 in the original recording):
"Rain" (extended excerpt):
"Nowhere Man" (extended excerpt):
"Hey Bulldog" (extended excerpt):
"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey" (bass at 2:03 in the original recording):
"Come Together" (extended excerpt):
"Something" (bass at 2:03-2:10 in the original recording):
”Don't Let Me Down”
In "Don't Let Me Down," Paul's bass underpins Lennon's bridge with
. Since McCartney sings the upper vocal harmony, he coddles Lennon's blues wailing both from above and below.
It's impossible to separate "Don't Let Me Down" from all the business wrangling brewing offstage, as Lennon was about to throw his lot in with would-be manager Allen Klein and declare war on McCartney's future father-in-law, John Eastman, in the battle for control over the group members' financial future.
standing on the Apple during the "rooftop concert," the Lennon-McCartney partnership was perched on disaster, but they didn't know it yet
in a few month's time, Dick James would sell his shares of Northern Songs behind their backs, delivering their publishing catalog to a bunch of bankers!!
It is worth pointing out that, later, the Beatles attempted to promote Let It Be ... Naked (released by Apple Records on November 17, 2003) as an untouched "live" set (the raw recordings from the rooftop concert), when it was actually an elaborately edited master (thanks to the engineers at Apple). As a result, their initial promotion for the ... Naked album was a scam.
The Spring of 1969
The spring of 1969 brought several individual projects and life experiences:
Paul played bass on James Taylor's "Carolina in My Mind" and 12-string acoustic guitar on Mary Hopkin's "Goodbye"
Ringo co-starred with Peter Sellers (of Pink Panther fame) in the movie based on Terry Southern's absurdist 1959 novel, The Magic Christmas.
John had divorced Cynthia and married Yoko in Gibraltar in March
John and Yoko's honeymoon was a whirlwind tour
a week-long "bed-in" for peace in Amsterdam
the "bed-in" was their parody of worldwide campus sit-in and teach-in demonstrations of recent years
delighted by the constant attention of the world's press, John and Yoko made a statement for peace as performance art!
a quixotic stage performance in Vienna with Yoko caterwauling inside a large bag
many of their antics are documented in the newspaper-like-story-like lyrics to "The Ballad of John and Yoko," recorded as a duo by John and Paul, but released as a Beatles single
John and Yoko carried their "commercial for peace" to Montreal in September, where they held a second bed-in, culminating with the hotel-room recording of "Give Peace a Chance," John's anthem chanted with the help of a roomful of visitors
”The Ballad of John and Yoko”
Few showbiz feuds took on the scale and furor of the Lennon-McCartney battle during the spring of 1969:
the January "Get Back" sessions had left such a sour note in everybody's ears that they mothballed the tapes for weeks and then gave them to engineer Glyn Johns to produce
George Martin was much less involved with the recording and production of the "Get Back" sessions (i.e., Let It Be), following the more removed role he had filled for The White Album sessions
Singles released in the spring helped patch over any breakup rifts the press began reporting ...
"Get Back" / "Don't Let Me Down" appeared in April
McCartney provided the following quote: "We made it into a song to roller coast by."
John added a "p.s.": "It's John playing the fab live guitar solo."
at the end of May, they released "The Ballad of John and Yoko" / "Old Brown Shoe" (a composition by George)
Lennon's flippant, as-it-happens tale of his celebrity wedding only gets more complicated and unlikely the more historical details emerge!
Regarding the recording of "The Ballad of John and Yoko," Lennon had penned a quickie narrative for his elopement and went knocking on McCartney's door for collaboration. Together, the two of them (Harrison was out of the country & Starr was still filming The Magic Christmas) played, sang, overdubbed,and mixed the neo-rockabilly track in under eight hours on April 14th, with Lennon on guitars and McCartney on piano, bass, maracas, and drums!
Geoff Emerick (engineer) remembers the session as friendly and convivial, which set the band on split tracks:
in their business offices, they pursued mutually exclusive goals, contracting with separate managers and lawyers and squabbling over Apple
in the studio, the Beatles' muse kept them prolific through the summer
snare drum only
Abbey Road
During the spring of 1969, the future looked dim ...
Apple's ambitions had far outpaced anybody's grasp on management
expenses outpaced revenues
business consultants began to worry about how easily such a venture might run aground
What was happening with the Beatles?
Lennon and McCartney had long since stopped writing together
the "Get Back" session recordings languished
no further full-group session plans emerged until summer (McCartney called George Martin to ask him to produce again, assuring him it would be "like the old days")
George Martin had been secondary during the "Get Back" project, as the Beatles intended for their roots project to be a live straight-to-tape recording, without any production sheen. Martin felt sidelined, and he seriously questioned the band's commitment to making a full-fledged group effort.
As the band began to consider material for the new album, George impressed everybody with some of his strongest contributions yet (e.g., "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun"). Harrison also helped Ringo with chord choices to beef up his own composition ("Octopus's Garden"), a musical sequel to "Yellow Submarine." [This "songwriting lesson" provides one of the more lighthearted and enjoyable sequences in the otherwise dreary Let It Be (1970) documentary; Get Back (2022; directed by Peter Jackson using the same set of source materials used by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, director of the Let It Be documentary) is a much better and more balanced presentation of this period ... which is why you will be watching it at the end of the semester rather than the older documentary. :)]
Abbey Road was released in September, shortly after the Woodstock festival, affirming everybody's hopes for the band's -- and rock 'n' roll's -- future. The Beatles continued to evolve and innovate, as evident in their use of the Moog synthesizer as a lead instrument in "Here Comes the Sun" (occurs at 0:07 in the intro of the original recording).
It's important to remember they the Beatles recorded Abbey Road as a finale ... a farewell to one another and their place in music history. Let It Be (the album and the documentary) appeared the following year but comprised material that was recorded earlier, and it remains an anomaly, out of step with how the band conceived this material. Most consider Abbey Road as the more unified, self-conscious swan song for the band.
Abbey Road represents ...
a compromise between Paul's song sequence on side 2 and John's preference for songs presented as individual components (like on side 1) -- not part of what he heard as "Paul's pop opera."
the song sequence (or what John calls "Paul's pop opera") included most of the songs on side 2, including "Sun King" / "Mean Mr. Mustard" / "Polythene Pam" / "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" / "Golden Slumbers" / "Carry That Weight" / "The End"
Everette & Riley (2019) do a terrific job of providing a detailed analysis of this song sequence on p. 223 with a description of how the key center changes throughout this sequence ... then comparing it to the key centers in "Something" (on side 1); they then go on to provide examples of specific melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic ideas that unite the tracks on Abbey Road.
it was kind of always this way: John's inspiration came in spurts with fantastic single songs (turning in 1969 to topical one-offs like "The Ballad of John and Yoko" and "Give Peace a Chance"), while Paul wanted to frame the big picture, setting the stage for Sgt. Pepper's and Magical Mystery Tour.
John's large-scale thoughts were poetic, Paul's practical ... each visionary in his own way
steady songwriting growth from George Harrison
many hold that George's Abbey Road songs ("Something" and "Here Comes the Sun") as among the band's best tracks!
Harrison's "Something" goes a step further than just being a great composition ...
it brought out some of Paul's best melodic writing on bass
George didn't just create imaginative ostinato ideas repeated in varied contexts but composed a soaring, large-scale, through-composed melody given ever-more creative embellishments that continually command attention
Abbey Road contained the first "hidden track" in rock history
McCartney cut "Her Majesty" from the middle of the medley (i.e., the song sequence on side 2), asked for it to be thrown out
the engineer removed it but, not wishing to destroy it, spliced it to a long piece of silent leader at the end of the reel
Paul liked the way this worked out and ordered the master to retain the odd edit, causing a long pause before "Her Majesty" begins to play
initially, "Her Majesty" was not even listed as a track on the album cover
Abbey Road was released in September to universal acclaim and with no hint that it was the group's last work together!
”Oh! Darling”
Toward the end of the track, Paul's vocal performance begins to suggest a cartoonish apotheosis, one particularly discredited by a that remains incongruous in its mistimed formal placement, a pretense at passion seemingly giving way to desperation.
Critic Jonathan Gould pointed out that the displaced exclamation point (!) in Paul's title for this track was modeled after Little Richard's "Ooh! My Soul."
The Beatles' catalog reveals that their music had universal appeal across all audiences, with renditions of Beatles songs later to come in styles ranging from jazz to Baroque:
Wilson Pickett's cover of "Hey Jude" (1969)
Aretha Franklin recording "Eleanor Rigby"
Stevie Wonder recorded "We Can Work It Out"
Lennon once revealed how badly he had wanted to sing "Oh! Darling"
in 1980, John said the song "was a great one of Paul's that he didn't sing too well. I always thought I could've done it better -- it was more my style than his. He wrote it, so what the hell, he's going to sing it. If he'd had any sense, he should have let me sing it."
Geoff Emerick (engineer) remembers Paul spending several days tearing up his voice, practicing to find just the right vocal effect
"Every day, we'd be treated to a hell of a performance as McCartney put his all into singing the song all the way through once and once only, nearly ripping his vocal cords to shreds in the process"--Geoff Emerick (2006)
In "Oh! Darling," Paul pays respect to the luminaries with whom he grew up, but, in another sense, the song serves as a sweet-yet-tart kind of "Get Back" homage to the forever-broken Lennon-McCartney partnership.
"bkgd" = background
The Ex-Beatles
The day before Abbey Road's release, John Lennon and Yoko Ono made a "solo" appearance at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival billed as the Plastic Ono Band. The set consisted of some songs with mass appeal ("Yer Blues," "Cold Turkey," "Give Peace a Chance," and a number of oldies ("Money [That's What I Want]," "Dizzy Miss Lizzie," and "Blue Suede Shoes"). Then Yoko presented two provocative pieces: "Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)" and a 12-minute tirade, "John John (Let's Hope for Peace)," which upset fans even more than "Revolution 9" had!
No matter how far the idea of the Beatles stretched, it couldn't quite fit Ono's spectral screams.
John & George also both performed onstage in 1969:
George played slide guitar for a number of R&B-fueled shows across Britain and Denmark with friends Delaney and Bonnie Bramlet in December (members of this band formed the core for Eric Clapton's self-titled first solo album, his Derek and the Dominoes album (including the song "Layla"), and George's own debut solo album All Things Must Pass, among other important releases).
John and George played for a year-end UNICEF benefit concert in London
remember it was Paul who'd wanted to get back onstage as early as 1968!
As a group, the Beatles managed to perform only the one unannounced rooftop performance on January 30, 1969, their only public appearance after the calamitous 1966 tour.
With Abbey Road completed by the end of 1969, Lennon offered the Beatles his brand new "Cold Turkey," a frightful number about heroin withdrawal, but they refused.
this spurred Lennon to release his second solo single: "Give Peace a Chance" was released in July & "Cold Turkey" was released in October, both before the Beatles officially called it quits
John recorded the track as the ever-changing Plastic Ono Band
after this single, an album featuring John & Yoko's performance at the Toronto festival in September 1969 (Live Peace in Toronto 1969) hit the market in December
John & Yoko also put together a swiftly recorded series of duets capturing a number of travails they'd endured the previous year, releasing it as Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With the Lions
George released Electronic Sound in May 1969, the same month as John's Unfinished Music No. 2
The year 1970 brought solo albums by all four ex-Beatles:
John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band
Paul McCartney - McCartney
George Harrison - All Things Must Pass
Ringo Starr - Sentimental Journey
Everette & Riley (2019) describe each of the band members' preferred directions:
John: "raw and uncomfortable"
Paul: "pretty and grandiose"
George: "spiritual and soaring"
Ringo: "crooning and casual"
The "Paul is Dead" Hoax
Fueled by DJ Russ Gibb of WKNR in Detroit, rumors began to circulate relaying a story that McCartney had been "killed" in a November 1966 car crash and replaced by a double, claiming that clues had been planted in every subsequent Beatles release (who is this "Billy Shears"? Why is there an "O.P.D." ["officially pronounced dead"] armband on the album insert for Sgt. Pepper's? why is Mussolini's hand over Paul's head [a symbol of death] in the front cover image for Sgt. Pepper's?).
Interesting excerpts from Beatles recordings, furthering the "Paul is Dead" hoax:
"Strawberry Fields Forever" (the end of the track): at 0:20 in the excerpt below, John says "cranberry sauce" (heard by many as "I buried Paul")
Sgt. Pepper's - back cover: George points to the lyric "Wednesday morning at five o'clock" (supposedly fixing the time of Paul's "passing"; see image)
Magical Mystery Tour - walrus on the cover: symbolizes death in certain obscure faiths
"Revolution 9" (The White Album) - playing "number nine" phrase backwards sounds to many like "Turn me on, dead man."
forward:
backwards:
John's gibberish connection "I'm So Tired" to "Blackbird" (The White Album), when played backwards, sounds to many like "Paul is dead, man; miss him, miss him, miss him."
forward:
backwards:
the license plate on the local piano tuner's white Volkswagen that happened to be captured on the Abbey Road album cover declares "28 IF" (see image); 28 is purportedly the age Paul would have been "IF" he had lived (according to the hoax)!!
Here is a link to an interesting resource on the topic of these odd symbols
on the Abbey Road album cover: BIOGRAPHY.com.
McCartney's artistic break with the other band members over Phil Spector's production of Let It Be was concurrent with the business differences he had with the other three ... specifically, about who would represent the Beatles in legal and managerial matters (Allen Klein vs. John Eastman, the latter of whom was the father of Linda Eastman, Paul's future wife and bandmate in Wings)
Eastman began advising Paul, making his and Klein's roles similar to the primaries in the Lennon-McCartney feud
Ringo quit and returned to the band in 1968
George quite and returned to the band in January 1969 (you will see this when you watch Get Back later in the semester
in September 1969, John made plain his intentions to "divorce" the band (he never again worked with the band after that September)
Klein and the others asked Lennon to keep the breakup a secret due to ongoing, sensitive contract negotiations (to which he agreed)
on April 10, 1970, as McCartney was giving press interviews for his initial solo album, Paul announced to the world that he was leaving the Beatles (imagine how John felt about that!)
whereas his mates had each quite the band privately, it was Paul who first let on that he was breaking with the Beatles by announcing it irrevocably to the world
As strong as John's hold on the band was, Paul upstaged him in many ways:
showed John that they could both write songs
was the early "musical director," the one to direct the ensemble with count-ins most often onstage
began the quest for adding non-pop sources to their sound (blues, music-hall, classical, even barbershop)
took John's 1966-67 masterpieces "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," adding introductory parts for exotic keyboards that raised their value immeasurably"
drove the overarching concepts behind Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour
flipped John's "I Am the Walrus" and "Revolution" by creating respective A-sides: "Hello Goodbye" (which John hated) and "Hey Jude" (which John had to admit was the better song)
outshined George as lead guitarist in Harrison's own songs ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Something") with his bass and tonal imagination
tended to boss around George and Ringo with his detailed arrangements (what guitar parts to play or where a drum fill should go)
in Let It Be, during a rehearsal, Paul admits, "I can hear myself annoying you."
took John's "Everybody Had a Hard Year" and recast it as a duet in "I've Got a Feeling," which Paul leads off
insisted on including what John referred to as "Paul's mini-opera" on Abbey Road (i.e., the collection of songs that form an extended narrative)
took sides in business matters against the other three regarding the band's management and in buying shares of their publishing company behind the backs of his bandmates
John, George, & Ringo put up with a lot because of Paul's phenomenal musical abilities and creative imagination
Everette & Riley(2019): "Yoko did NOT break up the Beatles; she just gave John the strength to walk away from the wreck."
Tragically, John Lennon's life was cut short in December 1980 (by an assassin's bullet) and George's in November 2001 (cancer). As of the present, both Paul and Ringo continue to tour and record music.
Everette & Riley (2019, p. 231) provide a list of some of the former Beatles' most significant solo releases. I created a Spotify playlist of these albums, which you will find embedded in this webpage below:
The Beatles' "Latest Recordings"
With help from Jeff Lynne (who played both with Electric Light Orchestra and the Traveling Wilburys, the late 1980s group including Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty), the Beatles took three of John Lennon's demo tapes and managed to get them into good enough shape for the remaining Beatles to add their own parts, to which Everette & Riley refer as "the 'Threetles' overdubs." The first two songs ("Free as a Bird" and "Real Love") were each included on one of the Beatles' Anthology releases, "Free as a Bird" on Anthology 1 (1995) and "Real Love" on Anthology 2 (1996). They had planned to release the third on Anthology 3 (1996), but the sound quality was so bad they didn't think they could salvage the song. In fact, it wasn't until Peter Jackson was working on the Get Back documentary that the technology to make this possible became available. As a result, "Now and Then" was released in 2024. Paul worked very hard to ensure that this recording got made, and many wonder why this was so important to him. After Lennon was shot, it is rumored that John's last words to Paul were "Think of me now and then" ... John's last words echoing the title of this song.
All three of these songs, based on demo recordings left behind by John Lennon, are included in the Spotify playlist for Module 11b/ch. 9b:
"Free as a Bird"
"Real Love"
"Now and Then"
The Beatles Anthology documentary consisted of a six-hour, three-night television broadcast, then sold in various video formats including a large print book and the story of the Beatles in their own words, as overseen by their former road manager Neil Aspinall. The series contained many outtakes and live performances of value to fans and scholars.
The Beatles' Legacy
The music of the Beatles was so innovative and creative that it launched many subgenres, which led, in many ways, to the thousands of niche musical styles we discover today on the internet. The expansive reach of the Beatles inspired just about every songwriter and record producer who followed. In fact, the evolution of popular music and rock 'n' roll of the 19t0s through the early 21st century would have been vastly different without the influence of the Beatles.
Some Interesting Developments
In the early 1970s, Apple Records released Badfinger's "Come and Get It," a song composed by Paul for the Magic Christian soundtrack.
George Harrison helped produce Badfinger's third album, Straight Up (1971).
In 2004, Danger Mouse produced a fully-length mash-up of Jay Z's Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album to create his own The Grey Album, a very interesting recording that positions the Beatles as prototypes for hip-hop, as they had served for sampling in their use of "found lyrics" and existing recordings that they used for "Revolution 9."
The Beatles' catalog has been the subject of numerous radio series, Cirque du Soleil's perennial Las Vegas show, Love, and a megahit video game ... Rock Band: The Beatles!
In 2017-2018, both Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The White Album topped Billboard's album chart 50 years after their respective release dates due to Apple's production of deluxe celebratory box-set rereleases.
The Beatles remain the biggest-selling and most critically acclaimed rock band in history! Their music is among the very most stimulating popular music of the tonal era (from A.D. 1600 to the present), providing us all with a rich source of sonic pleasure, meaning, and human interaction.
their ever-changing musical style made them sound new with every release
each record unleashed an enchanting stream of ideas, life- and love-affirming views, always-eccentric appearance, top-of-the-world nonchalance, and global leadership in every social and cultural domain they touched to make them indelible masters in the realm of Pop.
the range of their musical styles defies most imaginations, and yet on every track they remain inimitable ... a band with a thousands selves!
June: New York City police raid on a Greenwich Village gay bar kicked off the Stonewall rebellion, and, with it, the gay liberation movement
Paul McCartney wanted to retake the concert stage.
rather than performing at the Pyramids or on a cruise ship, they settled on performing on the roof of their central London offices on January 30th, playing a 45-minute set for finale of the documentary
Fueled by DJ Russ Gibb of WKNR in Detroit, rumors began to circulate relaying a story that McCartney had been "killed" in a November 1966 car crash and replaced by a double, claiming that clues had been planted in every subsequent Beatles release (who is this "Billy Shears"? Why is there an "O.P.D." ["officially pronounced dead"] armband on the album insert for Sgt. Pepper's? why is Mussolini's hand over Paul's head [a symbol of death] in the front cover image for Sgt. Pepper's?).
the license plate on the local piano tuner's white Volkswagen that happened to be captured on the Abbey Road album cover declares "28 IF" (see image); 28 is purportedly the age Paul would have been "IF" he had lived (according to the hoax)!!