Of Beatles and Hobbits Part 2

By the time the Beatles finished the rooftop concert on January 31st, 1969, they probably felt that they had dodged a bullet. The group had it's most serious threat of breakup during the filmed rehearsals, with George leaving for a week. There was turmoil, with both John and George facing drug charges. Apple was bleeding cash despite being financed by the largest selling group in the world.

Glyn Johns, the engineer who was really producing the album while George Martin hovered at a respectful distance, did the job that he was hired for, having a rough mix of some of the material ready even before the rooftop concert. Johns was used to groups like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin working in a studio to get a groove going, unlike the usual Beatle method of creating a perfect track layer by layer. The Fab Four had started working more organically in the studio during the White Album sessions, driving Martin crazy. The resulting outcome did favor a denser, heavier sound on many of the songs.

But the film crew complicated things in more than one way. Not only were there cameramen, but audio was being recorded constantly, with clapboards used to synch the sound in editing. It wasn't just a question of Glyn Johns rolling tape for another master. Every ditty, snatch of song, blown take and unused instrumental was recorded, along with all between song chatter, on Nagra tape machines. These portable devices also recorded time code, a frame accurate stamp needed to keep sound and vision locked together.

At the time, all this seemed insignificant. By February, the Beatles were working on new material, some of it tried out during the 'Get Back' session. 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)' and 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' were being laid down within weeks of the abandoned project. The band still needed a steady supply of new material to float Apple Corp. When Glyn Johns presented his second mix in March, the band thanked him and sent him on his way, not bothering to listen.

A couple of songs were released in April, the two most commercial rockers, Paul's 'Get Back' on the A side, with John's excellent 'Don't Let Me Down' on the reverse. It stormed up the charts as expected, keeping the Beatles in the public's eye as they worked again with George Martin to craft songs in their more traditional method. Paul and John got married in March, John and George went through their drug trails. Allen Klein was now representing three of the Beatles.

The music from the January 1969 session was not being worked on. It seems as if the Beatles considered it a lost cause, with no one having the energy to sort out all the hours of material. 'Abbey Road' was finished in August, as things were getting 'heavy' at Apple, a word used by everyone involved. People were getting fired right and left. The album, a near-perfect slab of vinyl showcasing the band at their best, was rush-released the following month.

By this time, John Lennon was done with the Beatles. That same month, he appeared for around thirty minutes live with the very under-rehearsed Plastic Ono Band, which for that appearance included Eric Clapton, at a Toronto festival. His first real solo single, 'Cold Turkey', appeared the next month. Supposedly he had presented it to McCartney as a single to follow 'Abbey Road', but Paul rejected it. Lennon's career as a single artist had started.

In fact, there was so many fractious meetings between the Beatles and Allen Klein, with Paul constantly being forced to sign a management deal that he wouldn't, that McCartney just abandoned London with his wife and newborn child in late September. At the last meeting, John announced his decision to leave the band. It was Allen Klein who convinced him, and all in the room, not to go public with the news since he was renegotiating their royalty rates. In fact, from now on, with Paul absent from policy making while John and Yoko flew around the world having Bed-Ins, Klein was in charge of Apple.

Something completely out of the hands of Klein, or anyone in the band, happened at the same time across the Atlantic. 'Kum Back', considered the second mass produced rock bootleg vinyl, started appearing in record stores in selected cities across America. It was a big deal and a new thing. Copies were played on the radio and it was even reviewed in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. It was, effectively, a copy of the first Glyn Johns mix of the 'Get Back' sessions.

How it escaped Apple has been heavily speculated upon. Most likely, someone getting fired by Allen Klein grabbed everything of value they could carry out the door, including a copy of the acetate. An entire album of mostly unreleased Beatles material, both forbidden fruit and incredibly desirable. It was a no brainer from some enterprising bootlegger to start printing up copies. Soon, hundreds of thousands of illegal discs were for sale across America.

It's not known if the appearance on 'Kum Back' spurred Klein into reviewing the 'Get Back' material. It wouldn't be too hard a business decision to see a large group of songs, including such obvious hits as McCartney's 'Let It Be' and 'The Long & Winding Road', and seeing the potential income. After all, there would be no new songs from the group; they needed cash flow now more than ever.

Michael Lindsay-Hogg had presented a rough edit of the movie to the band that was an hour longer than the original release back in the early summer. No one liked it. John thought it showed Paul as the only active one in the band, with the other three laying around waiting. In actual fact, that is what largely happened. The other three rejected all the extracurricular John and Yoko material, wanting the movie to focus strictly on the group.

After the finish of 'Abbey Road' and the argumentative business meetings in September 1969, during which Lennon and McCartney lost control of their songwriting, Paul disappeared for three months. John and Yoko were in the papers virtually every day. Ringo was recording his first solo album and getting ready for a BBC television special, singing standards. George spent part of the time touring with Delany and Bonnie across Europe.

When McCartney did re-emerge in January, it was to polish up some of the material from the 'Get Back' sessions. Paul, George and Ringo spent a couple of days overdubbing songs; George's 'I Me Mine', adding chorus and brass to 'Let It Be'. Linda McCartney even added vocals to the later. Glyn Johns supervised the session, returning with yet another version of the album, to be rejected again. John didn't bother to show up.

McCartney's next move shows how much he had removed himself from the Beatles by this time as well. Instead of going to Abbey Road, Paul booked Island Studios to do overdubs on much of the material for his first solo album, as well as record a few new songs. He used engineer Robin Black, noted for his work with Jethro Tull. It was only during the mixing of his solo material in February that he finally went to Abbey Road. Paul was keeping his new material close to the vest.

In March of 1970, McCartney was finished with his first solo album, setting a release date, working on the artwork and press material. The next single from the 'Get Back' sessions, 'Let It Be' was released. It was essentially just like the release of 'Get Back'  a year earlier, a Glyn Johns production attributed to George Martin. Curiously, it was after the single release that Phil Spector was brought on to remix the album.

By now Allen Klein had the machinery in place to debut new Beatles product, but not a release date for the album. He conducted business in a decidedly different manner than Brian Epstein. A single from the 'Abbey Road' album was released, which the Beatles had never done before on a non-soundtrack album. A greatest hits compilation, 'Hey Jude', a collection of non-album singles, was released in February 1970. Epstein had resisted such moves. Even 'You Know My Name (Look Up My Number)', possibly the worse song ever done by the band, had been used as a b side to 'Let It Be'. Klein had almost released 'What's the New Mary Jane' as the a side. The mind boggles.

When the movie and album came out, Paul was furious enough to announce that he had left the band. There was more than one reason for his decision. The album didn't come out at all like it was supposed to, despite repeated attempts by Glyn Johns and George Martin. Most damaging, the movie had turned him into the villain of the moment.

"Let It Be' the movie has never been released in the United States in any home video format, nor has it ever streamed. While I have no proof, it seems logical that during the editing process both Allen Klein as well as John and Yoko made sure that all the bad stuff concerning Paul was included while all the bad stuff from George, who had been significantly against the project from the beginning, was left out. Harrison even quit during the shooting, walking out, remaining missing for nearly a week. Very little of that is reflected in the finished project. What is there makes Paul look like the aggressor.

Remember those Nagra tapes? They became the source of countless bootlegs for the next decades. I remember one particularly impressive package, a three album set called 'The Black Album'. As a physical product, it was most impressive. There was even a giant poster exactly in the style of the one in the 'White Album'. It was only when the needle hit the groove that you were stuck in two hours of meandering jams and half-baked songs.

Things got even stranger. There was a tape operator at Abbey Road studios in the early 1980s called John Barrett. One of his jobs was to review tapes in preparation for tours of the famous studio where the Beatles had recorded. Finding that he had cancer, he started making copies of the best material, and when he died, it was sold at a high price. Around 1984, immaculate versions of incomplete and unreleased material started flooding the market.

Worse still, those Nagra tapes - and there were hundreds of them - having escaped the notice of Apple, were being used as the raw material for an even greater deluge of illegal material. You could literally buy a box set of every day of the 'Get Back' sessions, between song chatter included. Bootlegging became a serious business in the 1990s, right before the Internet allowed -for a time - massive downloading from anonymous sites and peer-to-peer copying. In 2003, for instance, there were raids in Italy and Belgium seizing over 500 Nagra tapes from the 'Get Back' sessions.

Eventually the Beatles did start releasing material from the vaults. When George Harrison could finally be persuaded to participate, the one Fab holdout, due to fear of losing his Friar Park house when his film production company went belly up, the 'Anthology' series included six hours of audio material, supervised by George Martin himself. It was a good start, with the ten hour video remaining the ultimate exploration of the Beatles phenomenon.

But the fanatic always wants more, and with the recent 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' and 'White Album' box sets, plus the anticipated 'Abbey Road' companion coming out this year, the road leads to the fractious 'Let It Be' film and album. Bringing in Peter Jackson, a complete outsider from the other side of the world, a fresh set of eyes and ears, sounds like the sort of compromise needed to get Paul McCartney to green light the project. To him, it will always be tainted material, with the stamp of ABKCO on it.