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Post by superhans on Jan 2, 2009 10:54:18 GMT -5
Here's a sobering thought - it was precisely forty years ago today (January 2nd 1969) that the Beatles trudged wearily into a cold and frosty Twickenham Film Studios to begin work on - what was to become - 'Let it be'.
It's interesting to spare a thought for the 'Let it Be' project on this particular day, because you get a real feel for how bad the timing was - January is a miserable month in old Blighty. It's the hangover after Christmas, everyone's glum and demoralised, it's either freezing cold or piddling down with rain...and the days are short and bleak. It's really no time for a bunch of wealthy, fractious egos to be mucking around in a cavernous film studio trying to be creative.
Anyway, I have a quick question for you: Of the four Beatles, who really went into that project with the wrong attitude? Who's head really wasn't in the right place for a month of film, frivolity and feuding. Was any one of the Fab four particularly at fault for the whole project slipping off the rails? Pick just one Beatle and explain your reason...
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Post by John S. Damm on Jan 2, 2009 12:12:47 GMT -5
Great Thread. Thanks for pointing out this particular anniversary.
I'd say that it was John who came in with the wrong attitude for this specific project. He was disinterested and apparently reeling from heroin.
He just had a great showing on The White Album and was apparently unprepared emotionally, physically and songwriting-wise to be starting over so quickly.
Had John been more "on board," Paul would not have felt the need to be such a cheerleader trying to push the band. That in turn might have kept George happier.
As I type this, I am struck though on why Paul felt the need for The Beatles to regroup so early after The White Album. That album was still a major seller on or near the top of the charts and The Beatles had the monster single "Hey Jude" just a few months earlier.
In hindsight, The Beatles should have taken off January and February!
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Post by alltouttt on Jan 2, 2009 12:55:54 GMT -5
IMHO, no one was really to blame for the imminent collapse of the band...
Each member of the Beatles had grown apart and their individual interests were going in very different ways...
Sure, John's relationship with Yoko must have been a major distraction for Paul in particular but by the time of the *Let It Be* sessions, I think they had already seen enough of each others and they were all ready to move on, or at least take a long break as Beatles...
We all do this when we get to be around 25... embarking in adult life and serious relationships with wife and kids... Old friends take a back seat and a new period begins ...
It's called life and they had a pretty ectic one from 1963 to 1969!
All things must pass... Really!
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Joseph McCabe
Very Clean
A rebel to his last breath ...
Posts: 912
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Post by Joseph McCabe on Jan 2, 2009 14:46:10 GMT -5
Anyway, I have a quick question for you: Of the four Beatles, who really went into that project with the wrong attitude? Who's head really wasn't in the right place for a month of film, frivolity and feuding. Was any one of the Fab four particularly at fault for the whole project slipping off the rails? Pick just one Beatle and explain your reason... Easy question: Paul McCartney himself. His hectoring attitude to the others, his attitude to the group and what it should do, his appalling sense of timing - coming together so soon after the very tense White Album sessions, and so on. Oh yeah, I'll blame it mostly (mostly, not all) on Macca. Dreadful judgement by him.
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Post by winstonoboogie on Jan 2, 2009 15:20:56 GMT -5
I agree with JSD. As for alltoutt's (spelling?) 2 pence, that would have been great in theory, but weren't the Beatles under contract to supply x number of albums and singles for a contracted period of time?
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Post by OldFred on Jan 2, 2009 17:21:32 GMT -5
I also agree with JSD. And that's an interesting thought that it was too soon after the release of the White Album for them to get together, a two month rest might have helped the project more and perhaps they could have planned things a little better. Look at the span of time between 'Get Back/Let It Be' and 'Abbey Road'. They were able to recharge their batteries a bit and came up with a brilliant coda to their career. I kind of wish they had taken the Genesis route of doing a group project, then do some solo stuff before coming back for another group project. I believe that was a possibility that they took into consideration. Then again, it's perhaps best they ended as they did, at the top.
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Post by johnpaulharstar on Jan 2, 2009 20:57:39 GMT -5
In retrospect since Paul was so keen to do something (and the others didn't seem to be) it might have been a good time for Paul to do a solo album. George would have been a good candidate for a solo album as well seeing as two very good songs of his ("Not Guilty" and "Sour Milk Sea") didn't make it onto the White Album. He had more stuff around (and some very good songs that didn't make it onto Let It Be or Abbey Road). Actually, thinking about it now, a single disc of songs that were the most group oriented could have been THE WHITE ALBUM and that would have left enough for Paul, George, and John to do solo LP's too. Maybe I'll start a new thread on this topic!
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Post by jimc on Jan 2, 2009 23:21:33 GMT -5
The sessions for the White Album were finished by mid Oct. 1968. That gives the Beatles at least two and a half months before trying to begin work on Get Back in Jan. I would think the others could have spoken up and vetoed the idea of working in Jan. (However, I wonder if the studio, crew, etc. had been booked several months in advance? I can't remember what I've read about that.)
Anyway, Let It Be practically blended into Abbey Road. The filming sessions stopped, but the Beatles continued to record, whether it was I Want You, George's solo stuff, or the Ballad of John and Yoko single. Then the sessions for Abbey Road were in swing by April, I think?
I'm not sure time had much to do with it. The conditions of the film studio, maybe. Actually, I think if they had taken off as much time in 1969 (between the White Album and Get Back) as they did between Revolver and Sgt. Pepper -- there still would have been trouble. There had to be an airing of grievances. As others have said, the boys had grown up.
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Post by Joe Karlosi on Jan 3, 2009 6:56:16 GMT -5
Look at those photos. It always irked me that straight-laced Paulie was the only Beatle who looked not much different between 1962-1969. That's why I gave him kudos for having the beard in LET IT BE. It's the only time he looked much difference (aside form the fleeting moustache).
(OK, well, Paul has always looked better clean shaven)...
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Post by alltouttt on Jan 3, 2009 9:49:19 GMT -5
I agree with JSD. As for alltoutt's (spelling?) 2 pence, that would have been great in theory, but weren't the Beatles under contract to supply x number of albums and singles for a contracted period of time? That contract must have been near the end too because, after all, the band only did release two albums after the *White Album* ... (Yellow Submarine doesn't count!)
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Post by mikev on Jan 3, 2009 10:09:13 GMT -5
If they took the picture in early 1968 instead of early 1969, only John with the granny glasses and Mike Nesmith sideburns would have looked different.
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Post by ReturnToPepperland on Jan 12, 2009 23:00:28 GMT -5
They had already taken three months off by Jan 69 as they wrapped up the white album in early october 68. You expect them to take 5 or 6 months off in their prime? They had a contract to fulfill.
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Post by mikev on Jan 12, 2009 23:41:19 GMT -5
Can you imagine how cool live white album tracks could have been?
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Post by John S. Damm on Jan 13, 2009 0:19:27 GMT -5
They had already taken three months off by Jan 69 as they wrapped up the white album in early october 68. You expect them to take 5 or 6 months off in their prime? They had a contract to fulfill. Well, I see where Doug Sulpy feels the exact same way some of us do that the big mistake on "Get Back" was starting so soon after the long but productive White Album sessions. Don't tell me there was a rush to release a new album as we know Let It Be sat in the can for well over a year. The Beatles still had plenty of time to properly record and release Abbey Road for 1969 as well as the non-Get Back hit single BOJAY/OBS. School semesters start Jan. 2nd and we adults all sigh and say goodbye to the just concluded holidays on Jan. 2nd and get back to a new year of work. But Beatles don't do well on Jan. 2d to start early in the morning in a large, cold film studio. ;D Oh well, it is what it is and the Get Back sessions helped put the nails in the coffin lid of The Beatles emotionally. The music lives on even though parts of Apple would prefer the movie Let It Be go away and be forgotten.
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Post by superhans on Jan 13, 2009 4:38:12 GMT -5
They had already taken three months off by Jan 69 as they wrapped up the white album in early october 68. You expect them to take 5 or 6 months off in their prime? They had a contract to fulfill. I think the lack of a break between the White Album and Get Back is evidenced by the paucity of songs that Lennon brought to the table for the project (although he seemed to have a tantalising number of half-finished songs - 'I want you', 'Gimme some truth', 'Jealous guy' etc). Can you imagine nowadays a band only taking two months between albums....two years, perhaps.
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Post by superhans on Jan 20, 2009 5:48:05 GMT -5
Now, ya see - forty years ago today, Monday 20th January 1969, the Beatles trudged into Saville Row to start the second, and more successful phase of work on Get Back. However...
...just about now they'd be switching on Magic Alex's stunning 72 track recording studio - the one with seventy-two little speakers, disco lights, an oscilloscope and a console that was recycled from the cockpit of a B-52 bomber.
...and just about now they'd be booting Alex Mardas out of the front door of no. 3 Saville Row. ;D
Recording would commence in earnest on 22nd January.
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Post by mikev on Jan 20, 2009 10:49:59 GMT -5
I have to wonder-if they did in fact finally realize the guy was a fraud. Imagine bonus footage of him actually getting the boot. I also wonder if he collected an royalties for his "cameo" on Anthololgy.
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Post by superhans on Jan 20, 2009 11:24:49 GMT -5
I also wonder if he collected an royalties for his "cameo" on Anthololgy. I think Magic Alex's salutation to "all the beautiful ladies in the world" from Apple Electronics was my singular favourite bit of the entire Anthology series. What a sleaze! ;D
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Post by ursamajor on Jan 20, 2009 20:44:21 GMT -5
I also wonder if he collected an royalties for his "cameo" on Anthololgy. I think Magic Alex's salutation to "all the beautiful ladies in the world" from Apple Electronics was my singular favourite bit of the entire Anthology series. What a sleaze! ;D "to all the byoodifool electrawnik people and to all the byoodifool ladies in the world" not sleazy.. cheezy... how many women here think that Magic Alex is hot
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Post by vectisfabber on Jan 20, 2009 21:00:44 GMT -5
how many women here think that Magic Alex is hot I do, to the extent that "hot" means "ought to be boiled in oil." And I apologise for not being a woman. Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write.
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Post by winstonoboogie on Jan 20, 2009 21:22:57 GMT -5
how many women here think that Magic Alex is hot I do, to the extent that "hot" means "ought to be boiled in oil." And I apologise for not being a woman. Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write. ;D
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Post by superhans on Jan 30, 2009 3:26:04 GMT -5
...and forty years ago this day (30th January 1969)... The Rooftop Performance. The Bealtes' final live performance and still lauded to this day as one of the most famous live events in the history of pop music. I thought I might celebrate by popping down the shops and buying the concert on DVD, but then I remembered that such a product doesn't exist. Good old Apple -- and happy birthday 'Get Back', 'I've got a feeling', et al.
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Post by Steve Marinucci on Jan 30, 2009 15:36:07 GMT -5
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Post by rockwizard on Feb 1, 2009 19:23:15 GMT -5
Lets face it, Twichenham was a train wreck from the start. The Beatles were notorious night owls ---- starting around 10PM and working throughout the night on sessions. With this, they're in a windy, COLD movie hanger in the morning and cameras are catching their every move. Not exactly an ideal environment to work. Is it any wonder the old wounds reopened so quickly?
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