By 1969, The Beatles were a musical and cultural phenomenon. Despite reaching one musical peak after another, the group was disintegrating.
The Beatles had spent almost five months recording their last album, and the tense sessions nearly tore them apart. Paul McCartney hoped that a return to live performance, after a two-year hiatus, would bring The Beatles together again as a rock band.
The Get Back Rehearsals Begin at Twickenham Studios
On January 2, 1969, The Beatles regrouped at Twickenham Studios to record a follow-up to their last release, The Beatles (the 'White Album'). After the ill feelings generated during the 'White Album' sessions, the group hoped to begin 1969 with an exciting new project.
The idea was simple. Rather than spend months on elaborate studio productions, the group would get back to how they had been in the old days — playing simple songs live, without studio trickery. The project also would include a live album of new songs, a documentary film of the recording sessions, a deluxe book with exclusive photographs, and a televised live performance.
By all accounts, the rehearsals were disastrous. Hours of live performances were taped and then declared unusable by group members still fighting with one another. As McCartney later admitted, “it wasn't a happy time” because of all the tension.
The Get Back Sessions Move to Apple Studio
On January 22, The Beatles moved to their own Apple Studio at 3 Saville Row in London. Once there, the group began multi-track recording of the songs they had rehearsed. The recordings, however, were little different from the unstructured rehearsals. Extended jam sessions, jokes, and arguments were mixed in with unfinished songs, which were played over and over in a lackluster manner. The Apple Studio sessions finished on January 31.
Over the next year, the tapes from the 10-day sessions would be shuffled, mixed, edited, and reedited. In all, three different versions of the Get Back album would be produced by engineer Glyn Johns.
Glyn Johns Makes a Get Back Acetate
About six weeks after the Get Back sessions ended, Johns was summoned to Abbey Road Studios. According to Lewisohn (2008), John Lennon and Paul McCartney pointed to a table stacked with eight-track reel-to-reel tape boxes. They told Johns to make an album from the Apple Studio sessions.
The task was daunting. None of the songs had undergone proper recording back in January, and the group itself had long lost interest in the results. On March 10, Johns produced an acetate disc of 11 songs, which included the following songs:
Side One: “Get Back”; “Teddy Boy”; “Two of Us”; “Dig a Pony”; “I've Got a Feeling”
Side Two: “The Long and Winding Road”; “Let It Be”; “For You Blue”; “Don't Let Me Down”; “Get Back (reprise)”; “The Walk”
The group rejected this version. An unauthorized (bootleg) copy of the acetate somehow crossed the Atlantic Ocean and was played by radio stations in the United States, including WBCN in Boston. The broadcast was preserved on tape and can be heard on a Vigotone compact disc (VIGO 109).
The First Version of Get Back
Johns started again on the tapes and worked on them for nearly two months. On May 28, a 15-track master tape was prepared as the first official version of Get Back:
Side One: “One After 909”; “Rocker (instrumental)”; “Save the Last Dance for Me”; “Don't Let Me Down”; “Dig a Pony”; “I've Got a Feeling”; “Get Back”;
Side Two: “For You Blue”; “Teddy Boy”; “Two of Us”; “Maggie Mae”; “Dig It”; “Let It Be”; “The Long and Winding Road”; “Get Back (reprise)”
A cover photograph was taken of all four Beatles recreating the same pose they had used for their first album, Please Please Me. The album originally was scheduled to be released in July, but was postponed to September in order to coincide with the intended release of the film and book.
On September 26, 1969, The Beatles released Abbey Road instead. In order not to interfere with album sales, the group decided to push the Get Back project to December. In the end, the first version never was released at all.
The Second Version of Get Back
On December 15, The Beatles came back to Johns. Now that the film was almost complete, the group wanted an album that would serve as the film soundtrack. Thus, the song listings had to match. Johns went back and reedited the album. A second official version of Get Back, with 16 total songs, was completed on January 8, 1970.
Side One is identical to the first version, but with “Let It Be” positioned as the final song on the first side. On Side Two, “Teddy Boy” was deleted because it was not in the film. Johns then added “Across the Universe” and a second song by George Harrison, “I Me Mine.”
This version also was rejected. In 1999, Vigotone released a copy of the final mix as VT 182.
Let It Be
In the end, none of the three Glyn Johns' versions were used. Beatles' manager Allen Klein wanted to release a more commercial album, so he gave the Apple Studio tapes to producer Phil Spector. Spector added strings and voices to the tracks, and his version was released as Let It Be on May 8, 1970 — pleasing almost no one.
McCartney was so irritated with the Spector version that he supervised yet a fifth version of the tapes.. In November 2003, the McCartney version was released as Let It Be . . . Naked, which was meant to match the original Get Back concept.
References
Lewisohn M. 1988. The Beatles Recording Sessions. London: EMI Records, Ltd.
Sulpy D. 1990. A Beginner's Guide to Beatle Bootlegs. Published by The 910.
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