(Continued from Part Eleven)
Engineer Glyn Johns was asked to put the album Let It Be together from what were essentially rehearsal tapes. Though recording had taken place well before Abbey Road, that album was the group's final one, even though Let It Be was released the following year.
After Johns assembled the album, it sat around while the Let It Be documentary was edited from the film footage of the Beatles rehearsing in the studio and playing their famous rooftop concert. During this period, the group recorded Abbey Road, released it, and broke up.
Meanwhile, the album still lacked one song to complete it, so the group recorded "I Me Mine" on January 3, 1970 without Lennon. Klein, not happy with the work Johns had done on the album, now to be titled Let It Be, gave it to producer Phil Spector.
Spector edited, spliced and overdubbed several of the songs intended to sound "live". This infuriated McCartney, who was especially unhappy about the heavy orchestration on "The Long And Winding Road", which included a 36-piece ensemble and 14-voice choir.
The group released the compilation Hey Jude, a Top 5 album around the world which rose to #1 in Australia and #2 in the U.S. and Canada and has sold over three million copies.
The title song from the album is a grand masterpiece, inspired by a dream Paul had, as he told The Salt Lake Tribune:
I think I was getting like, a little bit over the
top with [the party fashion] - getting pretty
tired and pretty wasted. And I went to bed
one night and had a kind of restless night.
But I had a dream where my mother, who
had been dead at that point for about 10
years, came to me in the dream and it
was as if she could see that I was
troubled.
And she sort of said to me, she said,
"Let it be," and, "It's going to be OK.
Don't worry." I woke up and I
remembered the dream, and I thought,
"Well, that's a great idea." And I then
sat down and wrote the song using the
feeling from that dream and of my mum
coming to me in the dream.
The group released the single "Let It Be" on March 6, #1 in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and Austria and #2 in the U.K. and West Germany. The Quadruple Platinum-selling song is The #18 Song of the Rock Era*.
After Paul's demands that the changes to "The Long And Winding Road" be deleted were ignored, he publicly announced that he was leaving the Beatles on April 10, one week before the release of his self-titled solo project. By the time the public heard the song, the Beatles were finished.
This final single of the Beatles era evokes a sadness, looking back while also looking forward, and is a fitting finale for this most amazing of groups.
McCartney wrote the song in 1968 while at his farm in Scotland. The beautiful view of rolling hills contrasted to everything the Beatles were experiencing at the time while they were recording the White Album. At that farm, Paul was able to find peace while he wistfully looked back at the group's past decade.
"The Long And Winding Road" was the 20th and final #1 song for the legendary Beatles.
Finally able to crack through the Lennon/McCartney monopoly, Harrison placed one of his career best on Let It Be. Written for George's wife, the Beatles first worked on the song while filming the Let It Be documentary. Lennon played a lap steel guitar on the track.
The flip side of "The Long And Winding Road", here is "For You Blue".
Here is another of Lennon's best songs in the later Beatles years. John talked about the writing process as he experienced it in the 1980 book All We Are Saying by David Sheff:
I was lying next to my first wife in bed,
you know, and I was irritated. She
must have been going on and on
about something and she'd gone to
sleep and I'd kept hearing these
words over and over, flowing like an
endless stream. I went downstairs
and it turned into sort of a cosmic
song; rather than a "Why are you
always mouthing off at me? or
whatever, right?...
But the words stand, luckily, by
themselves. They were purely
inspirational and were given to me
as boom! I don't own it, you know,
it came through like that. I don't
know where it came from, what
meter it's in, and I've sat down and
looked at it and said, "Can I write
another one with this meter?" It's
so interesting. "Words are flying
[sic] out like [sings] endless rain
into a paper cup, they slither
while they pass, they slip away
across the universe." Such an
extraordinary meter and I can
never repeat it! It's not a matter
of craftsmanship; it wrote itself.
It drove me out of bed. I didn't
want to write it, I was just
slightly irritable and I went
downstairs and I couldn't get to
sleep until I put it on paper, and
then I went to sleep.
Part of the song's chorus, "Jai guru deva, om", is a Sanskrit phrase which translates loosely as "Victory to God divine". The Beatles brought in 18 violins, four violas, four cells, a harp, three trumpets, three trombones, two guitarists and 14 vocalists to accompany the band on this great song--"Across The Universe".
John was famous for disliking several of his songs, among the best ever written. "Across The Universe" was one such example which he gave away on a whim to the World Wildlife Fund when he wasn't satisfied with the recording of the song.Lennon often wrote nonsensical lyrics that nonetheless were painstakingly researched and analyzed by people hoping they could figure out "the code". This amused John, and "Dig A Pony" is in much the same light.
The group recorded the song on the rooftop of Apple Records on January 30, 1969 for the Let It Be film.
This is the last song recorded by the group before the broke up in April of 1970. It is Harrison's view of the group's situation at the time--"I Me Mine".
The Let It Be documentary debuted later in the month and the Beatles won an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score.
The influence of drugs undoubtedly sped up this process, but ultimately, it was the ego and overriding feelings of self-importance that spelled the group's demise, the existence in each Beatle that their individual needs superseded those of the group.
McCartney filed a lawsuit for the official dissolution of the Beatles' contractual agreements on December 31 but disputes continued long after and the dissolution wasn't final until December 29, 1974.
All four Beatles went on to enjoy success after the breakup, and all were ranked in The Top 100 Artists* in 1976 (McCartney & Wings and Lennon are both still ranked.) McCartney enjoyed both solo success as well as with his band Wings, Lennon too continued to record outstanding solo music and gave the world "Imagine" in 1971.
Harrison, who struggled to place his songs on Beatles albums, showed what he could do with great songs like the classic "My Sweet Lord", "What Is Life", and "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)", to name a few. Starr also went on to enjoy several hits, including "It Don't Come Easy" and "You're Sixteen", and still performs to this day.
The 1973 album Ringo is the only one to contain compositions and performances by all four ex-Beatles, although they were on separate songs.
Despite rumors, longings of their millions of fans, and offers from promoters to reunite, the Beatles never did. Promoter Bill Sargent offered the Beatles $10 million for a reunion concert in 1974. Sargent raised his offer to $30 million in January of 1976 and then to $50 million the following month.
On April 24, 1976, during Saturday Night Live, producer Lorne Michaels jokingly offered the Beatles $3,000 to reunite on the show. Coincidentally, Lennon and McCartney were watching the live broadcast at Lennon's apartment at the Dakota in New York City, within driving distance of the NBC studio. John and Paul briefly talked about going to the studio and surprising Michaels by accepting his offer, but decided not to.
Compilations that have been released in the years since abound, but we will highlight the best ones. Two essentials to listeners are what have come to be known as The Red Album and The Blue Album, both double albums and both released on April 2, 1973.
Rock 'n' Roll Music, released in 1976, has gone Platinum, and contained a new single, "Got To Get You Into My Life", that became a big hit, reaching #7 in the United States. The song was first released on the Revolver album.
Love Songs (released the following year) has sold over three million copies, and Rarities (Gold) and Rock 'n' Roll Music, Volume One and Volume Two (both Platinum) were all released in 1980.
Harrison wrote the song "All Those Years Ago" in honor of his fallen bandmate. Paul and his wife Linda sang backing vocals and Ringo played drums on the track.
At a time when medleys were all the rage, Capitol released a medley of Beatles' songs from their films, A Hard Day's Night, Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine and Let It Be. "The Beatles' Movie Medley" reached #12 in 1982.
In 1982, Reel Music went Gold and 20 Greatest Hits has been certified Double Platinum, although neither hardly does justice to the group.
We want to highlight three superb live collections: Live at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962 and The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl were both released in 1977. Live at the BBC, which reached #1 in the U.K., #2 in Australia and Canada and #3 in the U.S., was released in 1994 and has gone Quadruple Platinum.
In 1988, the Beatles were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That same year, the wonderful Past Masters volumes were released, which included all Beatles tracks not available on CD releases of their original albums. Volume One includes 18 tracks from 1962-65 while Volume Two includes 15 from subsequent years.
McCartney, Harrison and Starr collaborated on the Anthology project, which included a television miniseries, an eight-volume video set and three box sets. Two songs based on Lennon demos, with instrumentation and vocals added by the three surviving Beatles, were released as singles. An estimated 400 million people viewed the television series.
Anthology, released in 1995, features 52 previously unreleased out-takes and demos from 1958-1964. In confirmation of the lasting effect of the group, it was the first of three such releases over the next two years, each of which were universal Top 5 albums over 25 years since the Beatles broke up.
Anthology I reached #1 in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and France and #2 in the U.K. and Sweden and has sold eight million copies in the United States alone.
Anthology 2 hit #1 in the U.S. and U.K. and #2 in Sweden and has sold four million, while
"Free As A Bird" represents the first song recorded by the Beatles since their breakup. A 1977 track sung by Lennon into a tape recorder is backed by vocals and instrumentation from the three surviving Beatles recorded in 1996 and produced by Jeff Lynne.
One of Lennon's early takes of this song was on the soundtrack of the Imagine: John Lennon documentary. The surviving members of the Beatles built their version from a different Lennon recording captured at his piano with a small cassette recorder. As you can imagine, creating a professional quality sound from a cheap cassette recorder is no small task, as producer Jeff Lynne explained to Sound on Sound:
The problem I had with "Real Love" was
that not only was there a 60-cycles
mains hum going on, there was also a
terrible amount of hiss, because it had
been recorded at a low level. I don't
know how many generations down this
copy was, but it sounded like at least a
couple.
So, I had to get rid of the hiss and the
mains hum, and then there were clicks
all the way through it. We'd spend a
day on it, then listen back and still find
loads more things wrong. But we
would magnify them, grab them and
wipe them out. It didn't have any
effect on John's voice, because we
were just dealing with the air
surrounding him, in between
phrases. That took about a week
to clean up before it was even
usable.
McCartney, Harrison and Starr overdubbed their parts onto the resulting tape in February, 1995 at McCartney's studio in Sussex, England. Lynne gave his impression of what he heard that day:
Paul and George would strike up the
backing vocals, and all of a sudden it's the
Beatles again. To be there in the middle
of all this, and have a degree of
responsibility over the result, was
astonishing. It wasn't some kind of fake
version; it really was the real thing.
They were having fun with each other,
and reminding each other of the old
times. I'd be waiting to record and
normally I'd say, "Okay, let's do a
take," but I was too busy laughing and
smiling at everything they were
talking about.
The Beatles released the single "Real Love" (from Anthology 2) on March 4, 1996. It reached #4 in the U.K. and #11 in the United States.
In 1999, it was confirmed that the Beatles were the most successful recording act of the 20th century (as if anyone doubted that) with album sales of over 106 million in the United States alone.
The surviving Beatles joined Yoko Ono to release the Anthology book.
The compilation 1 collected all of the group's #1 songs and was a #1 album across the globe. Though it too leaves off so many of the Beatles' greatest songs by limiting it to only #1 songs, the collection has sold 15 million.
Harrison succumbed to lung cancer at age 58 in November of 2001 and the world mourned. McCartney and Starr were among the musicians who performed at the Concert for George at the Royal Albert Hall in London on the one-year anniversary of George's death.
In 2005, George and Giles Martin collaborated with the Cirque du Soleil to produce the show Love, featuring Beatles songs. The show was wildly successful.
In 2009, the box set The Beatles (The Original Recordings) was released and has gone Triple Platinum. It is one of the most complete and best compilations of this iconic group. In 2014, the group received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 2016, the documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week, directed by Ron Howard, was released. It showed the group during their touring years from 1962 to 1966, from their performances at the Cavern Club in Liverpool to their final show in San Francisco. This is essential viewing for not only fans but for anyone doubting the Beatles' immense following.
In November of 2021, a new documentary directed by Peter Jackson using footage of what became the Let It Be film will be released. Titled The Beatles: Get Back, the film has been delayed several times due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before the Beatles, the Rock Era, and indeed all of popular music, was all about the single, the 45 (or the 78). This band, especially after their Rubber Soul album, shook the industry upside down and showed everyone that the album could be, if expertly crafted, a work of art far superior to the single.
When they began their career, they were solid musicians, but the Beatles in 1970 were far more advanced musically than when they began. By that time, also, each had learned to play more and more instruments, adding to not only the complexity of their recordings but enabling their music to be largely self-contained for most of their career.
Five asteroids: 4147 Lennon, 4148 McCartney, 4149 Harrison, 4150 Starr and 8749 Beatles are named after the group. In 2007, they became the first group to be featured on a series of postage stamps in the U.K. issued by the Royal Mail.
Although they broke up before most of the awards shows began, the group collected seven Grammy Awards and an Academy Award. They have achieved six Diamond albums (over 10 million in sales), 20 Multi-Platinum albums, 16 Platinum albums and six Gold albums in the United States alone.
The Beatles are (by far) the best-selling band in history, with over 600 million units sold, and and they also have sold the most albums of all-time (183 in the U.S.). They have scored more #1 albums on the U.K. charts (15), and sold more singles in the U.K. (22 million) than any other act. They hold the all-time record for #1 hits with 20.
The Beatles charted 72 career hits, with an astonishing 34 of those (47%) reaching the Top 10 and 20 #1 songs. 29 of those 72 are in The Top 500 Songs of the Rock Era*, far more than any other artist, and 15 Beatles songs are ranked in The Top 100*, again far more than any other artist of the Rock Era!.
Those statistics should easily show you why this group is The #1 Artist of the Rock Era*. We mentioned that it isn't even close between #1 and #2, between 2 and 3, between 3 & 4, and between 4 & 5. The difference, then, between #1 and #3 is huge, between #1 and #4 monumental, and between #1 and #5 astronomical.
I hear the question, "How can someone whose recording success took up essentially seven years be ahead of an artist who has put out music for 50 years?
Exactly. The answer is in the question. When some act is so great and so successful that their seven-year output is light years ahead of any artist who has been recording for 50 years, that gives a glimpse of how groundbreaking they were, how innovative they were, and how talented they were. Records are made to be broken, but in this case, it is very difficult indeed to see anyone ever topping them, or for that matter, anyone ever topping #2 Elvis Presley.
We hope you have enjoyed this special as much as we have enjoyed working on it--good day to you!
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