Beatles' Let It Be (33 1/3) (7 page)

As for George, he didn’t simply go off to his mum’s house in Liverpool and await the premiere of
Wonderwall.
That weekend he wrote a song that later
debuted on
All Things Must Pass.
The song, “Wah Wah,” effectively stated his complete disillusionment with the Beatles and allowed him musically to vent his anger over the months of turmoil that included the laborious
White Album
sessions, various Apple business dealings and the Twickenham filming.

On January 13, Paul and Ringo returned to Twickenham and, in the absence of both George and John, did no more than sit around and chat. George’s absence was paid little notice, but there was much animosity directed at Yoko’s presence. John finally showed up around mid-afternoon and attempts were made to work on “Get Back.” By then, the lyrics closely approximated those of the final version of the song.

The next day was pretty much a repeat of the previous one. Paul and Ringo showed up, and John arrived quite late again. He appeared ill, a result of his by then obvious drug intake. Yet, even with John initially being out of sorts and George gone from the group, the three seemingly had a grand old time making up fake movie scenarios and joking around. The conversations, which also included Denis O’Dell, George Martin, and, it would appear, Glyn Johns and Michael Lindsay-Hogg, all sounded very relaxed and collegial. John was on a non-stop rap that mixed lots of off-color humor, drug references (aided by Paul), word-play, sending up of the music and film biz, and tangential satire, all seemingly
thoroughly enjoyed by Paul. Paul even baited John and Yoko into discussing what
Two Virgins
was all about. Adding to the joy, though tinged with sarcasm and some discomfort, was the arrival on the set of Peter Sellers. Once again, very little music was rehearsed.

Wednesday, January 15, would prove to be the last day of filming at Twickenham and nothing of any note was done on that day. It is not clear whether anyone other than Paul actually showed up.

While it has been chronicled that there was a meeting held the previous Sunday, January 12, at Ringo’s house in Elstead, it was apparently not very productive. Reportedly, George, incensed at John’s obstinate behavior, walked out. On the evening of the 15th, another meeting, which reportedly lasted nearly five hours, took place at Ringo’s house. All four Beatles attended.

George had returned from Liverpool and told the others he was prepared to leave the group unless some conditions were met. Filming at Twickenham was to end and talk of a live concert was also to be abandoned. By “live concert,” George meant playing at a London venue, on a boat, or in some far-off place like Tripoli. There was still the possibility of the group’s being filmed performing live, but instead they would do something in a controlled environment, secretly, with no audience. George suggested that they should take some of the new songs they had begun, add more if necessary, and
record a new album at their new studio in the basement of Apple’s headquarters. All agreed to George’s conditions and it was decided that the project would continue on January 20. In fact, it actually began on January 22. We shall soon see why this delay took place.

For the time being and through the release of the final
Let It Be
album, 223 rolls of corresponding film and audio recorded over 10 days and amounting to nearly 60 hours of film and synched sound would be left almost completely unused. The Beatles had played over 200 different songs and innumerable jams and improvisations during the Twickenham filming.

The Beatles would now move to their Apple headquarters to make a proper album. During the break between the rehearsals at Twickenham and the sessions at Apple, other Beatles business matters would continue.

January 17 saw the official release in the U.K. of the soundtrack of the film
Yellow Submarine.
The film had premiered on July 17, 1968, at the London Pavilion in Soho. The release of the soundtrack was held up to avoid any conflict with the release of
The White Album.
(As it turned out,
The White Album
was not actually released until November 22, 1968, in the U.K. and November 25 in the U.S.) On January 18, John Lennon gave an interview to Ray Coleman in the offices of Apple, during which he said, “Apple’s losing money every week … if it carries on like this, all of us will be
broke in the next six months.” The quote, which appeared in
Disc and Music Echo,
only further antagonized George Harrison.

Apple Studios was located in the basement of Apple’s headquarters. By January 1, 1969, all Apple business was primarily conducted out of that building, which was situated in a posh section of Mayfair, just off Regent Street, in a neighborhood filled with some of London’s finest tailors. Since 1956, the bandleader Jack Hylton had run his theatrical management firm from the Georgian building. The building came complete with a huge fireplace and oak beams. After Apple moved in, thick, apple-green carpet was installed throughout the building. While the fireplace remained, the oak beams were covered over with cheap, clinical-looking polystyrene. There was also a reversible wall in the studio, with carpet on one side and metal on the other.

One of the first releases from Apple was “Sour Milk Sea” by Jackie Lomax. The song was written and produced by George Harrison. Together with “Hey Jude,” “Those Were the Days” by Mary Hopkin, and the Black Dyke Mills Band’s “Thingumybob,” it constituted what was called
Our First Four,
a set of Apple’s first four singles, released on August 26, 1968.

Lomax later had two more singles released by Apple, and his full-length album,
Is This What You Want?,
was released by the label on May 19, 1969. He spoke about the early promise of Apple. “In the first year there was a tremendous atmosphere there—a creative, drivingforce atmosphere,” he stated. “Things could happen, dreams could be met; optimism.” For Lomax that early excitement didn’t last long. “Then, after the first year,” he recalled, “they (the Beatles) sort of figured out how much they spent—and it was a lot—on different projects. I think they just reversed momentum so much that they went the other way into ‘Let’s stop it all.’ That’s what happened when Allen Klein got there.” Lomax couldn’t help but come back wistfully to how it was at first. “It was nice. It was relaxed. It was easy,” he recalled.

Neil Aspinall was the managing director of Apple Corps. Aspinall began life with the Beatles back in their Liverpool days as a roadie and then as a driver. Apple consisted of many divisions. Among them were the studio, the record label (which was run by Ron Kass and employed Peter Asher as A&R Director), Apple Electronics (headed not so successfully by Alex Madras), and Apple Films (run by Denis O’Dell). There were many other divisions as well. They were individually responsible for retail, wholesale, television, and even tailoring. Other key people employed by Apple were press officer Derek Taylor and his assistant Richard DiLello (affectionately
called the “House Hippie”). Several others, such as Tony Bramwell, Brian Lewis, and Jeremy Banks, held various positions for differing lengths of time. Peter Brown, in his roles as the Beatles’ personal assistant and later general manager, was also a significant figure at Apple.

Gene Mahon designed the Apple logo, and Alan Aldridge came up with the lettering. Paul Castell took the various photos of the logo that were used for record album labels and singles.

Alistair Taylor weighed in on Apple:

Apple was chaotic. Times there were not pleasant. Everyone remembers the Savile Row building. It’s now the headquarters of the U.K. Building Societies Association. I wasn’t happy at Apple after the discipline of NEMS.

I remember Derek Taylor, in his huge peacock chair, and Richard (DiLello), his assistant, perching on the filing cabinet. Antiques and expensive office furniture abounded. Petty theft was rife. Expensive pieces of art were bought—and then stolen.

The air was filled day after day with the unmistakable aroma of cannabis. Alex (Madras) decided to turn the basement into a studio. The building almost collapsed when he began knocking down a supporting wall. Sheer and utter chaos!

The Beatles made some of their greatest music during the Apple years, but as a business it was a shambles. It was a massive, chaotic, drug-addled business
with no controls and no direction. Money was wasted every second of every day, and if I said anything I’d be told, “Don’t be a drag, Al.”

The building quickly drew the attention of Beatles fans, who would hang around outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of a Beatle. George Harrison affectionately immortalized the rag-tag throng in his song “Apple Scruffs,” which appeared on
All Things Must Pass.

The relationship between the Beatles and Abbey Road has been well documented and makes up a large part of the entire history and myth of the group. The fact is, though, that for some time the Beatles had been growing tired of Abbey Road. The opening of Apple Studios was partly the result of the Beatles’ festering unhappiness with Abbey Road.

Abbey Road was run very efficiently. Engineers who worked there were highly trained. They began their training by filing tapes for three months or so at the vast EMI tape library (located at Abbey Road), or by working at the company’s factory in Hayes. The record engineering development division was located at Hayes and was where much of the electronic equipment used at Abbey Road was designed, built, modified, and fully tested before being installed at Abbey Road. The fledgling engineers would then move on and shadow someone already installed as an assistant engineer at Abbey Road. At that point they would be known as second
engineer (or, alternately, as “tape-op”), and in many cases their job would involve nothing more than turning the tape machines on and off and keeping logs of the sessions. They would then graduate to the title of engineer or, as it was called, balance engineer. As such, they would assist the producer, who, in the case of the Beatles, was usually George Martin, and run the mixing board. The engineers would also be trained in very specific methods of sound recording. In keeping with the emphasis on efficiency and orderliness, the engineers and especially the technical staff were expected to wear white lab coats or at least a tie, a practice that went on into the early 70s.

Along with producers and engineers, there was also an extensive technical staff. It was primarily responsible for maintaining the equipment, but also became deeply involved in the many technical innovations that were born at Abbey Road, mostly during the Beatles sessions.

Jerry Boys was an engineer who worked at Abbey Road and Olympic Studios on such Beatles albums as
Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper,
and
Let It Be.
He has had a long, successful recording career working with a diverse range of musicians. He commented on the positive aspects of working at Abbey Road: “You were in a place where everything was done the best possible way. They had spares of everything. It was like training as
a doctor in the best hospital. You were exposed to every form of music you could possibly imagine.”

While the Beatles had recorded outside of Abbey Road, this would be the first complete album to be recorded elsewhere. Although the group had basically had the run of Abbey Road at the end of their time recording there, which included having a great production, technical, and engineering support team at its disposal, the idea of having their own studio, outfitted the way they liked and accessible around the clock, was appealing. The group had long abandoned recording in accordance with the rigid Abbey Road schedule. Aside from the rock musician’s penchant for late hours, the group embraced the idea to record at night because they had heard that Frank Sinatra did so. The simmering ill feelings of the group about working at Abbey Road boiled over during the
White Album
sessions. After a tape machine broke down, John Lennon said, “It won’t be the same when we get our own studio down at Apple.”

John Henry Smith, an engineer who worked at Abbey Road and at Apple, remembered that the Beatles were “frustrated and fed up with EMI (Abbey Road).” “EMI at that time,” he continued, “wasn’t terribly respectful of them. They were still treated as ‘the boys.”’

The process of the Beatles gaining more control over how their records sounded involved having George
Martin interpret their ideas, as well as convincing the engineers at Abbey Road to allow them to break the written and unwritten rules of recording that had long been adopted at the studio.

Peter Asher attested to the challenges the Beatles faced at Abbey Road Studios. Asher, who had brought James Taylor to Apple Records and went on to produce most of his recordings in the 70s, had also been half of the duo Peter and Gordon. He knew Paul not only from his days recording at Abbey Road, but also from his sister Jane’s long relationship with Paul, which lasted from 1963 through 1968. Paul spent a good deal of time with the Asher family at their home on Wimpole Street. In fact, it was Margaret Asher, Peter and Jane’s mother, who picked out Paul’s home in St. John’s Wood. Coincidentally, she had also been an oboe professor at the Royal Academy of Music and had even taught George Martin to play the instrument. Peter Asher recalled some of the constraints when recording at Abbey Road:

For a mix, they would come in and set the compressors in the mix position and that would be it, and no one was allowed to touch it. It wasn’t until the Beatles that you were allowed to go, “What happens if you turn the knob all the way like this?” We’d bring in records and say, “Look, we want more bass,” and they would say, “No, that’s all the bass you can have.” We’d play them a Motown track and say, “Listen to this bass,” and they’d go, “Well, that’s distorted, you can’t do that.” We would say, “If they can do it in America, why
can’t we do it?” They just said, “No.” It was like breaking the rules. You couldn’t have distorted sound on a record. They were purists and in some ways that was good. There was a very high attention to detail. They were judging it all by ultra hi-fi standards, which is not what rock ‘n’ roll records were all about. Bass was a big issue at EMI. We would listen to American records and the bass would sound so punchy, and we could never get that—and we tried!