If there's one phrase that best sums up the Beatles' final album, Let It Be, it is this: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".
No album made by the Fab Four began with such high hopes and no album ended with so much recrimination and inter-band hostility. Some have even suggested it was the record that broke up the Beatles.
Looking around there's more than a little evidence to support that view. John Lennon described the music as "the shittiest load of badly recorded shit".
George Harrison recalled the album's creation this way: "For me to come back into the winter of discontent with the Beatles ... was very unhealthy and unhappy."
Asked about the feeling in the studio, Lennon was even more scathing: "It was just a dreadful, dreadful feeling ... by the time we got to Let It Be we couldn't play the game anymore."
Released 50 years ago this week, the album was accompanied by a documentary of the same title that only emphasised the dark mood inside the group.
So was it really that bad? For much of the past two years film director Peter Jackson has been tasked with sifting through the 50-plus hours of film and 140 hours of audio recorded during January 1969 in an attempt to remake the documentary.
Simply called Get Back, the project is set to be released later this year and, surprise, surprise, there's already a major attempt to recast Let It Be focusing on the positive.
Paul McCartney said that when he saw the unreleased footage, his feeling was, "It's great. I'm not bullshitting! You see this kind of thing, this relationship between me and John, and me and George. You'll get it."
Peter Jackson was even more effusive: "You look like friends and you look like you're having a ball".
Really? If they were all having such a ball back in 1969, why were the album and film shelved, and why did the band effectively split nine months later? And why are we now suddenly being prepared for a very different take on it all?
The answer is simple enough. It's in everyone's interest to recast Let It Be. After all, we love a happy ending. And it will sell.
Deep divisions on the 'road to hell'
Which brings us back to the "road to hell" and for that we need some background.
In late 1968 the Beatles were a group in name only. The White album may have sold millions of copies but it was a record made by four individuals rather than a band.
So, ever the ideas man, Paul suggested they needed to become a real group again.
His plan was to create songs they could sing on stage without overdubs or studio trickery. Fully rehearsed, they'd play a live concert. The whole process would be filmed and become a television special.
In theory it was a great idea, inspired in part by the excitement they'd felt doing a mini concert in 1968, playing the song Hey Jude on the David Frost Show.
The idea of going back to their roots was a good one. However, at this point, the group made what may now be seen as a fatal error.
They were persuaded to film the rehearsals for the album at the Twickenham Film Studios, where they'd shot Hey Jude.
The film stage was cold and uninviting in a London winter and, to make matters worse, the shoot was scheduled to take place between 9:00 and 5:00 each day — hardly rock and roll hours.
But the location and hours were just part of the problem. As 1969 dawned, the band was deeply divided over the management of its financial affairs.
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To make matters worse, John, already battling heroin addiction, arrived for the project armed with partner Yoko Ono, whose mere presence was a source of conflict.
Paul, who quite rightly felt he'd been carrying the band for some time was, depending how you look at it, either overly enthusiastic or overbearing.
George, who had already decided he wasn't being appreciated, began the process on guard. He had reason to be worried.
If you can snag a copy of the original film, Let It Be, you'll notice the group is already trying out a batch of songs that will form part of Abbey Road. Included are a number of songs written by George.
Given they included Something and All Things Must Pass, they weren't duds — but they didn't get the attention of John or Paul.
Reliving the good times — and the rivalries
There comes a moment in the film where, having been told by Paul how he wants a song to sound, George says: "I'll play whatever you want me to play. Or I won't play at all if you don't want me to play. Whatever it is that will please you. I'll do it."
Finally, something had to give and, after a blazing row with John, George told his bandmates he was off: "See you 'round the clubs" was his goodbye.
The way out of this mess — and it was a mess — was to coax George back.
The next move was to abandon a full live concert, to shift the rehearsals to the Beatles' Apple recording studio and invite keyboard master Billy Preston to play with them. Preston's presence, it seems, made everyone behave and allowed the band to make some great music.
Still lacking a finale to the film and in better spirits, they decided to play a rooftop concert at their Saville Row offices.
You can bet your life when Peter Jackson finishes his new movie, now called Get Back, it will focus on the Apple footage and the rooftop concert and will allow McCartney and fans everywhere to relive the good times.
"I bought this idea that me and John were rivals, and we didn't like each other and stuff," he said in a recent radio interview. "But you see the film and it's like, thank God it's not true ... we're having fun together ... and it's a joy to see it unfold."
It does seem bizarre that Paul needs to see the footage to clarify his relationship with John but inevitably all this will lead to further re-assessments of Let It Be and the forces that led to the Beatles' break-up.
Unfortunately, like the arguments about who was the greatest Beatle, it misses the point.
Yes, they did like playing together. Yes, there was, as George Martin explained, a magic when the four were in the same room. But were they really enjoying each other's company anymore?
Based on the testimony from people at the centre of events the answer is a definitive 'no'.
Left to the band, Let It Be would've stayed on the shelf
It's also true the four kept it together long enough to make Abbey Road.
But remember this: just weeks before the album's release, John met with his bandmates and discussed making another LP, and strategies to iron out their differences.
He even suggested a Christmas record and a little later asked them to play on his new song, Cold Turkey. They declined.
At that point John said the Beatles were over. He never played music in any meaningful forum with Paul again.
Left to the Beatles, Let It Be would have stayed on the shelf.
But their money-hungry manager Allen Klein wouldn't hear of it and set to work whipping into shape both the album and film, knowing he was on a commercial winner. To top it off they even had a major argument about the release date.
Dressed up in a box set it sold like hotcakes; the Beatles, though, were conspicuously absent at the launch of the LP and the film and that was that.
Come September we'll probably get a chance to see the new film Get Back and be granted what may appear to be a fly-on-the-wall look at the Beatles' magic.
Enjoy it, relish it, but keep it in perspective. In 1969 the Beatles was a marriage on the rocks — they were growing up and they were growing apart and it wasn't always pretty.
The problem then and now is we don't really want to acknowledge the facts. As John announced in 1970, "The dream is over".
What George Harrison would think of all this is anyone's guess, but he gave more than a hint in 1995 when asked about his old band's legacy.
"The Beatles meant something to the people who grew up with us. But apparently, a lot of them became too attached to us, and it's a real problem when they want to live in the past," he said.
"Some people are afraid to change, and that's bad."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiUWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTA1LTA3L3RoZS1iZWF0bGVzLWxldC1pdC1iZS01MC15ZWFycy1vbi8xMjIwMTE2MNIBJ2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvYXJ0aWNsZS8xMjIwMTE2MA?oc=5
2020-05-07 03:32:02Z
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