#steve matteo

[tavolgisvist]

The Beatle way of life was like a young kid entering the big world, entering it with friends and conquering it totally. And that was fantastic. An incredible experience. So when that idea really came that we should break up, I don't think any of us wanted to accept it. It was the end of the legend, even in our own minds. Marilyn Monroe gets to believe eventually that she's Marilyn Monroe. Now I feel that's how the Beatles got to be -- I'm just speaking for me. You were very much a Beatle in your own eyes, and to an extent we all still are. Thinking back, I think it was great what John said. And he told us, 'Look everything sort of comes together right.' And now I agree. We'd just made this album and it was to be called 'Get Back' and on the cover was a photograph showing us in exactly the same position as in the first album we'd made -- the whole lettering and the background was exactly reproduced. So John said, 'It's a perfect circle, you know.' I think what John did was tremendous from the point of view of 'Okay, so we are actually going to go our own ways.' You just can't be as tied together as we were for so long a period of time, unless you all live in the same house. From then onward it was to be a question of living your own life, which was the first real turn-on for me in a long time -- and this coincided with my meeting Linda. So early in 1970 I phoned John and told him I was leaving the Beatles too. He said, 'Good! That makes two of us who have accepted it mentally.'

(Paul McCartney, April 16th 1971, interview with Richard Merryman for Life Magazine)

By the way, what happened to my idea of putting the parody of our first album cover on the Let It Be cover?

(John Lennon's letter, published in Melody Maker in the December 4th 1971)

While the Beatles were working on Abbey Road, Glyn Johns was attempting to prepare Get Back for release. The album he assembled included “Get Back,” “Dig a Pony,” “The One after 909,” “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “For You Blue,” “Let It Be,” “Two of Us,” “Dig It,” and “Maggie Mae,” which would all appear in some form on the official Let It Be album when released in May 1970. The songs on Johns’s version that would not be found on Let It Be were “Don’t Let Me Down,” “Teddy Boy,” and the oldies medley “Rocker” (which is a snippet of “I’m Ready” from Fats Domino) and “Save the Last Dance For Me.” He also did not include “Across the Universe” and “I Me Mine” on the first version of the Get Back album that he prepared. He did include studio chatter. A cover shot was prepared for the album, featuring the Beatles, with long hair and dressed in their hippie finery, in the same pose and location where the cover shot of Please Please Me had been taken—an outdoor balcony at EMI’s Manchester Square headquarters in London. The group even used the same photographer who had taken the previous shot, Angus McBean, though the new photo was slightly altered because the exact construction of the balcony had been changed since 1963. The proposed back cover art also replicated the look of the original album, with liner notes by Tony Barrow, who’d written the original back cover copy for Please Please Me. The new album title mirrored the full title of their debut album; Please Please Me with Love Me Do and 12 Other Songs replaced by Get Back with Don’t Let Me Down and 9 Other Songs (subsequently and then being replaced with Get Back with Don’t Let Me Down and 12 Other Songs). The new McBean photo that would not be used would eventually be used for the 1973 double album compilation 1967–1970, referred to as the Blue Album, and the original McBean photo would adorn the double album compilation 1962–1966, referred to as the Red Album. <...>

The Let It Be (Get Back) cover was my [John Kosh] answer to the White Album—a funereal package as a tribute to the Fab’s swan song. But Abbey Road interceded so the transition is no longer apparent.” The decision over which cover idea to use—the one that aped Please Please Me or Kosh’s “funereal” design—was finally made by Paul. (sorry? when and how he did it?) “I mocked up both the Let It Be and Get Back covers with Jack Oliver for Paul while he wavered on the title,” says Kosh. “John wanted to Get Back to their roots whereas Paul wanted to Let It Be. I had prepared final art for both as the deadline was looming.”

(Act Naturally The Beatles on Film by Steve Matteo, 2023)

(Part I, II, III, IV)

[tavolgisvist]

At Abbey Road Studios on August 11 [1969], John Lennon would add backing vocals to “Oh Darling,” marking his last musical contribution to music of the Beatles before they broke up.

(Act Naturally The Beatles on Film by Steve Matteo, 2023)

[tavolgisvist]

The songs on Johns’s version [Glyn Johns' version of Get Back album] that would not be found on Let It Be were “Don’t Let Me Down,” “Teddy Boy,” and the oldies medley “Rocker” (which is a snippet of “I’m Ready” from Fats Domino) and “Save the Last Dance For Me.”

(Act Naturally The Beatles on Film by Steve Matteo, 2023)

On January 21, 1969 Paul sings a single line - I'm able to rock and roll all night (Fats Domino' I’m Ready), pretends drunk and says 'Just a minute, boys… Would (?) boozed 'cause I'm in love…' they start Save The Last Dance For Me and after 'Oh darling, save the last dance for me' it turns to Don't Let Me Down

+ dance

[tavolgisvist]

The week ended on January 10 with what seemed to be the completion of a makeshift control room by Glyn Johns. Given that the tape recorder is Harrison’s, it’s odd that on a day where good progress seems to be made, George casually announces he’s leaving the group, suggesting the group put an ad in the NME for a replacement in a discussion with John and Mal. The filming is stopped, and although it wasn’t captured by the cameras, Harrison apparently then says: “See you round the clubs.” One wonders if Harrison’s seemingly abrupt departure was premeditated because he was scheduled to attend a recording session for the Apple group Trash that evening at Trident Studios. The group was working on a song called “King of Fuh,” and John Barham’s string parts were being recorded at this session. Barham recalled the session as being lighthearted; “There was a lot of laughs when they played the tape in the studio,” he told author Stefan Granados in Those Were the Days: The Beatles and Apple. The day’s events also inspired Harrison to write the song “Wah Wah” when he returned home; it later appeared on All Things Must Pass. Much else happened at Esher that was part of a personal drama playing out for George. A French model named Charlotte Martin had broken up with Eric Clapton. Pattie was friends with the girl, and Pattie said she could come and live with her and George after Clapton broke up with her. While Martin was living with the Harrisons, she and George began having an affair. The affair prompted Pattie to go and live with Belinda (née Watson) and Jean-Claude Volpeliere-Pierrot, a fashion photographer, whose sister was the model Marie-Lise Volpeliere-Pierrot, one of Pattie’s closest friends during her modeling years. Jean-Claude’s wife Belinda was a model and fashion stylist. They had two sons (one of whom Ben, became lead singer of the 1980s British pop band Curiosity Killed the Cat). That night when George came home and Pattie wasn’t there, he supposedly asked Martin to leave and then rang Pattie at Jean-Claude and Belinda’s wanting to get back together. Harrison also had dinner at some point in the evening with Klaus Voormann and his wife Christine, most likely after leaving Esher and before he worked in the studio with the group Trash. Harrison was clearly at wit’s end, not only with the Beatles but also with his personal love life. He was obviously seeking some kind of comfort and solace and also went and visited his parents at their home in the country and went to Liverpool.

(Act Naturally The Beatles on Film by Steve Matteo, 2023)

(Part I, II, III)

[tavolgisvist]

John received a fan letter on audiotape recorded on New Year’s Eve 1963 by a fan who had seen the Beatles perform in Coventry on November 17. Sometime in the first two weeks of January, Lennon used the tape to demo the song “If I Fell.” The tape contains five takes, only one being an almost full take. Part of the song required a high, nearly falsetto vocal that John couldn’t quite reach, which eventually Paul would take on for the final recording. It’s also a unique demo in that within the song is a guitar riff that would eventually be the basis for “I Should Have Known Better.”

(Act Naturally The Beatles on Film by Steve Matteo, 2023)

(Part I, II, III, IV))

[tavolgisvist]

In November 1963, Owen joined the Beatles on tour as part of his research for writing the script. In the 2014 documentary, You Can’t Do That, Owen recalled his time in Dublin going from their hotel room to a press reception and to the theater where they would perform, noting, “At no time were they allowed to enjoy what was supposed to be success … the only freedom they ever actually get, is when they start to play the music and then their faces light up and they’re happy.”

<...>

Owen joined Shenson and Lester in Paris in January 1964 to further get to know them, spending a weekend with the foursome at the George V hotel. Shenson and Lester had also observed the four over the Christmas/New Year holiday while they were performing The Beatles Christmas Show at the Astoria Theatre in Finsbury Park, London.

(Act Naturally The Beatles on Film by Steve Matteo, 2023)

(Part I, II, III, IV)

[tavolgisvist]

After Iain MacMillan shot Abbey Road, the chromes arrived by courier from the lab and were laid out on my light box. Iain and I [John Kosh] poured over the film strip and marked the frames. One stood out, even though Paul was out of step. Of course, that along with other clues led to the rumors of Paul’s demise. These rumors were flouted. Derek Taylor issued an edict that, if challenged, we should mumble that, “well it looks like him.” The cover was hastily produced to fit the schedule of the postponed Let It Be release—at that point still titled Get Back. I was paid £750 for my part in Abbey Road—happily the most parodied cover ever. To pay my rent, I had to cash the Beatles& Co cheque. It was signed by John and Paul. What an idiot.

(Act Naturally The Beatles on Film by Steve Matteo, 2023)

[tavolgisvist]

Petulia (1968) was in many ways the perfect extension and counterpoint to his [Dick Lester'] other London films (A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, and The Knack) because it was shot in San Francisco, which was, at that time, the new hip international world mecca. The film featured a score by John Barry, but it also featured performances by Big Brother and the Holding Company (featuring Janis Joplin) and the Grateful Dead, groups central to the San Francisco scene of the time. The film also featured a scene at an aquarium with performing penguins—one of the penguin’s names was George, and the other’s was Ringo.

(Act Naturally The Beatles on Film by Steve Matteo, 2023)

(Part I, II, III, IV)