Beatles' Let It Be (33 1/3) by Steve Matteo Read Free Book Online Page B

Been On My Mind,” and Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be The Day” was the other song fans of unreleased Beatles recordings have talked about a great deal over the years—actually two songs, which were preceded by a “Get Back” reference to the subject matter. The two songs in question were “Commonwealth” and a short snippet of only 20 seconds or so called “Enoch Powell.” Both dealt with Conservative Parliament member Enoch Powell’s claim that continuing immigration into the U.K. would cause a race war. The issue was a contentiousone at that time in England, and McCartney was addressing it by parodying Powell.
    The proposed live concert, a continual topic of discussion at the rehearsals, hung over proceedings as an unresolved issue and a source of disagreement among the four. “It was around the second week when the notion [came up] of what and where the public performance was going to be,” says Les Parrott, in regard to the ongoing discussion of the logistics of the live concert. He continues:
    Slowly the notion—driven hard by Lindsay-Hogg, I think—of staging a concert in a ruined Roman amphitheater in North Africa, with a crowd of 1000 saffronrobed locals, grew. The means and cost of shipping the equipment were a major debating point. Huge mobile generators would be needed for the lighting and sound requirements. However, this was all solved by a suggestion from George. He said the production should ring up a U.S. Air Force general who ran a large part of the USAF in Britain, as they had once done a charity concert for him, and he had said anytime they needed help, he would help them. Well, the producer did call and an immediate offer was made to fly all and everything we would need in a massive Galaxy aircraft down to a another USAF base a few hours drive from the proposed location, from where USAF trucks would haul it to the Roman ruins. I think the answer ended with a salutation of, “Hell, we’ll just turn this into one big exercise; we just love those guys.”
    However, one lunch time this all ended. We had all moved into the dubbing suite at Twickenham. I think we were looking at some sound/film rushes and a somewhat
ad hoc
meeting developed to discuss the pros and cons of the North African location shoot. It was certainly at one point well over the proverbial fifty percent approval mark, with the visual notion of one or more thousand saffron-robed Arabs being a major selling point. Then Yoko spoke up, “After 100,000 people in Shea Stadium, everything else sucks.” That was it in that short sentence; the idea evaporated. “Yeah, right; good point, of course,” chorused the other Beatles, and that was it.
    While the January 30 Apple rooftop concert was probably the most famous date of the “Get Back”/“Let It Be” project, January 10 was probably the most infamous. After running through “Two of Us” and “Get Back,” the group performed “Hi-Heeled Sneakers” before lunch. It appears that by that morning, Paul was fairly happy with the progress he had made on the song “Let It Be” and played it for the group’s music publisher, Dick James. It was during lunch, just after a heated exchange between Paul and George and following the intro of Chuck Berry’s 1961 song, “I’m Talking About You,” that George walked out of the session and quit, saying, “See you ’round the clubs.” Dave Harries, one of two technical advisors from Abbey Road present atTwickenham, recalled the haste with which Harrison left the film studio. George Martin had arrived just before Harrison left. Martin was driving his Triumph Herald and accidentally hit Harrison’s Mercedes. It must have happened just minutes before Harrison left, because when George Martin walked onto the soundstage, Harries said, “George didn’t have time to tell him ‘I dinged your car.’”
    In order to keep the filming moving along, Denis O’Dell instructed Michael Lindsay-Hogg to shoot close-ups of John, Paul, and