The Beatles (149 page)

By the second week of rehearsals, tensions were at an all-time high. A “general disenchantment” had come to pass, no thanks to the circumstances and the two 16mm cameras buzzing like mosquitoes just near their heads. At the best of times, Ringo and George acted bored, but there were moments punctuated by outrage and contempt. Paul, despite considerable cajoling, could not get John to concentrate. Yoko was all over him, distracting him with kisses whenever possible or whispering in his ear. By John’s own admission, he was “
stoned all the time
… on H” and “just didn’t give a shit.” After all, how could he get behind something that seemed so patently insincere? The music sucked; having not jammed in such a long time, the Beatles were rusty and out of sync. Their conversation was stilted. It disturbed him that they were “
going to try and create
something phony.”

Once again, it was rapidly shaping up as a Paul McCartney project. He was directing the cameramen, choosing the songs, blocking the arrangements as if they were classical scores. He worked frantically trying to fire up enthusiasm. But the way he controlled every aspect didn’t allow anyone else to contribute. “
We put down a few tracks
, but nobody was in[to] it at all,” John said.

George, especially, found it “stifling
.” He had been growing frustrated and disillusioned with the interactions of the group for some time. As
usual, the songs he’d written were being ignored. But nothing galled him more than his loss of creativity as a musician. George felt he absorbed more than the others what an insufferable dictator Paul had become, instructing him exactly what to play, as well as how and when to play it, indifferent to his or anyone else’s input. John would simply tell Paul to fuck off, but so far George was not up to the task. “
I had always let him
have his own way,” he recalled, “even when this meant that songs, which I had composed, were not being recorded.” In fact, on the last few albums, he’d played as a relative sideman for Paul, a role he cited as being particularly “painful.” He’d been promised that playing “live,” so to speak, would eliminate such heavy-handedness. But by the second week of rehearsals, Paul was cracking the whip and George’s patience had gone.

On January 10 there was a tense and hostile morning session during which Paul badgered George about how to play a simple guitar solo. George glared at him, lighting a cigarette in the interim while the anger and frustration building over the past ten days finally boiled to the surface. “
Look, I’ll play whatever
you want me to play, or I won’t play at all,” he grunted between clenched teeth. “Whatever it is that’ll please you, I’ll do it!” Later, on the lunch break, the two Beatles squared off in the studio canteen. George had taken enough shit and refused to continue recording in the same manner. It was too degrading, too painful. Paul, as usual, dismissed his grievances as “petty.” As their tempers rose, the movie cameras moved in for close-ups, right in their faces, filming the miserable confrontation as though part of a soap opera. “
What am I doing here?
” George wondered. All the niggling directions—play it slower, come in sooner, hit it harder—seemed suddenly unbearable. He fought the futility of it with rage. “I’m not doing this anymore. I’m out of here.” He packed up his guitar, snapping the case shut with sharp, angry blows. “
That’s it,” he said, struggling into his jacket and heading toward the door, “see you ’round
the clubs.”

When the recording session resumed that afternoon, sans George Harrison, the remaining three Beatles started to jam, a really violent, off-key bashing meant to take the edge off their frustration. The intensity of it was impossible to ignore. They pummeled and tore at their instruments as never before. Ferocious strains of feedback and distortion surged through the damp soundstage. “
Our reaction was really
, really interesting at the time,” Ringo noted. How else could they process all that had happened? Was it realistic to expect them to produce meaningful music without George? Yoko didn’t wait for an invitation to fill the void. She immediately laid claim to George’s chair and blue cushion. Looking quite pleased
with the ominous events, flashing a fierce, tenacious smile, she jumped into the smoky spotlight, clutching the mike with both hands and screeching into it like a wounded animal. Reflexively, the high-strung musicians turned up the heat. For the moment, the Beatles served as her chastened backup band. Some bystanders stared in disbelief. The others, especially Paul and Ringo, may have missed the implication of Yoko’s grand triumph, but they understood her well enough to know that it had nothing to do with music.

George did not return at all that Friday, or the next day. Paul and Ringo expressed concern that he was calling it quits, whereas John suffered no such sympathy. “
I think if George doesn’t come back
by Monday or Tuesday,” he told Michael Lindsay-Hogg, “we’ll ask Eric Clapton to play. Eric would be pleased…. [H]e’d have enough scope to play the guitar. The point is, George leaves and do we want to carry on the Beatles? I certainly do.” When Lindsay-Hogg suggested they explain George’s absence by saying he was sick, John only hardened his position. “If he leaves, he leaves, you know…. If he doesn’t come back by Tuesday, we get Clapton…. We should go on as if nothing’s happened.”

On Sunday, January 12, all four Beatles met at Ringo’s house to discuss the apparent impasse. It was essential, they all decided, to bury the hatchet. Halfway through their talk, however, negotiations broke down and George stomped out, slamming the door as he left. A few hours later he was in the car, heading to Liverpool for a visit.

At first, the rest of the Beatles tried to shrug it off as a passing emotional outburst, throwing themselves dutifully into another round of rehearsals. But by Tuesday, things had reached a critical stage. Paul, unsure of what they should do, dismissed the film crew “as a matter of policy.” It was pointless for them to continue without George. In a heated five-hour meeting the next day, at the Savile Row offices, George laid down the terms for his return. If they wanted him to finish the record, they’d have to abandon all plans for a live concert and leave Twickenham. He had no intention of participating in either fiasco.

Without much choice, the other Beatles caved in to his demands. Logistics for the concert had become too much trouble anyway, and they agreed that Twickenham wasn’t working out as expected. But they dreaded returning to Abbey Road. The punishing White Album sessions were too fresh in their mind. They’d felt like prisoners there during those contentious five months. A new record required new, upbeat surroundings,
some place different, some place with no history of conflict, a fresh slate where the Beatles could concentrate on doing what they did best: making music. But where? Every studio in the city was booked through the spring.

The right studio—the only studio, in John’s opinion—was their own, the one Magic Alex was building for them in the basement of Apple. Wasn’t that, after all, what they had commissioned it for? Besides, it would be like working at home. They wouldn’t have to travel; their staff was right upstairs; they could keep an eye on the business. The suggestion must have sounded like an ideal solution. Typically, no one questioned its feasibility. After talking it over with about as much detail as they’d give to, say, ordering dinner, the matter was settled. On January 20, with a week off to get everything in order, they would begin recording a new album in a place that not only felt like home but bore the family name: Apple Studios.

But Apple Studios, as it turned out, was nothing more than a name. Alex’s seventy-two-track marvel was, in George’s words, “
the biggest disaster
of all time.” The place was a shambles, with all of Alex’s wildest schemes woven into the loose, laid-back fabric of Apple’s tapestry. Somehow, seventy-two tracks had dwindled down to a neat, sweet sixteen—twice the number available at Abbey Road—patched together by a dense thicket of wires that snaked across the floor. The accompanying speakers were nailed haphazardly to the walls. “
We bought some huge computers
from British Aerospace… and put them in my barn,” recalled Ringo, “… but they never left that barn” and were eventually sold for scrap. According to George Martin’s AIR studio manager, “
the mixing console was made
of bits of wood and an old oscilloscope. It looked like the control panel of a B-52 bomber.” The building’s ancient heating system, conveniently located in a closet next door, rumbled through the walls, no doubt to complement the “
very nasty twitter
” from the air-conditioning unit. There was no soundproofing, and Alex had somehow forgotten to invent the invisible sonic screen that he promised would replace the trusty old studio baffles needed to prevent sound leakage into the mikes.

When George Martin arrived to inspect the facilities, he was stunned by the condition of the studios. “
They were hopeless
,” he declared, traipsing from room to room as though inspecting a recent bomb site. “In fact, Magic Alex, for all his technical expertise, had forgotten to put any holes in the wall between the studio and control room,” which made it impossible to run the necessary electrical cables for the recording equipment.

Despite Alex’s epic failure, the Beatles seemed more determined than ever to utilize their own studio. “
You’d better put some equipment in
, then,” they instructed Martin, who, always eager to indulge them, borrowed a pair of
mobile four-track mixing consoles
from EMI and installed them in Apple’s basement.

The proposed album itself was another matter. For the purpose of focus and vitality, the Beatles decided to scrap the twenty-nine hours of tape recorded at Twickenham and start from scratch. Even with the benefit of the rehearsals, the Beatles were still experimenting with concepts, trying to hit on an interesting approach that would provide the necessary edge. This much they knew: it had to be stripped down and largely spontaneous to give the illusion of a live performance without terrorizing the band. And more than ever they endeavored to delve into their past to get the old magic back, the long-suppressed authentic sound of rock ’n roll. Emphasizing that point for George Martin, John warned rudely: “
I don’t want any of your production
shit. We want this to be an honest album.” Martin, who was offended by the implication, managed to hold his tongue. With no idea how to proceed—“I assumed
all
their albums had been honest,” he quipped wryly—he merely asked John to describe their idea of an honest album and was told: “I don’t want any editing. I don’t want any overdubbing. It’s got to be like it is. We just record the song and that’s it.”

Martin’s role was tenuous enough without imposing more restrictions. Insecure about their future and eager to appear in control of it, the Beatles now sought to distance themselves from anyone tethered to the past. There was a growing suspicion among the four musicians that members of the old entourage were living off them, not only financially but creatively as well. This rap could hardly be applied to George Martin, who earned practically nothing from their records, nor sought to capitalize on their fame. But they feared that his ever-growing celebrity as their producer was creating a false impression about his contribution to their success. Recently John had grumbled to the press that Martin was more or less a cipher and argued against “
all those rumors
that he actually was the brains behind the Beatles.” It also enraged him that Martin filled up the
Yellow Submarine
album with bland instrumental interludes—John dismissed them as “
terrible shit
”—that were composed for orchestra. And later he complained to
Rolling Stone
about people, “
a bit like Martin
, who think they made us.” As a result, Paul invited überproducer Glyn Johns, who had worked with the Stones, the Who, the Kinks, and Traffic, to “assist” as a balance engineer during the new sessions, a maneuver that drove
Martin ignominiously to the sidelines. If he was stung or humiliated, Martin refused to let it show, although it is clear that he was absent for many of the sessions, either by necessity or by choice.

Recording began in earnest on January 22, 1969, and rolled on for nearly a week in a knockabout fashion. A series of bluesy, impromptu jams paced the daily sessions, with the Beatles running through a lineup of old Liverpool and Hamburg standbys that reverberated through the halls. They played “Save the Last Dance for Me,” “Bye Bye Love,” “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” “Kansas City,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Miss Ann,” “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” “Tracks of My Tears,” and “Not Fade Away,” all of which received a thoroughly modern update. The interaction was far more animated than it had been earlier in the month. Part of the upbeat atmosphere could be attributed to the studio’s feeling like an informal clubhouse. “
The facilities at Apple
were great,” Ringo recalled. “It was so comfortable and it was ours, like home.”

As the week progressed, their rising outlooks coalesced into an album. Paul and John both brought in a fair number of original songs that ignited the Beatles to play tighter and harder. “Get Back” was an obvious crowd-pleaser, a “kickass track,” in Ringo’s estimation, that presented itself as a shuffle but ultimately demolished the form with accented rhythmic jabs and reversals that charge the groove with irrepressible force. Paul had written most of the melody the week before, during breaks at Twickenham. The playfulness of it immediately attracted John’s interest, and he collaborated on the words, seizing on the rising racial hostility in England between Pakistani immigrants and the National Front. Behind the good-timey boogie of licks and leaps lies a spikey little lyric as barbed as any of the Beatles’ sharp asides. One line—“Don’t dig no Pakistani taking all the people’s jobs”—was deemed too hot, while an abandoned third verse, especially, caught the inflammatory mood: