13
LET IT BE
1969–1970
I nearly made it on to the Let It Be album–not as myself, but as the inspiration for a song. Or at least, so I have imagined, so I tell myself. Complete fantasy, I am sure, but we can all dream.
Late one night in December 1968, when my wife and family and I were living in a converted sardine factory right on the beach at Praia da Luz in the Algarve, there was loud banging and shouting from outside, which we thought at first must be drunken fishermen. I opened the door to find a rather cross taxi driver, who was demanding to be paid, having driven his fares all the way from Faro Airport, only to find they now said they had no money. Out of the taxi spilled Paul and a blonde American woman called Linda whom I had never seen before. When we had left London nine months earlier, Paul was still engaged to Jane Asher.
It gradually emerged that he had got together with Linda, a photographer. And she had a six-year-old daughter called Heather, who was also with them. That evening, in London, Paul had suddenly decided to come out and visit us, knowing we had two young children, just a bit younger than Heather. They didn’t ring, as we didn’t have a phone, but they knew our address as I had written to him. They simply asked Neil Aspinall, their road manager, to book them a private jet, and off they went.
They stayed for about two weeks, and we all had a jolly time, going on local expeditions, up in the hills, mucking around on the beach. Paul had brought his guitar with him, as always, and even used to take it with him to the lavatory. One evening I happened to reveal that my real first name is Edward, but I had never ever been called that, only by my second name, Hunter. For some reason, Paul thought this was awfully funny–though I can’t think why, as Paul is not his real first name either; he was christened James Paul.
So he went off to the lavatory and when he came back he played us four bars of a song he had apparently just written called ‘There You Go Eddie’. He only had four lines–which consisted of the title repeated three times, then the line ‘Eddie you’ve gone’. I thought it was pretty good, and naturally encouraged him to finish it. He said he might, one day.
When we got back to London in 1969, I rushed to buy their next two albums–which alas, turned out to be their final two albums–hoping that Eddie would have been worked on, polished up, or even subsumed into another song, but nope, no sign of Eddie, in any form.
Quite recently, I heard a copy of a song about Eddie that had been found on a bootleg tape of the Let It Be recording sessions. (Apparently one hundred hours’ worth of bootlegs have crept out over the years.) You can hear Paul singing and playing the Eddie song to John. He had obviously worked on it a bit, as it had acquired a second verse and quite a decent middle section. In it, Eddie is referred to as ‘Eddie you dog’ who thinks he is one of the ‘In Crowd’. Surely I never thought that about myself? It had become a fairly decent song, as whole and complete as some of the songs they used to fill up their final album. But, curses, it never made the cut. On the bootleg tape, John can be heard muttering in the background. Paul does several versions, changing Eddie to Tiger, Bernard, Nigel and then to Mimi, which makes John laugh. When Paul has finally finished singing it, there is silence from John.
The Let It Be album was a fairly chaotic, unhappy, unsatisfactory experience for them all–and it ended up being delayed well over a year, for various reasons. Technically, it was their last album, being the final to appear, but it was in fact the penultimate album that they worked on and recorded.
The original idea was to make a film of them recording, which was a good idea, observing them at work, watching them create their music–something all Beatles fans would have loved to see. In the event, they spent most of the recording sessions arguing amongst themselves. George fell out with Paul and John in January 1969, while they were recording, and left the group for a week, but was persuaded back. He was fed up with being bossed around by Paul and thought John was just messing about, not working hard enough. They were arguing about Apple, particularly about Allen Klein, who had been brought in to manage their affairs by John, George and Ringo–but not by Paul, who wanted someone else. By this time they were also each going their separate ways, with their own individual projects–and partners. John and Paul had rows. Then the lawyers were brought in. The whole thing became a sorry, sad mess, something I had never ever expected. I had often morbidly, gruesomely imagined the Beatles all dying suddenly in a plane crash–just because there had been periods in their lives when so many people around them, friends and relations, had suddenly died. I hadn’t expected them to splutter and splinter apart over what seemed to the outside world to be petty, piddling, personal and business differences. Dear God, surely they could have worked it out.
The Let It Be film, when it eventually emerged, allowed us to see the effects of some of these differences, capturing their strained relationships and petty bickering. The film was only 81 minutes long, cut down from miles of material, and its release was endlessly delayed.
The album was also delayed. Allen Klein was not happy with it and ordered several remixes. Then Phil Spector was brought in to add some polish to it, which made Paul furious as he hadn’t been consulted and was upset by what Spector was doing to some of his songs. Paul then announced his departure from the Beatles, though John had already decided he was off, having had enough, but was persuaded not to announce it before a new EMI contract was signed.
So by the time the Let It Be album was eventually released in May 1970, along with the film, the Beatles were no more. The album ‘as reproduced for disc by Phil Spector’–came in a fancy black box set, complete with a 160-page glossy book, mostly colour photos, plus some overheard, rather pretentious chat that took place during the making of the film. The book is entitled The Beatles Get Back, as that was originally going to be the title of the album, and it has the publication date 1969, indicating how long it had been delayed. The original creation and recording of most of the songs on the album had taken place almost eighteen months earlier, in January 1969. In relatively happier times
One of those happy times, as captured in some historic photos in the book, shows them on the roof of the Apple office in Savile Row on 30 January 1969, when they played their last ever live session. Not to a paying public, but to thousands of gapers in the streets below, listening to their live performance–until the police came along and put a stop to it. In the film, and in the photographs, you can see how much they were enjoying themselves, playing together, larking around, amused by such a funny stunt, such a funny location, and also by themselves, having fun together.
Two Of Us
The two were not Paul and John, despite the fact that in the film you see them head to head in the studio, sharing the same microphone, singing away. The two of them were now Paul and Linda, his new loveheart, soul mate, companion. The song was recorded in January 1969, just after they had got back from their Portuguese holiday.
Linda used to encourage Paul to jump in the car, drive off and get lost, as they did in Portugal–and naturally Paul wrote a song about it, writing it as it happened, standing solo, wearing raincoats, then driving home again, singing that we’re going home. There’s a reference to chasing paper, which could be a reference to the Apple mess and all the documents and court cases–but he doesn’t dwell on this. It’s a happy, cheerful, totally straightforward road song–no memorable lyrics, but a proper song, with a chorus and verses.
It’s the first song on Let It Be, but before Paul starts singing ‘Two of Us’, you can hear John announcing ‘I dig a pygmy by Charles Hawtrey and the Deaf Aids (Ha ha ha). Phase one, in which Doris gets her oats…’
Charles Hawtrey was an English actor who appeared in many Carry On films. ‘Getting your oats’ meant sexual intercourse, a phrase you hardly hear these days, modern usage being much more blunt.
Professor Campbell, in his compendium, transcribes these two lines as being part of the lyrics of ‘Two of Us’, but I have ignored them. It is just John playing silly buggers.
The manuscript, possibly in Mal Evan’s hand, is neatly done on Apple notepaper. At the end it says ‘A Quarrymen Original’–a joke, harking back to the days when they wrote ‘Another Lennon–McCartney original’ on every song scrap.
Holiday snap, Portugal, 1968: (left to right) Hunter Davies, Linda McCartney, Paul, Hunter’s wife Margaret, and children.
Two of us riding nowhere
Spending someone’s hard earned pay
You and me Sunday driving
Not arriving on our way back home
We’re on our way home
We’re going home
Two of us sending postcards
Writing letters
On my wall
You and me burning matches
Lifting latches on our way back home
You and I have memories
Longer than the road
That stretches out ahead
Two of us wearing raincoats
Standing solo in the sun
You and me chasing paper getting nowhere
On our way back home