Paul – lead
vocals, bass
John – harmony vocals, lead guitar
George – rhythm guitar
Ringo – drums
Billy Preston – electric piano
‘Get Back’ was the first single to be recorded at Apple Studios, using the new facilities installed in the basement of the Apple building at 3 Savile Row, London. The recording studio used the innovative technique of employing sonic beams to act as baffles and so prevent sound from leaking from, for example, the drum kit to the vocal microphones. These beams counteracted the sound of the drums by emitting an anti-phase signal that exactly cancelled out the unwanted sound. The studio’s state-of-the-art recording and mixing equipment also left Abbey Road’s antiquated eight-track hardware in the shade. The Apple control room was equipped with a world-beating 72-track mixing desk.
Or at least, that was the intention.
These plans, dreamt up by Magic Alex Mardas, were either scientifically unsound, or, given the technology of the day, totally unfeasible. Mardas had led the Beatles to believe that the studio would be ready for their first session at the new studio on 20 January, but what he had produced by that stage was shoddy and, according to technical engineer Dave Harries, who was to become studio manager at George Martin’s AIR studios, “made of bits of wood and an old oscilloscope”. An attempt to record a take brought forth only hums and hisses. Mardas’s design had apparently even omitted any cabling between studio and control room. The basement had to be cleared out, and two four-track mixing desks borrowed from Abbey Road to complement Apple’s eight-track tape machine. Recording was finally possible on 22 January. A couple of songs recorded on this first day at Apple, ‘Dig A Pony’ and ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’, were released on Anthology 3.
The ‘Get Back’ single was the first release from these so-called Get Back sessions – thirty days of filmed rehearsal that, after much soul-searching and extensive problematic delays, ultimately resulted in the LP Let It Be. Roughly half the sessions, those from 2 to 15 January, took place at the Twickenham film studios. When it became clear that the Twickenham environment was proving deadly to the group’s ability to produce half-decent music, they all decamped to the newly built Apple Studios to restart the process. The sessions culminated in the renowned performance on the roof of the Apple building on 30 January.
Because of differences between the single and album versions of ‘Get Back’, and because it was seen performed on the roof of the Apple building in the film Let It Be, there is often confusion about exactly what version was recorded when. In fact, the single and album versions come from the same take, recorded in Apple Studios on 27 January. This take was preceded by the “Rosetta” chat that was included at the start of the Let It Be LP version, and ended with the “ooh” at the end of that version. The LP then has a snatch of repartee from the rooftop performance, while the single version has a coda edited in from a separate take of the track recorded on 28 January.
‘Get Back’ was first aired at Twickenham on 7 January, in the form of something of a jam – a few lines discernible from the verses, but the distinctive driving guitar and the chorus firmly in place. It was also rehearsed on 9, 10 and 13 January, and was finally brought out for recording on 23 January, at a session at which Alan Parsons made his debut as tape operator. The group ran through several takes of the song on most of the subsequent days, and three versions were performed during the rooftop concert on 30 January. Over-rehearsal naturally resulted in a number of permutations of the song. The most notorious, taped on 9 January, included the line “don’t dig no Pakistanis taking all the people’s jobs”. This was followed later that day by a semi-improvised jam that has been entitled ‘Commonwealth’, which included: “You’d better get back to your Commonwealth homes”. The songs were outlets for frustration at the country’s immigration policies and the controversial speech by Enoch Powell in April 1968 warning that unchecked immigration would lead to a situation akin to “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”. Ludicrously, Paul was accused of racism over leaked recordings of the session.
“There were a lot of stories in the newspapers then about Pakistanis crowding out flats – you know, living sixteen to a room or whatever. So in one of the verses of ‘Get Back’, which we were making up on the set of Let It Be, one of the outtakes has something about ‘too many Pakistanis living in a council flat’ – that’s the line. Which to me was actually talking out against overcrowding for Pakistanis … If there was any group that was not racist, it was the Beatles … We were kind of the first people to open international eyes, in a way, to Motown.”
Not to mention the fact that, two weeks later, Billy Preston was playing along to the self-same track.
The song epitomises all that the Get Back project stood for. Besides looking back lyrically to the group’s roots, it is also one of their simplest songs since ‘Love Me Do’, being a blues-based progression of G–D–A (bVII–IV–I) (compared to the earlier song’s G–(D–)C, or I–(V–)IV). But the differences are more interesting than the similarities. The legendary unsatisfactory drum-work of the 1962 track has given way to an excellent, driving performance from Ringo, and the knowing simplicity of the request to ‘Love Me Do’ has become the lyrical duplicity of ‘Get Back’.
The release of the new single threw up a number of pointers for the record-buying public, giving an indication of the state of the Beatles in the spring of 1969. One apparent pointer was that, given that the group’s last single, ‘Hey Jude’, was released the previous August, an eight-month gap seemed to have opened up between single releases. This misconception was, however, soon allayed by the fact that the follow-up to ‘Get Back’ was released just seven weeks later. There was also no Christmas single – it is true that this had also happened in 1966, but the Beatles had then released ‘Penny Lane’/‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ in February 1967 and were hard at work on Sgt Pepper. ‘Get Back’ was no ‘Penny Lane’, and there was certainly no Sgt Pepper in the offing.
But not only had there been a sizeable gap since ‘Hey Jude’, the public also had to wait almost a fortnight for the record to hit the shops. The single had been treated an initial mono mix on 26 March by George Martin, assisted by Jeff Jarratt. (It would be the last Beatles single issued in mono in the UK – conversely, in the US it would be the group’s first single to be issued in stereo.) A further mono mix of both ‘Get Back’ and ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ was carried out by Glyn Johns on 4 April, making the official release date of 11 April unattainable. Johns also produced stereo mixes for the US single, due for release on 5 May. But Paul was unhappy with the UK mix of the song, and, in spite of an acetate of the single having been played on BBC Radio One by DJs Alan Freeman and John Peel on 6 April, he booked Olympic Sound on 7 April to re-mix the track. This left no time for the record to be pressed for the following Friday, and so it finally hit the shops nearly two weeks late. Helped by this delay, ‘Get Back’ was the only Beatles single to enter the charts at number one. It was the last Beatles single to reach number one in both the UK and US – and in virtually every other chart across the world. It also won the Ivor Novello Award for the highest British sales for 1969.
Also, for the first time since ‘All You Need Is Love’, when the practice of crediting the producer began, the label of the single gave no credit to George Martin, or indeed any producer credit at all. Although it would be a year before Phil Spector was on the scene, the roles of George Martin, Glyn Johns and the Beatles themselves were so unclear throughout the whole Get Back project, a definitive production credit would be a dangerous thing to assign.
Most clearly, for the first time since the days of Tony Sheridan, the Beatles shared the performance credit with another artist – the electric pianist Billy Preston. The Beatles had first met Billy Preston when he was playing keyboards for Little Richard. On 12 October 1962, a week after the release of ‘Love Me Do’, the Beatles, Little Richard and ten other acts appeared at the Tower Ballroom, New Brighton for Brian Epstein’s venture “Little Richard at the Tower”. Two weeks later, the Beatles teamed up with him again for a show at Liverpool’s top venue, the Empire Theatre.
As the 1960s progressed, Preston worked with Ray Charles, recording and touring with him. Preston remembers that after a Ray Charles concert at the Festival Hall in January 1969, he called George Harrison, who had been in the audience. George, mindful of the calming effect that Eric Clapton’s presence had on the overwrought atmosphere within the group the previous year and keen to try anything to lighten the atmosphere at the recording sessions, suggested he come over to Apple to meet the group.
The enthusiastic welcome he received from the group on his entry into the lion’s den of the Get Back sessions on the afternoon of 22 January is captured in the Anthology film. George remembered, “He got on the electric piano and straightaway there was a 100% improvement in the vibe in the room. Having this fifth person was just enough to cut the ice we’d created among ourselves.” George Martin was also grateful: “His work on ‘Get Back’ alone justified him being there. He was an amiable fellow too, very nice and he was a kind of emollient.”
In the event, Preston stayed until the end of the Get Back sessions, before returning to America at the beginning of February. The Beatles remained supportive of Preston and signed him to Apple records. His first Apple LP, That’s the Way God Planned It, was co-produced by George Harrison and Ray Charles. Fittingly, Preston performed ‘Get Back’ for the soundtrack of the 1978 Bee Gees vehicle Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Even based on the cursory and selective evidence of what was filmed and released for Let It Be, his presence had a strong and positive effect on the productivity of the group for the last two weeks of the project. Such was the chemistry between the musicians that he was asked to appear on two Abbey Road tracks, ‘Something’ and ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’.
So both sides of the single credit “The Beatles with Billy Preston”, which he found “a great honour”. Billy Preston also got his big creative chance on ‘Get Back’ – “They said, ‘Hey, take a solo.’ So I just played. I played my heart out.”