TMBP Extra: Jan. 6, 1969 recap

” I’ll play, you know, whatever you want me to play. Or I won’t play at all, if you don’t want me to play. Whatever it is that will please you, I’ll do it.”

Blogoversary week continues with a look back at my posts about today in Nagra tapes history: January 6, 1969, a truly fascinating and historic one in band history.

• Icing Cream: As the new work week begins, the band and director Michael Lindsay-Hogg are fixated on how bad the Cream farewell documentary is
• Hear Me: In which the Quiet Beatle proves he’s possibly insane by introducing another future classic to be met with complete indifference
• Here comes the bird king: Jam isn’t just for toast for the Beatles on this day at Twickenham as they work on some improvisations including a song that would later appear on, of all things, Paul’s unreleased Rupert the Bear soundtrack
• Playing to the gods (If there’s a rock show, Pt. 1): It’s the first real talks about the live show to be the sessions’ eventual endgame, and as far as audiences are concerned, Yoko Ono asks who needs ’em?
• Such a lovely audience? (If there’s a rock show, Pt. 2): Extensive discussion of the eventual live show continues, with exotic – and not quite so – options in the mix
• Adore your ballroom dancing (If there’s a rock show, Pt. 3): Lengthy midday discussion about the eventual live show concludes with George Harrison asking what The Beatles image should be, and Paul proposing playing a dance as the answer. Or should they all just go home?
• Cross that bridge (Pt. 1): The session’s legendary discord emerges as the boys battle the bridge in “Don’t Let Me Down”
• Cross that bridge (Pt. 2): The day’s rehearsals for “Don’t Let Me Down” conclude with tension, but ultimately a progress on the song’s troubling bridge. But mainly tension.
• Please, please you (Pt. 1): Rehearsals for “Two of Us” begin as the band argues just over how to conduct a rehearsal. We’re on the road to “whatever it is that will please you” in the beginning of a multi-part series on this historic session.
• Please, please you (Pt. 2): Tensions during “Two of Us” continue to reach a boil as George admits he plain doesn’t care, while Paul evokes the pair’s experience rehearing “Hey Jude.”
• Please, please you (Pt. 3): George doesn’t mind, he’ll play, you know, whatever you want him to play.
• That weight and this boy: Paul bookends a rough day of rehearsals with the debut of “Carry That Weight,” and now we know why Ringo is so prominent on the song’s eventual recording on Abbey Road.
• Et cetera: The day’s coverage is a wrap as I tie up some loose ends — checking on a pair of curios written for Ringo, rehearsals of a couple other songs that managed to endure, a few covers and the briefest of mentions of George’s sex life.

There’s one more post that fits in here, even though it’s not precisely on the timeline.

• TMBP Extra: Time to leave the capsule:  The members of The Beatles and Bowie have crossed paths several times over the last 40-plus years, but here I dig into what they were doing on January 6, 1969, before they met, just miles away at the same precise moment. Bowie, The Beatles and Apollo 8 all cross paths in one post.