12 days until the start of the Get Back sessions
While we can’t say for certain, there’s a good chance the Beatles, their significant others and children were sitting by a television shortly before 1 p.m. London time on December 21, 1968, because we know so many other people were.
That’s when Apollo 8 launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida en route to the moon’s orbit.
Everything else happening in the world, even the Beatles’ world, comes off pretty mundane by comparison. But as they say in “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” life goes on, and so will we.
That song not only rocketed Marmalade up the British charts, it gave them a high-profile cheerleader.
As reported in the December 21 issue of DISC and Music Echo, John Lennon had joined the Marmalade Fan Club. In a separate feature on Marmalade elsewhere in the issue, the group describes how they were exposed to the hit-in-the-making by publisher Dick James:
“Everyone will be doing numbers off the album and we’ll get slagged left, right and centre if we do it,” we told him. But when we heard it we knew it was right for us. We were genuinely knocked out by the song – we’d have recorded it even if the Pope had written it! We were the only people that didn’t copy the Beatles note for note. The other versions even had the same brass going through.
Melody Maker’s December 21 issue saw Marmalade’s cover of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” rise eight notches to 15 in the singles chart, while the Bedrocks’ version debuted at 29. (Mike McGear and the Scaffold held tight at No. 1 with “Lily the Pink”). The Beatles’ double LP retained its grip at No. 1 on the album chart.
Not looking any farther than its own occupied office space, Apple eyed its next act, so to speak. Back to the DISC and Music Echo:
Hell’s Angels, America’s controversial motor-cycle gang, is in Britain at the invitation of the Beatles. And some of them are lined-up to make an album for the Apple label.
Hippie novelist Ken Kesey, man behind San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury “explosion” two years ago, is with the Angels’ 15-strong party and has been invited to make recordings for the first of a series of new low-budget LPs being planned by Apple.
Says Beatles Pressman Derek Taylor: “Hell’s Angels have been to Apple and talked to John and George. We’ve given Kesey a tape-recorder and asked him to move around London observing and taping things he feels are interesting. The recordings will become the first of a series of ‘live’ spoken-word LPs which Apple will market at around 10s a time.”
Ken Kesey outside 3 Savile Row.
Richard DiLello’s account in The Longest Cocktail Party adds that Kesey was also given use of an electric typewriter, and a warning about the press by Derek.
“Watch out for them –”
“Why?” he wanted to know.
“Because they’re straights –”
“Well, you’re sitting behind a straight desk –”
“True, true. I forget about that sometimes –“
Others were seeking help from the Beatles on this same December 21, 1968. In his pursuit of a London-area temple for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, movement founder A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada penned a letter on this date to Shyamasundar Das, who was already in London. “ACB” encouraged Shyamasundar to press George Harrison – who he already had contact with — to join the movement and take him up on his offer of a temple site.
If Shyamasundar Das founds familiar, you may have seen his name (spelled slightly differently) in Get Back.
They May Be Parted 