6 days until the start of the Get Back sessions
Today’s Weather: Very cold in most areas. (Daily Mirror, December 27, 1968)
It’s a judgement call to say it was long and lonely, but there’s no argument this was a cold winter.
Under the front-page headline “Freeze-up hits the weekend sport,” the December 27, 1968, Evening Standard reported on the cold front leading to cancellations of sporting events, not just on this Friday, but into the upcoming weekend. The nation’s workers enjoyed the day indoors, taking in a three-day weekend “as bitter winds blew in from the north.”
The paper continued:
London was a motorists’ paradise, with empty car parks and deserted bays. St. James’ Square – normally crammed with cars on a working day – was as empty as on a wet Sunday.
Traffic on all roads into London was reported “extremely light” and motorists enjoyed a clear run into the capital.
It was this cold. (From the December 28, 1968, Guardian).
Not everyone took the day off, like director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who was fresh off the Rock and Roll Circus and already in the planning stages for the upcoming Beatles project, due to begin six days later.
Michael went on a scouting mission in London and was joined by others – we don’t know who – but it wouldn’t be a surprise if some combination of producer Denis O’Dell and Apple head Neil Aspinall joined him.
We can pinpoint this specific outing because Michael mentioned it explicitly during a conversation on January 6, 1969.
The remark came in the context of a large group discussion (including all the Beatles, plus Michael, Denis, Yoko Ono, George Martin and others) as they searched for a venue for a live concert, along with what kind of audience they should have.
Paul: We shouldn’t just try and build something like the Tower Ballroom ‘cause we can go to the Tower Ballroom.
Michael: That was one of the reasons we started veering off on these ideas was when we were looking at locations that Friday after Christmas. All the locations looked like four steps up from a boutique, you know what I mean? Like four years ago everybody’s shooting in a boutique, now it’s some disused sawmill or whatever it is. They just looked [like] plastic-real locations …
Others talked over each other saying they looked “so phony.”
Michael’s quote was used in the Get Back docuseries, but pulled out of sequence. In Get Back, it’s presented as part of a similar discussion on January 8. The usage of it in that context is understandable, but it simply didn’t happen that day.
There’s really no indication of the kinds of locations that were scouted. But they had free run of London’s streets while they looked.
***
Apple publicist Derek Taylor was sick of censorship, “fed up with all the humbug in this country.” A story in the December 27, 1968, Western Daily Press retold the familiar Two Virgins story – John and Yoko are naked on the cover, few are selling the record, few are buying the record and no one is listening to the record.
But John and Yoko needed to do this for the sake of art and honesty.
“We are not revolutionaries and I am not a nudist,” said Mr. Taylor.
“We didn’t contemplate the consequences, and we were certainly not asking to go to jail for Christmas.
“We simply wanted, once and for all, to show two people standing naked with nothing to hide.
“If artistic people had to wait until the man in the street accepted what they do, it would never be done.”
Even allowing for the fact that the naked Mr. Lennon and the naked Miss Ono are hardly the apples of everyone’s artistic eye, reaction to the record has already helped to prove Mr. Taylor’s point.
***
As Michael and Co. searched for a suitable concert venue, Apollo 8 returned to earth. Evening papers and next-day headlines celebrated the splashdown, which occurred shortly before 4 p.m. London time about 900 miles southwest of Hawaii.
They May Be Parted 
