Back in February we learned Twickenham Film Studios, many times a character in Beatle films and promos and one of the famed villains in “Let it Be,” was slated to close in its 99th year.
Today we learn a “mystery buyer” has put down a 10 percent deposit to keep the studios alive, just a few weeks after a pair of different buyers withdrew their offers — the first one after local residents opposed the developer’s plans to build a housing complex on the site.
Via Sky News:
Gerald Krasner, from joint administrators Begbies Traynor, told Sky News a mystery buyer exchanged contracts with them on Friday and they have received a 10% deposit.
He said the building would continue as studio facilities with all staff jobs secured.
Colin Firth, Sir Paul McCartney and Steven Spielberg all backed the campaign to save the studios
A statement released by Begbies Traynor added: “It is envisaged that completion will take place later this year.
“At this stage, the purchaser wishes to remain anonymous and further details will be released after completion.”
Staff at studios say they are “delighted” at the news but Maria Walker, who started the petition to save the studios, is wary.
She told Sky News: “I am cautiously optimistic because we don’t know who the buyer is. If it is genuine then it is great news but we do have our concerns.”
With Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, the band wrapped the second day of the sessions at Twickenham. This blog is ready to move onto Jan. 6, the next day the band assembled after the weekend, but first, I wanted to tie up a few loose ends and address a few items that didn’t quite merit their own separate posts.
• After being introduced the day before, the band continued to work on “Two of Us” in a matter that totally didn’t distinguish itself. The song had the familiar architecture and same lyrics as would be eventually released, while the tune was a little bit quicker than we’d hear. Just ordinary runthroughs churned with nothing groundbreaking and no remarkable dialogue or discussion.
• As they famously did throughout the sessions, the band covered “oldies” (by this point, we’re talking some songs that in 1969 were less than a decade old, of course). George, Paul and John each led the way at different points. And while they seemed happy — or at least not bored — they weren’t necessarily very good.
To me, this is a hallmark of what these sessions were about prior to beginning to listening to the complete tapes, when I all would see/hear were compilation bootlegs of the sessions. “The Beatles cover all these songs!” OK, great, but they’re not particularly listenable. Or at least re-listenable.
Interesting to note just how many of these songs would eventually see release by these guys on solo records (John and Paul, at least).
This environment of the oldies, however, did at least bring to the forefront their oldies, like “One After 909.”
• Plus they touched upon a number of contemporary songs, but “touching” is even too strong a term. Often it was just for a few seconds, and often it was mere mockery. And even then, it’s completely disingenuous to call it covering. In some cases, like “I’m a Tiger” by Lulu, Paul sings the chorus while George tunes up (That song, incidentally, appeared on No One’s Gonna Change Our World, the record that first debuted “Across the Universe.”).
Dylan got his due with “All Along the Watchtower,” “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Please Mrs. Henry.”
Paul shows his love for Canned Heat at one point in a hilarious exchange with George and Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
“That Canned Heat number, I love that new one. It’s cornier than the last one, not quite as good. ‘Up the Country‘ is it?”
Paul proceeds to sing the first verse before continuing.
“It’s just got flutes playing. It’s a bit of a fruity thing they do. … Almost no soul.”
“Almost no what?” George asks.
“Soul,” says Paul. “They don’t bend the flutes or anything. But it’s great because they don’t. It’s sort of a … “
Paul offers the flute part in falsetto “doo-doo-doos” and continues..
“The end is great. They do, like, a false end.”
More “doo-doo-doos.”
“They keep going with the flute!”
After some laughs, George does a few-second quote of Canned Heat’s other hit, “On the Road Again,” before the band completely changes course and reintroduces “One After 909”.
As the band departed the session, the last point of discussion caught on tape was George and Mal picking up the discussion they had about equipment earlier in the day, during the “All Things Must Pass” rehearsals. Then with the goodbyes, the day’s tapes are done.
NOTE: I originally posted this on May 20, 2012, when this was a mere blog bébé. I gave it a scrub and a revision May 13, 2020, with better information on the May 13 premiere of the film at various venues across the United States.
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Outside the London premiere on May 20, 1970.
There was no glitz, no red carpet.
When the Let It Be film was shown to the public for the first time on the big screen, it was in ordinary theaters dotting the United States, not at a promoted premiere in New York, an event that’s still cited across the internet because of a 50-year-old press release.
The film Let It Be will, in Britain, be simultaneously premiered in both London and Liverpool on May 20, and, under the distribution agreement with United Artists, the film will open in New York on May 13 and will be shown in 100 cities all over the world! Let It Be is described by United Artists as a ‘Bioscopic Experience’.
The New York premiere, he writes, never happened, and the film was to open May 28.
But that’s not completely accurate either. There indeed was not a New York premiere. There wasn’t even a New York showing, when searching the day’s movie listings. (You could still catch six showings of Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil in Murray Hill, though.)
While the Big Apple was shut out for another week, Let It Be was showing on screens across California, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, in theaters and drive-ins. A week later, it received wider distribution across the U.S.
May 20 was even more important in England, where the film finally received its proper sendoff, premiering in London and Liverpool with the pomp missing stateside.
Back to Badman:
The Let It Be film opens today in Britain with special simultaneous Gala North-South premiere events. In the South, crowds surge upon the London Pavilion where guests include Spike Milligan, Mary Hopkin, Julie Felix, Sir Joseph Lockwood, Richard Lester, Simon Dee, Julie Edge and Lulu. Not to mention fifty dancing members of the Hare Krishna group and various members of The Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac pop groups. Most noticeable in the crowd are women no longer involved with The Beatles, John’s ex-wife Cynthia Lennon and, two years after her split from Paul, the actress Jane Asher. Before entering the cinema, Spike is playfully pictured by the press, alongside the police, trying to hold back the large excited crowds.
At the conclusion of its first week at the 1,004-seat cinema, where Let It Be was screened a total of 41 times, the film nets approximately £ 6,229. Brian Millwood, on behalf of UA, announces: “We’re happy with the start made by the film. It’s by no means the biggest take for the house, but it’s nevertheless good.”
Let It Be will run at the London Pavilion for five weeks until Tuesday June 23, when it is replaced by the Mick Jagger film Ned Kelly. Meanwhile in Liverpool, the northern premiere takes place with a comparatively quiet, invitation only, event at the Gaumont in Camden Street, London Road. (The screenings at both cinemas commence at 8:45pm.) Let It Be will eventually go on to be released in 100 major cities around the world.
At the London premiere
The film received mixed reviews and has endured a love-hate relationship with fans as well as the group. But the importance of the film and these sessions in the band’s — and music history (see: Rooftop) — can’t be diminished.
September 4, 2020, we get to do it all over again, when Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back retells the story of the January 1969 sessions.
Well before it was derided by John as more “granny music,” George as “so fruity” and Ringo as “worst session ever” (in reference to the Abbey Road recording), “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” on Jan. 3, 1969, was simply “the corny one,” a song The Beatles had yet to rehearse so many times that it literally caused bandmembers to refuse to participate or go ahead and quit the band.
Written in October 1968, just too late for inclusion on the White Album (per Lewisohn) — but apparently never rehearsed then — we hear it for the first time as Paul doodles on the piano to start the Jan. 3 sessions.
With Paul in novelty-song mode for much of the White Album (a planned topic of a post for the distant future, when I’m done with the Nagra timeline), this tune would have fit like a glove on that record. And, perhaps it’s in retrospect, but it didn’t fit at all with Get Back/Let it Be, at least what we’ve heard in these first few days.
Hours after the piano sketch, we get to hear the full band tackle the song for the first time in rehearsals that clock in at less than 35 minutes.
It’s an interesting contrast with the “All Things Must Pass” rehearsals that had just occurred earlier in the day. George played and sang his heart out, clearly exasperated and desperate for the band to appreciate the song. Paul, meanwhile, is slogging through “Maxwell’s.” He knows he band will learn it, even if they hate it (and they will in time!).
While George is desperate to bring “All Things Must Pass” to the band, he’s seems aware there’s little urgency.
Paul, meanwhile, laughs, scats the lyrics, has an extremely relaxed demeanor, especially impressive given the long day that’s near to ending.
The Let it Be film captures some of this pretty well, with Paul barking out chords. If you’re able to follow along at home, the first 45 seconds or so are indeed from these Jan. 3 sessions, with the edit coming right as the anvil hits.
With Paul in instructional mode, George is proactive in offering suggestions to the harmonies as well as guitar licks. Again, quite the opposite experience from “All Things Must Pass,” where the other members of the band did little to add to the song George brought to them.
The origin of the song’s most notable feature — the anvil — is discussed by Paul during one of the takes.
“Originally, I was trying to get a hammer, which we might get Mal [Evans] to do. A hammer, like on an anvil. A big hammer on an anvil.
You can’t make it with anything else. Bang, bang!”
As they had done earlier in the sessions on “Don’t Let Me Down” and “All Things Must Pass,” the band shakes up the lineup as the “Maxwell’s” rehearsals progress, with Paul shifting to piano and George taking over on bass, preferring the six-string. At one point, Paul asks George for his bass to sound like it was “from those movies” — a shivering sound during the “Joan was dead” bit.
It’s a fun, bouncy song at this point, none of the weight of the Moog on the Abbey Road version, and a circus-like groove from the rhythm section. There is the old-timey movie feel to it, and it works for whatever the song at present is.
In something of a telling, but confusing exchange, George asks about the seemingly incomplete state of the lyrics. At this point, all we’ve heard in both the early solo piano sketch and the afternoon full-band rehearsals are just the two verses and the chorus.
To my ears, this is what they say:
Paul: There’s only two verses. … But I don’t really know where it goes after that.
John: Finish three of them. You need another one, yeah?
George: Do the words, like, resolve the story?
Paul: Well, they will do.
George: I mean, there’s no more to write?
Paul: No, no not more to write.
Here it seems Paul is content to have the song’s lyrics stay as they are in truncated form — no P.C. 31, testimonial pictures, Rose, Valerie or the judge — and perhaps the musical arrangement alone is what he plans to finish.
Again, the contrast with “All Things Must Pass” is fascinating. “Maxwell’s” isn’t brand-new — it’s a few months old — but it’s still incomplete. If anything, “ATMP” is newer, and it’s a finished product when it was brought to the band.
Really, I think what we’re learning here George is a saint — he not only brings polished work to the group only to have it passively embraced, he’s busy working to improve everyone else’s songs. Sure, we know he actually quits the band in a few days, but you’d have to think this is a pattern that appeared on prior records, but we only have tape of these sessions to hear it.
Further, and it’s a point I’ve obsessed on before, but why bring an incomplete song to a session that seemingly had a purpose and endgame, a live show soon to be recorded? Shouldn’t everyone be bringing their best material to the table? Was “Maxwell’s” — and we know, ultimately, on Abbey Road it didn’t change that much musically and would only get the extra verse — really something worth spending valuable time on when we know what great stuff Paul had in the bank already (“Two of Us,” “Long And Winding Road,” “Let it Be,” “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” etc.)? They’re rehearsing an incomplete song, they’d have to get back to it regardless. Paul makes a brief mention of where an orchestra would come in — clearly he was thinking beyond just the live rock show.
At least this early version of “Maxwell’s” gives us the memorable lines: “Back in class again/Maxwell is an ass again” and “She tells Max to stay/when his ass has gone away.” Alas, never to make the final cut.
With the end of the “Maxwell’s” sessions, the band wraps it up for the day, a Friday. The day’s tapes end with the band saying their goodbyes and, the working stiffs they were, agreeing to reassemble Monday at 10 a.m.
The second day of sessions at Twickenham on A/B Road clock in at close to 5 1/2 hours, more than two hours of which was spent solely on “All Things Must Pass” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” (a song to a post coming soon).
For sure, much of the time that falls under a certain song’s track was actually dialogue. But ultimately, there wasn’t a lot of new material introduced.
When we did get new stuff, it was a taste of some classic songs.
Indeed, the entire day’s session begins with Paul tickling at the ivories with an incredible one-two punch that lasted just over a minute and a half. “The Long and Winding Road,” right into “Oh! Darling.” Another future Abbey Road Side 1 track — “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” which wasn’t actually new, but new to the sessions — gets the solo piano treatment next. Enjoy that sequence here:
Paul continues to play, and caps an incredible 15-plus-minute stretch with one more new song, and one that eventually defined the sessions overall: Let It Be.
John, as he was throughout the entirety of the sessions, only brought in the one new track — “Gimme Some Truth” — that day. And again, it wasn’t actually new to the band.
Outside of a pair of Ringo songs we’ve covered previously and seminal songs like “One After 909,” “Because I Know You Love Me So” or “Thinking of Linking,” the balance of originals on Jan. 3 were brief tastes, and in some cases presumably improvised jams.
And a break for news.
They May Be Parted 
