Tag Archives: Blogoversary

Blogoversary week continues with a look back at my posts about today in Nagra tapes history: Jan. 7, 1969, a dramatic, dynamic day rich in music that has proven eternal and one that brought the Beatles to the brink as they questioned why they were even together.

• Still they lead him back: Jan. 7 begins with a proper debut for “The Long and Winding Road,” poignant and revealing given the mood at the sessions and the prior day’s tension.
• Sing a lullaby: “Golden Slumbers” debuts, and the day-old “Carry That Weight” isn’t all a hurting Paul fits it with that morning.
• Signature song: It’s the origin story for “Get Back,” the song perhaps most identified with these sessions, featuring Paul, George and an absent Jackie Lomax.
• Power Hour: Putting Paul’s Jan. 7, 1969, morning session in context, 44 years later.
• On their own at the holiday camp: As Mr. Epstein’s ghost lingers, what motivates The Beatles in January 1969? The group openly questions that very thing.
• Taking the easy way out, now: The Beatles, comfortable as a studio-only band and admittedly shy to perform live but also fed up playing together, get a pep talk as they try to find the desire to stage a concert.
• Ain’t got no ‘pow’: Still searching for the elusive hook to their live show, the Beatles recall a misguided fan-club show, consider their lack of charity and foretell one of rock’s iconic moments.
• Entertainment is almost enough: In which the Beatles are asked to embrace showbiz, because “you may never do another television show.” Perhaps a captive audience is the answer.
• Have a divorce: The Beatles’ frustration with each other and the state of the group — an issue they admit dates back more than a year — reaches a tipping point as a conversation that began with the continued search for a live venue concludes with the band’s future in question.
• Pulled their socks up: “Divorce” was all talk, no action for the Beatles, who casually moved to “I’ve Got a Feeling” and “Oh! Darling” (briefly) after agreeing they should split up — without actually doing so — moments earlier.
• Joke whistlings: Amid the “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” origin story, Paul wants a little more “razzmatazz” but please keep the whistle solos “straight,” OK?
• Bangers and mashups: After making accidental musical history, The Beatles whistle while they work extensively on “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”
• Tumble blindly: The anachronistic, symbolic “Across the Universe” returns to The Beatles orbit, while the group also has a brief re-exploration of another John tune, “Gimme Some Truth,” as a Beatles number.
• Et cetera: Picking up the pieces from remaining storylines of the day, including a few covers and a link between “Don’t Let Me Down” and “Devil in Her Heart.”

” 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.

Blogoversary week continues with a look back at my posts about today in Nagra tapes history: Jan. 3, 1969.

• Setting the tone: A funereal classical piece becomes the movie’s opening theme
• Starrwriter 69: Having previously written just one song in his career, on Jan. 3, 1969, Ringo gives us two new ones
• No little thing: George kvetches the U.S. audience needs “oldies but goldies” with their new songs, and he offers up something of a random suggestion
• Traveling on that line: The Beatles rediscover “One After 909” at just the right moment in their history
• Shoctric shocks: Beginning a multipost look at the aggravating “All Things Must Pass” rehearsals on Jan. 3 with the song’s movie moment
• Four guys and four amps: “All Things Must Pass” remains rough, perhaps because it’s serving as background music to discussions about recording equipment
• The Band plays on: An in-depth look at the Jan. 3 rehearsals of “All Things Must Pass” concludes with talk of musical and lyrical inspiration
• Taxman, Revisited: George teases us with a reference to “Taxman Pt. 2”
• Hearing things: John reminds us he’s still there with a taste of a future solo classic
• Let you down, leave you flat: Bootleg tracklists for the Get Back sessions are so promising, especially when you see the Beatles are playing some of their older tunes, but really, they are just joking around
• Fifteen minutes of fame: The Beatles didn’t spend a whole lot of time introducing brand-new songs to the sessions this day, but the ones they (specifically, Paul) did were eventual classics
• Quizzical: Paul unleashes an incomplete “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” on the group as the anti-“All Things Must Pass” on this day
• Et cetera: Tying up some loose ends for the day’s sessions before we move onto the next day