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
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.
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.
Central to the legend of the Get Back/Let it Be sessions is the looseness of the group as they sloppily play covers and fool around with their own old songs. So many weird things, tucked in between a million takes of “Get Back” and “I’ve Got a Feeling,” right?
It’s what appealed to me in listening to the Get Back sessions in the first place, so long ago, when it was available on only curated compilations on vinyl. And really bad sounding ones, too. But go to record shows or Beatlefests and scan the back cover, and things seemed like they’d be cool! All these crazy cover songs, all these oldies of theirs, all these outtakes of songs we know and songs we don’t.
But the reality usually didn’t match the fantasy. [This overall theme will absolutely be covered again in this blog, likely ad nauseum].
And on Jan. 3, they did indeed have some fun with some oldies and originals. It’s not great. And really, I think things like this add to the generic resentment toward these sessions by Beatles fans. The band doesn’t care, so why should we?
Really, not a bad point. But it is interesting so long as you accept it for what it is. It’s no different than those of us who have office jobs spending a few minutes doodling on a notepad between taking care of real work, right? Their office happens to be the studio, and their doodles, songs. And if we’re eager enough to listen to their doodles as big enough fans, well… this is what we get.
So while the band didn’t spend all that much time the first few days genuinely going over their old songs, in addition to a poke at Every Little Thing and the reintroduction of “One After 909,” the band on Jan. 3 went into the back catalog for “You Can’t Do That” — after a take of Marvin Gaye’s “Hitch Hike,” a song that seems to have inspired the song off A Hard Day’s Night.
It was pretty much 3 a.m. bar-band quality. The song breaks down about a minute in, during the “everybody’s green” part. John keeps singing, Paul keeps in there, too, and eventually the song sort of comes back to life. They make it through the instrumental portion of the song before things completely break down for good.
More fun and somewhat historic, I suppose, was when Paul took the mic for a more significant take of “I’m So Tired.” Obviously, this was not meant to be anything beyond a bit of fun. Again, more 3 a.m. bar band. But perhaps even moreso. At least, here we got through the song. And even with an attempt at the end-of-song babble!
There’s no context, by the way, for why they went into this take. The tapes I’m listening to (A/B Road) just go from an unidentifiable jam cut straight into “I’m So Tired.”
The 2021 Get Back docuseries uses this sequence to great effect as something of a gag reel, showing various moments of the group yawning, rubbing their eyes, etc., for the final moment of the day’s coverage. I posit it’s also a sneakily effective response to the famous scene of Paul yawning during “Across the Universe” in the Let It Be film, show how everyone was yawning, it wasn’t a reflection of boredom to a particular song.
They stick with the White Album (flip from side 2 to 1 if you’re so inclined) for the next song they roll right into. As on the record, Paul takes the lead on “Ob-la-di Ob-la-da” — kicking things off with the bass line — but it doesn’t take very long for John to take over.
There wasn’t a heck of a lot of John on the second day of rehearsals at Twickenham.
Nagra has about 13 minutes of Don’t Let Me Down, 30 minutes of I’ve Got a Feeling (which is half-John, at least), and he led some covers.
But about halfway through the day otherwise dominated by Paul (Two of Us, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer) and George (All Things Must Pass), John pops in to give us a very special minute or so.
“Gimme Some Truth.” A future classic. Now, still pretty rough. But, certainly recognizable as a tease to what we’d see two years later on Imagine.
The band jumps right in, little preparation for the rehearsal. Indeed, the song dates back to ’68 in India, so there’s at least some familiarity.
Lyrically, it’s certainly not to its final form. Or even if it is, we don’t hear it here. Paul repeatedly makes reference to “son of Gary Cooper” — Richard Nixon, at this point the president-elect — wasn’t yet part of the lyric.
Prior to the brief foray into the song — the lone attempt at it on Jan. 3 — there’s a bit of back and forth as to what to play next. During part of the discussion, Paul (presumably) is playing the bass line to “Money (That’s What I Want).” There’s shuffling of papers as they ask which song to play next.
Paul: If you will all now turn to page 33.
George: “She Came in through the Bathroom Window?”
Paul: “All Things Must Pass?”
George: “Bang Bang, Maxwell’s Hammer?”
John: Is this a Harrisong? … I’ve got one, “Gimme Some Truth,” or something.”
It was, in fact, “Gimme Some Truth.” Not “Something.”
As we hear on vocals, curiously enough, it’s Paul. John sings along harmony and then takes over the lead when singing what would ultimately be the song’s first verse as the rehearsal concludes (the clip above pretty much is all we’d get). Why does Paul lead? Could just be Paul being Paul, taking over and singing while John gets himself acclimated or is otherwise occupied. Interesting, regardless.
However it happened, it’s the last we’d hear of the song for the day (we’d hear it again in a few days).
As quickly as it was introduced, they returned to “All Things Must Pass.” It was John’s last notable contribution the rest of the day.
Shortly after a discussion of Hey Jude, and the Wilson Pickett cover that had just been released, George begins to discuss the songs he’s bringing to the rehearsals.
“Thinking of all the tunes I’ve got, and they’re all slowish,” George says.
“Most of mine are,” Paul agrees.
Indeed, Paul had already introduced “Let it Be” earlier that day and the sessions closed with lengthy rehearsals of “Two of Us” the day before.
Then George jumps in with something of a revelation, at least to these ears 43 years later.
“I’ve got that Taxman Part 2, Taxman Revisited. But it should be very sad-type, with maybe a string or two.”
Taxman Part 2! What could that be??
It’s something Paul’s familiar with, since he responds with a passive “Oh, yeah.”
The internet is pretty empty when it comes to references of this, a song called “Taxman Pt. 2.” The few informal references I’ve seen suggest the song is actually “Isn’t It a Pity” — based upon the two-second sample of the song George subsequently plays.
I guess it could be that, if only because we know that George had brought the song to band initially during the Revolver sessions (we’ll learn that later on as we hear the tapes, in fact). The lone lyric he sings here — “When you’re smiling” — doesn’t necessarily lead to that, though.
I’ve also seen that it could be “Art of Dying,” since that also dates back to 1966.
The only two songs he even uses the word “smiling,” at least as far as Google is concerned, are “Behind the Locked Door” and “Soft-Hearted Hana.” And they could be easily dismissed — the former since it was about Bob Dylan written just a few months earlier, and the latter since George himself said he wrote it in 1978. George is the source of both those facts in I Me Mine.
Whichever song it is, the “Taxman” reference is probably by topical association only, since none of the possibilities are remotely anything like Revolver’s leadoff track.
Meanwhile, George continues to the band’s longtime bassist and drummer.
“So far there’s only a couple I know I could do live with no backing. And that’s one of them.
January 2022 update: The 50th anniversary deluxe edition of George’s All Things Must Pass LP included a book with an original list of potential songs for the LP from 1970, and it contained “Art of Dying,” “Behind the Locked Door” AND “Son of Taxman (5 Year Slog)” all by name. So it’s clearly a new song we don’t (yet) know — although a leak may have quickly come and gone last year. Once the dust settles, I’ll rework this post in its entirety to work this info into the main part of the post.
Robbie Robertson and George Harrison, November 1968
The Beatles had been Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Elvis Presley, the BeachBoys and others. And on January 3 for the rehearsals of “All Things Must Pass,” George said, “We’re pretending to be The Band for this one.”
These are genuine rehearsals, the band learning chords, harmonies and the song in general.
(I embedded this last post about the song, but worth repeating.)
They sound mostly not good, beset by some technical woes, a lack of focus and generally sloppy play. If this was how John and Paul treated George’s songs during rehearsals for all their other albums, we’re lucky to only have recordings available for these sessions to spare him the indignity.
As the rehearsals continue, George elaborates on the sought-after vibe.
“The thing that I feel about the emotion of it is very Band-y. Rick [Danko], this one, the one who wrote really the best ones. It’s like…” [plays the first verse]
He begins to describe how he wants the backup vocals during the chorus to sound.
“If there’s people joining in, I’d appreciate it,” George says.
After a few takes, Paul offers a suggestion. “If John sings what you’re singing, and I sing harmony that’ll be the Raelettes [Ray Charles’ backup singers].
But it’s The Band that George wants the inspiration drawn from.
“The reason all their people are singing different lines is they all want to be the singer. … [And] there’s discipline where nobody’s crowding anybody else out. But it’s really great.”
January 3 “All Things Must Pass” harmonies, from the Get Back docuseries.
As the harmonies continue to be worked out as they wrap up the day’s rehearsals of the song, John at one point remarks, “It’s getting like gospel.” But it also gets pretty sloppy. These kinds of harmonies do work for The Band, but it’s not quite working for George, Paul and John. Ultimately, some of the suggestions George had for the harmonies would show up in altered form when the song finally was released by George himself.
(First minute or so is from the Jan. 3 sessions)
George also wanted John’s organ sound to ape The Band.
“This guy Paul is looking a bit like from The Band who’s the organist [Garth Hudson], he’s really fantastic. And he’s into that so much. And it sounds a bit like a synthesizer, because the notes bend.”
So The Band gets the credit for the song’s sound. What about the lyrics? George explains to John:
“It’s Timothy Leary, I suppose. In his ‘Psychedelic Prayers’ he had one. I remember just from years ago. … That gave me the idea for the thing.
In fact, George summarizes nearly all the above quite neatly in his 1980 tome I Me Mine, without giving quite the level of direct credit to Leary, at least for the song’s first few lines.
When I wrote “All Things Must Pass” I was trying to do a Robbie Robertson-Band sort of tune and that is what it turned into. I think the whole idea of “All Things Must Pass” has been written up by all kinds of mystics and ex-mystics including Timothy Leary in his psychedelic poems.
Near the end of the day’s rehearsals during a break, John’s misreading of the lyric sheet — he sees “wind” as “mind” — ends up as a suggestion.
“A mind can blow these clouds away. … There’s a bit of psychedelia in it, you know? Social-comment like. “
Musical equipment, and not necessarily significant advances in songs themselves, characterized much of the Jan. 3 rehearsals, and certainly so during All Things Must Pass, from the shoctric shocks that actually made the film for the song’s only cinematic “appearance” to the more significant discussions about more macro points that occurred between takes — and during them — as well.
During one particular take — 3.106, if you’re keeping score at home — there’s extended crosstalk that begins as the song is still being played between Paul and Glyn Johns regarding bringing in a mobile eight-track to properly record the Twickenham sessions.
“What about Wally Heider? You know Wally Heider, ” Glyn says to Paul, and he replies, no. “Wally Heider is the mobile guy in America. He’s got a studio on Cahuenga. It’s the Beach Boys’ studio. They have a fucking great truck.
[It’s a] big truck, does eight-track mobile. Did the Cream live album and all that. We could get that, I suppose.”
Mind you, Cream had back-to-back records with live portions, and would later have a full-live album that came out post-breakup. So really, it could be referencing any of those.
Paul replies: “Telephone America… get it here next week, that quick.”
When told EMI only had a four-track mobile, Paul quickly snapped back: “No they haven’t. They took a fucking eight-track out to the Beach Boys. They really do [have an eight-track], because I had to use the studio, and they said, ‘We’re moving the eight-track tonight.’ And that was one of the excuses they used. Really.”
Paul continues to George: “If you wanted to to get eight-track stuff to record all this, you wanted to get the greatest equipment, where would we get it? Because apparently it hasn’t been… (recording trails off).
“We lend it to ourselves,” George says. “But EMI should do it. It’s like if Benjamin Britten wants to do an album in Paris, EMI has to fucking get all that shit over to him.”
“And they do it of course,” Paul adds, disgusted.
“Seeing as we subsidize EMI, then get it out of there,” George replies.
After a break in the tape, Paul continues.
“The answer is to get here before the end of this week the best console they possibly have here. Really, the end of the week. And what’s the hangup? Is it the expense? Japan and America, they’re both very together. Germany? Germany’s very together. … See, we should hust have a mixer and everything.
“If it was America, they’d be there with 48 eight-tracks,” George later adds. “And it’s a live album, they’re the company they get to charge on it , they have to supply it.”
The band returns to All Things Must Pass. But they weren’t done talking. After a few more takes, the band goes back to discussing essence of the sessions (3.138).
“You know,” George begins, “the idea of doing this thing so it’s just us doing it and there’s no overdubs or you can’t get out of it , is much better, really. Because you know all the time recording you think, it’s all right, we can do that later. So you never get even the most out of that [indecipherable]… really.
John finally chimes in after briefly asking about the song’s lyrics with further ruminations on the live performance with the band just two years and four months removed from their final live show.
People who are doing live shows now, they take so much gear on stage with them like echoes, phasing, tapes. And they do it live — they do their overdubs. And we’re still thinking of it in terms of the four guys and four amps.
Before returning to playing, George talks of getting a Leslie guitar pedal for the show and then of Magic Alex working on their studio that week before the band ultimately pivots to Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.
Fascinating are the politics involved with EMI and the issues they apparently had domestically in the UK.
And again, I can’t get over the question of why they even have started the sessions given the questions they still had over recording and getting equipment.
More All Things Must Pass talk in the next post.
Many, many thanks to @TheLilacTime and commenters @trainman74 and anonymous for helping clear up some of the details in the above bit of dialogue, including Wally Heider’s identity, Glyn’s voice and the location of Cahuenga.
Before I begin, thanks to all the new followers who found me from the spectacular Hey Dullblog and the superlative Kenwood. Glad to have you here!
The hour and a half spent listening to the Beatles rehearse “All Things Must Pass” (that includes their chatter before and after playing) on the second day of the Twickenham sessions are interesting (and aggravating) enough to warrant multiple posts. Count this as post No. 1.
Like Let it Be’s opening sequence, there was a bit of symbolism in the film’s portrayal of the “All Things Must Pass” rehearsals.
Feedback
Don’t remember hearing the song in the movie? Well, they never quite got to the song itself.
About 5 1/2 minutes in — after a performance of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” from a different day — there’s a sequence lasting just under a minute of George getting a load of feedback speaking from his microphone, and the crew working to fix it.
Hilarity ensues after George exclaims, “Fucking hell… shocktric shocks.” He insists “I’ve just got a belt, man” as far as what could possibly be causing the feedback. “I’ve got rubber shoes as well,” he says before Michael Lindsay-Hogg (I believe) chimes in, “And you’re made of wood” to laughter.
Naturally George tries again to touch the mic only to get shocked again.
Paul wraps the scene by looking into the camera and saying, “If this boy dies, you’re going to cop it.” And we’re off to a later take of “Two of Us.”
So here we have the lone moment in the movie of “All Things Must Pass” and it’s simply aborted, merely comic relief.
One of the film’s “touching” moments
In the movie, it was truly just a blip between songs. In reality, the technical problems lasted… well, I don’t know how long it lasted. But based on the remainder of that take in the tapes (“All Things Must Pass 3.101, for those keeping score), there was more feedback, more mic maneuvering for more than two minutes, more poking fun at George, then the tapes cut off. We’re back as they begin a subsequent take of the song, immediate issues already resolved.
The scene was edited for the film, as the dialogue didn’t quite happen in the order it was presented.
Knowing now what the song is actually being attempted — and we never do actually get to it in the film (or recorded for the album) — is an awful, awful tease. But that was really just part and parcel of the rehearsals of the song on Jan. 3 (and, I suppose, of how John and Paul treated the song overall, showing it little urgency).
The shock sequence also appears in the 2021 Get Back docuseries.
George has a really difficult time teaching the band how he wants the “All Things Must Pass” to sound (“Tell us the bits of which you’re most unsure of it,” he asks the band. “Or all of it.”). They sound clumsy and distant.
You hear phones ringing in the background at times. The equipment doesn’t work. The band is distracted — Paul argues about recording equipment with Mal Evans during one of the takes. There’s plenty of this throughout the sessions at Twickenham, I’m sure (I’m just on Day 2). but this is, in the immortal words of Paul years later, a drag, isn’t it?
After hearing a few songs sound close in pretty good shape (“Don’t Let Me Down,” “I’ve Got a Feeling,” and “One After 909” — that last one is cheating, I know) and other new songs with more polish (“Two of Us” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”) in those first two days, I hoped for more from the initial rehearsals for “All Things Must Pass,” some remote acknowledgement that this song was a keeper and should be thrown in the pile of songs for the performance and album they were working on.
Instead, it’s an aggravating listen, kind of the classic Beatles “with their trousers down” that the sessions were always labeled as. I do know the song gets better, having heard rehearsals from later in the sessions. I just got greedy wanting more early. And it’s made worse with the hindsight that ultimately, the song wouldn’t end up going much further than it already was.
More on the song — and the discussions the band had during rehearsals of it — in the next few posts.
Blogoversary week continues with a look back at my posts about today in Nagra tapes history: Jan. 3, 1969.
Hearing things: John reminds us he’s still there with a taste of a future solo classic
They May Be Parted 
