Tag Archives: Yoko Ono

October 7, 2026 · 9:09 am

Jan. 14: Two Junkies

John Lennon and Yoko Ono gave a lot of interviews in 1969, the year of Bagism and Bed-Ins. The 30 minutes they spent with a Canadian TV network on January 14, 1969 — what has long been known as the “Two Junkies” interview — was otherwise completely unremarkable save three things.

First, the interview was conducted in the midst of the Get Back sessions and on set at Twickenham Film Studios. Hugh Curry, who conducted the interview for a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) television program, probably wasn’t aware George Harrison had quit the group and certainly couldn’t have anticipated it was the last real day of the sessions at Twickenham.

Second, and maybe less of a surprise, John was coming down from a heroin high. “I just was up late, you know,” he said later that day as recorded on the Nagra tapes. “I was sort of stoned and high and watching films.”

His condition alone may not have been remarkable, but halfway through the interview John fled to throw up.

Finally, and we’ll get to this at the end, the provenance of how the full interview survived is an incredible story unto itself, rich with Beatles-adjacent characters in a massive pile-on of coincidences.

In the context of the Nagra tapes and Get Back docuseries, the Two Junkies interview lives in negative space. It’s not on the dozens of hours of tapes, and the interview isn’t seen in Get Back (Peter Jackson told me during our 2021 appearance on Something About the Beatles that he decided not to pursue the rights to the clip to include in Get Back after some consideration). Like so many things Beatle-related do – or did for a long time – it survives as a bootleg.

Curry finalized the timing of the interview (after 10 a.m. this Tuesday) just a few days earlier, on January 10, after George walked out on the sessions. It was originally pitched as a discussion primarily with Yoko.

“If there’s a moment while she’s doing it, I’ll wander into it,” John generously replied to the suggestion he could participate in the interview. “You just set a time to do her, and if I’m not doing anything, I’ll come in on it.”

Speaking decades later in an interview that surfaced on YouTube in 2015 but could date earlier, Curry said he was able to hook up the interview because his cameraman, Phil Pendry, was friends with Yoko’s then-estranged husband Tony Cox. Curry considered any appearance by John to be a bonus.

“We got there, and John and Yoko showed up, and we all had a couple of cups of tea and woke up, because it was fairly early in the morning, and did the interview,” Curry said. “And it went quite well, and John was really good and very kind to do it … it worked out very well, and that was the end of the story.”

(It wasn’t even close to the end of the story.)

John, Yoko and CBC’s Hugh Curry as captured by Michael’s cameras and revealed in Get Back.

Curry already had a history with the group – he interviewed three Beatles for Canadian radio during promotion for the White Album. At the time of this interview at Twickenham, Curry was in London embarking on a six-week assignment collecting interviews for a forthcoming youth-focused TV show, “Through the Eyes of Tomorrow.”

Let’s dig into the interview itself and the scene around it. Remember the last post: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Michael Lindsay-Hogg and others were playfully sketching out movie ideas aware John and Yoko were actively being filmed.

“There’s a camera crew here from CBC who John fixed [up], and they want to do Yoko and possibly John. They want to set up in the other part of the studio. They can easily go to another studio. Do you mind?” Michael asked.

It was OK with everyone, and Paul joked “We’ll just shoot the CBC crew shooting John shooting Yoko. But John and Yoko should be shooting Ringo and I.”

We could hear roadie Mal Evans as part of the conversation on the Nagras, but at the same time, he was keeping an eye on the nearby CBC interview. Photographer Richard Keith Wolff was there too, too, part of Curry’s traveling party. At one point Ringo sneaks by in the background, prompting some laughter.

Located on the familiar Twickenham set (the Blüthner and the rest of the Beatles’ rehearsal stage serves as the backdrop), John sat to Yoko’s right — both were in director’s chairs, with Curry sitting at an angle, in front of the couple and to their right. Occasionally you can see Curry’s leg in the shot, and his questions are audible on the recording. John enjoyed the usual Get Back session combo meal: a cigarette with a side of tea. Yoko worked on a muffin or cake or toast of some kind and was often seen picking at her nails and fingers. Their legs were crossed throughout. John appeared pale, at least at the beginning, as seen in poor quality video and better quality photographs. His speech was uncharacteristically slow and only got slower.

The interview began with Curry asking John for the couple’s origin story, which was familiar in the press by now, leading into how they have since been artistic influences on each other. Yoko was gracious and reflective in her reply.

(Both John and Yoko said “you know” a lot during the interview – for the sake of easy reading, I edited several – but not all — of those out when I quoted them below, like I would if someone said “um.” This sort of thing happens all the time. I went to journalism school, it’s all good!)

“John actually really changed the whole world in a way,” Yoko said. “You know, he influenced the whole world, I think. In that sense, I was sort of influenced.

“I think my work lacked a kind of relaxed type of sense of humor. I mean, there was sort of a cynicism in it, but there wasn’t a real sense of humor and also sort of constructive thinking. And that’s the thing that I sort of got from John, I think.”

Much of the interview centered around John and Yoko’s LP Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, recorded in May 1968 and released that November, only a few weeks before this interview. Curry called the duo’s nearly 30-minute platter of sounds “not a one-time listening experience.”

“If I did anything vaguely like that before, I’d just do it for sort of fun and maybe play it to Ringo,” John said.

John didn’t coin the name “Two Junkies” but came close in the late ’70s, writing that he and Yoko on the cover of Two Virgins were “two slightly overweight ex-junkies.” That description appeared in an autobiographical section of his posthumously released book Skywriting by Word of Mouth, in 1986. Click on for the NSFW version of the cover, but make sure to ask mom and dad first!

When it came to the controversial cover of the LP, John said he originally envisioned it as Yoko alone posing naked. John first pitched the idea to her in a letter he sent from India in February 1968, which included a drawing of her naked sitting on a “huge glass ball.”

John: The natural thing that I got from her and her book Grapefruit … was the simplicity and childlike [nature] and innocence. …

And then I thought the best cover [would be] for her to be naked and sort of say, this is me, you know, no arty cover or no design to it, just a plain straight photo of her naked as her work is. …

Just naturally when we got together and made the LP together [I thought that] that we should both be naked on the cover. You know, I didn’t think anything until I started getting reaction from people. …

Even when I first got it back, I got the surprise of seeing myself actually naked. But I thought, well, why not, you know? We’re all naked. And so it was just when I started showing it to people and people reacted very strongly, I thought maybe there’s some trouble here.

Freshly established as a Beatles B-side and album track, “Revolution” was another justifiable talking point that Curry jumped on. John’s reaction time answering had noticeably slowed by this point, 10 minutes into the interview.

Curry: How do you think [the revolution is] going?

John: I’ve no idea really. … I just know there’s something in the air. That’s all I know. And I don’t know what form it takes. I don’t know whether, you know, five million people in Trafalgar Square or [the] Two Virgins cover is doing it, or are both of them doing it, and to what extent they’re having the effect. …

We’re for the revolution, whatever it is, you know, but as I sort of said in that song, I’m not pro-violence. … I’m not saying, well, get off the streets and start marching and waving and distracting people. But I can’t give a yes to “let’s destroy it all,” you know, I don’t think that’s the answer. …

I really think, if it gets to destruction, you can count me out. But I’m not sure, you know, I’m human and I’m liable to change or, depending on the situation, I prefer non-violence.

It was shortly after this part of the conversation John, in fact, counted himself out.

“Excuse me, I feel a bit sick,” he said a little after the 16-minute mark of the recording, following a short stretch in which John was hiccupping, audibly holding something down, and clearly sick to his stomach.

This is when the Two Virgins canonically became the Two Junkies.

According to Wolff, who shared this account in Ken Womack’s book Living the Beatles Legend, Mal quickly arrived on the scene to help John, who threw up off-camera.

It’s Mal Evans to the rescue, as photographed by Richard Keith Wolff on January 14, 1969.

John recalled this moment later in the day, as heard on the Nagras and seen in Get Back — although for the docuseries, the reveal was edited for dramatic effect. The entirety of John’s admission came after actor Peter Sellers’ visit to the set, which was also in Get Back. It came on the heels of a mention of Ringo feeling sick (a hangover, probably).

“See, you missed me this morning. I did it for CBS [sic],” John said. “Just leapt off in the middle of the interview. No reason at all, except that I mistreated my body.”

A few minutes later, John returned to the subject:

John: I’m just recovering from the day.

Yoko: From the night.

John (feigning shock): Oh, don’t say that! You’re always revealing us. From the night indeed. Next thing you’ll be telling them about our black sheets.

Unlike other days recorded, here John and Yoko bluntly discussed drug use on tape. As Sellers left the stage, John joked the actor shouldn’t “leave the needles lying around. We’ve got a bad reputation now with John getting busted.”

The basement of 34 Montagu Square, where John and Yoko were busted for drugs as well as posed for the Two Virgins LP cover. Photographed on my trip to London in June 2024.

“I know what it’s like for showbiz people,” John continued. “They’re under a great strain and they need a little relaxation. … It’s a choice between that and exercise, you know. And drugs win, hand [sic] down.”

“Well, shooting is exercise,” Yoko added.

(For the record, John maintained they only snorted heroin. “I never injected it or anything,” he said in the 1970 Lennon Remembers interview for Rolling Stone. “We sniffed a little when we were in real pain.”)

In Get Back, the edit shows a concerned Paul suggesting John should avoid discussing drug use in front of the cameras.

“Is there any need to do this in public, Mr. Lennon?” we hear Paul ask.

But this response from Paul was spliced in from a completely different part of the conversation more than 20 minutes later and explicitly in the context of the Two Virgins nude LP cover. It wasn’t even a criticism – it was Paul role-playing as an aggressive interviewer as they joked their way through the afternoon.

Let’s listen in to be sure. First, here’s the context around Paul’s line “Is there any need to do this in public, Mr. Lennon?” as heard on the Nagra tapes.

Now, here’s John’s description of getting sick.

OK, so John vomited halfway through his CBC interview. Now what?

Consummate professional and self-promotion addict he was, John got right back in front of the camera to complete the interview after the brief absence. John wasn’t running quite at 100 percent, but he enjoyed a little bit more pep in the second half of the interview.

Two Virgins resumed as the focus of Curry’s line of questioning at John’s return. The LP, in John’s opinion, should be analyzed no differently than a Beatles record.

John: All the versions that people have of it, all their interpretations are true for them. If you believe it, it’s true. And it you don’t believe it, it isn’t true for you. It doesn’t exist. If I don’t believe you, in you, you don’t exist.

Yoko: It [was actually titled] Unfinished Music, which means that we were very conscious of that, meaning that you can add anything to it. You own sounds, if you want to, or just in your mind.

John, who said in the interview “it’s a job, writing a song,” put some effort linking his work with the Beatles to what he was creating with Yoko. It’s a thoughtful response that sheds a little light on his thinking — or what he wanted to telegraph publicly — halfway through the Get Back sessions and while George was estranged from the group.

Although we’ve [the Beatles] been married 10 years, it’s still as new as it ever was in the relation. You can’t just sort of bulldoze through because we’ve been together so long. We’ve got to feel our way and try and communicate or reach a certain level together to put it across, otherwise it doesn’t work.

Asked about a potential return to the stage, John derided their final tours in 1966 as “a sort of freak show.”

“The Beatles were the show, and the music had nothing to do with it,” he said. “And as we were musicians, we felt there was no enjoyment. … The only reason to be a Beatle is to make music, and not just to sort of be in a circus.”

John on January 14, 1969, as photographed by Richard Keith Wolff.

Curry pushed back, suggesting the live scene in 1969 wasn’t what it was even a couple years earlier, saying progressive venues like the Fillmore East and West and the Avalon Ballroom were more controlled environments with attentive audiences.

John: But we’ve done that gig. … We haven’t got a strong enough compulsion. …

That’s partly the reason for doing this show, doing a live sort of album with an audience.

With a return to the stage to cap the TV show they were recording still the Beatles’ imminent plan in some form — though at the moment an increasingly quixotic concept given the situation at this low ebb of the Get Back sessions — John was still offering a public face that the plan was still on.

An examination of John’s work ethic concluded the interview.

“I’ve always never enjoyed not having anything to do … but now there’s something to do all the time [with projects with Yoko]”

If he wasn’t making a record but was “in the garden, making eight mil[limeter] films,” John didn’t view that as work until Yoko convinced him otherwise.

John: Just having vague ideas and things, which I didn’t consider work. But when I met Yoko, I realized that was work. You know, that’s another kind of work. And so one way or the other, I work all the time now. I think I always did, but I felt as though I wasn’t working before.

Curry: You’re having to work at not working type of thing.

John: Yeah, but I can’t stand not working, you know.

At the conclusion of the interview, we can hear on the Nagras John and Yoko returning to the others as they’re climbing the chains on set, just killing time.

The Two Junkies interview survived in its entirety, although only a small portion was originally broadcast on Canadian television in 1969. Taken in sum, this wasn’t a groundbreaking or revelatory interview. It was pretty boilerplate, but an accurate, adequate fit for the couple’s public statements at the time. Unlike the other celebrity interviews Curry conducted in this period and apropos of the importance of the subjects, this one was shot in color.

Watched side-by-side with the Get Back documentary — or Let It Be, or any point in his public life, really — the Two Junkies interview is wild contrast for the John Lennon we’re used to. One of the most charismatic cultural figures in modern history, John is a monotone bore for most (all?) of the interview.

John on January 14, 1969, as photographed by Richard Keith Wolff.

Two Junkies is an outlier, existing apart from the Nagras, Get Back or Let it Be. If we want to know what it’s about and what happened, we need to pursue it as a separate entity, part of John’s solo career, in some part. So much of the Get Back sessions witness the Beatles revealing themselves organically. But here, in that same moment and space, there’s an outsider asking the questions in a deliberate manner.

With the interview in the can, Curry struck two prints of the film, one of which he kept, and the other handed off to the CBC. What happened next pushes this story into the late 1980s and in a wildly unexpected direction.

The Toronto Star, January 28, 1969.

The John-Yoko segment for “Through the Eyes of Tomorrow” was promoted as “coming soon” in TV listings only two weeks after the interview was conducted, in advance of the show’s debut the following month (which featured a January 7 chat with Jimi Hendrix).

A short clip from the John-Yoko interview ultimately premiered in May 1969, packaged in an episode that also included conversations with Eric Clapton, Spencer Davis and Fat Mattress. (Curry’s relationship with Lennon ultimately extended later into 1969, when he helped organize the Toronto Rock & Roll Festival.)

A newspaper listing (The Regina Leader Post) promotes “Through the Eyes of Tomorrow” on May 10, 1969. Fat Mattress was a band fronted by Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding, and he was quite slender!

For the wider, global public, a 20-second clip included in the 1988 documentary Imagine: John Lennon – in which John discusses “Revolution,” as quoted above – marked the first broad exposure to the interview. But that clip wasn’t supplied by the CBC, it came from the print Curry made for himself. Thing is, Curry didn’t give it to the Imagine producers, either.

“I’d been hanging out [in the late 1960s] with a guy called Tony Secunda, who was a real character, a real legend in the British music scene at that time,” Curry recalled in the YouTube clip posted in 2015. In his career, Secunda managed the likes of the Procul Harum, the Move, T-Rex and the Moody Blues, among many others. He was a legend! In her 2007 memoir “Memories, Dreams and Reflections,” Marianne Faithful wrote, without elaborating, that Secunda was the inspiration for “Sailor Sam” in Paul’s 1973 hit “Helen Wheels.” (Yes, I know Sailor Sam was in “Band on the Run,” too, but Secunda produced bands from Birmingham, which was name-checked in “Helen Wheels.”)

Certainly, Paul would have known Secunda through Denny Laine, Wings guitarist and one-time Moody Blues guitarist. Curry knew Denny too, via Secunda. “We hung out a lot together and partied together, and probably too hard,” Curry remembered.

Stick with me, I’m about to tie all of this together to the Two Junkies. To do that, though, let’s reintroduce two marijuana junkies: Paul and Linda McCartney. Paul’s drug bust in advance of Wings’ 1980 tour of Japan set off a chain reaction that led us – like, literally you and me – to be able to watch the Two Junkies interview on YouTube today.

Artifacts of the aborted Wings 1980 Japan tour (plus a sweet Rockestra scarf) on display at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this past summer.

Here’s how it played out, and remember, there are no coincidences in Beatles history, only connections we’d never predict:

The cancellation of the Wings tour in Japan ultimately led to the dissolution of the band – they split in 1981 without recording or touring again.
Dealing with the perfect storm of the end of Wings, a divorce and poor accounting advice, Denny filed for bankruptcy in 1986.
In searching though Denny’s assets as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, a film can was discovered at a flat he and Secunda had shared.

“I had totally forgotten [it] even existed,” Curry said of his own copy of the Two Junkies interview, which first found its way into Segunda’s during the pair’s hard-partying days, then via Secunda into Denny’s garage or basement or wherever it happened to be uncovered. Secunda suggested to Curry they “do something” with the reel, but the latter demurred, concerned with rights issues. At the same time, per Curry’s account, Secunda sent him a copy on VHS, which at some point Curry dubbed himself and shared with a friend who was a “very big Beatles fan.”

Meanwhile, in that same 1986 and across the ocean in New York, Yoko commissioned a documentary to be told in John’s words, what would become Imagine: John Lennon, released in 1988. A long lost interview clip — like, say, a joint interview with Yoko from 1969 — would be an attractive addition to the documentary. Secunda thought so too, sending his own copy of the interview to Yoko (he was ultimately credited as a researcher for the film). After the documentary hit theaters, that aforementioned very big Beatles fan suggested Curry give Imagine a watch because one scene was very familiar …

As Curry remembered:

The questions were being asked by this bloke with an English accent. And I said, gee, that voice sounds familiar. … I was thinking, well, maybe John did another interview that day or something. But then I looked down [at] the corner of the frame and I could see my boot that I’d been wearing that day to do the interview. So I knew it was in fact the interview that I’d done with John. I recognized the questions and the answers as well, but certainly I recognized the boot. …

[Secunda] clipped out my voice asking John the questions and put his own voice in. … Maybe he thought that would cover him legally where I was concerned or whatever. Or it would change the content of it and therefore change the copyright. But with Tony you never knew because he really was a lovable rogue, but a rogue nonetheless.

It doesn’t take much of a leap to assume some combination of Secunda, Curry’s friend and/or the production team for Imagine shared the full Two Junkies interview into the wild, where the bootleg market did its thing.

Recalling this from 2026, it’s incredible to consider Paul and Linda’s own drug-related indiscretions indirectly led to the widespread distribution and heightened status of what would otherwise be an obscure Canadian interview with John and Yoko, an interview that’s treated as a prime example of how drug use affected the Beatles.

And very much in the spirit of the Get Back sessions, it’s a bootleg that lets us know this moment exists at all.

Jan. 14: A day at the circus

Ringo Starr works the camera on January 14, 1969, as pictured in Get Back.

While they ultimately became a legend of the silver screen, the Beatles didn’t make as many films as they actually did.

As recently as January of this very 2026, octogenarian Paul McCartney recalled in an online Q&A what could have been the Beatles’ feature film debut, preceding A Hard Day’s Night by about a year.

Originally there was something called The Yellow Teddy Bears. We said to Brian [Epstein], ‘Yeah, OK, great!’ And then he came back to us after talking to the producers, and told us they wanted to write the songs themselves. So, we passed on that.

There may have been more to it. As quoted in Roy Carr’s Beatles at the Movies, published in 1996, Paul said: “It might have been that part of the deal meant that we also had to give away the copyright to any new songs which were featured in the film.”

You’d have to think the film’s limited potential audience – it received an X rating on release – was a further drawback, keeping anyone under 16 years old out of the theater.

Regardless of the actual reasons, they “immediately” turned the offer down, per 1990s Paul, via Carr’s book. And instead of portraying another band for their film debut, the Beatles instead appeared as John, Paul, George and Ringo in their cinematic introduction in 1964: A Hard Day’s Night.

While the Beatles’ participation in The Yellow Teddy Bears never went beyond the discussion phase, A Talent For Loving was explicitly announced as the Beatles third film, right before they started filming their second, Help!

From the February 10, 1965, Evening Standard

“The Beatles have just been signed to star in a Western. It will be their third film,” reported the February 10, 1965, issue of the Evening Standard under the headline “BEATLES TO MAKE COWBOY FILM”.

It is a £1,000,000 comedy based on the novel A Talent For Loving by Richard Condon. The Beatles will act as cowboys.

…

The Beatles will sing and their musical numbers will fit in naturally with the plot.

The role of the girl to play opposite the Beatles has yet to be cast. And it has not yet been decided which Beatle will get the girl.

Only four months after news emerged, while Help! was still being filmed, plans its follow-up were shelved.

“The script is not us,” Paul said. “We turn out like four Roy Rogers singing in the saddle.”

Paul and George elaborated in the February 1966 issue of The Beatles Book Monthly:

Paul: That doesn’t mean we decided to rule out the idea of doing a Western. It would be a comic-type Western, of course. And if we don’t do a Western this time I think it’s something we should keep in mind for the future. There are all kinds of great comedy situations you can work into a cowboy story.

George: Anyway, unless some kind of miracle happens – a script-type miracle, that is – we’ve ruled out “A Talent for Loving” and Walter Shenson has been searching for new script suggestions.

Paul: As George said, the problem is that most writers go by our image as a group. It’s difficult to get across to them the thought of having a Beatles film with a non-Beatles story.

Shades of a Personality was supposed to solve this concern, casting one Beatle (eventually reported to be John) with split personalities (himself and the other three) in something a little less fab than their previous efforts. News dribbled out of the script by prolific playwright Owen Holder in summer 1966, with an expectation filming would begin in January 1967. Ultimately Shades of a Personality never really landed squarely with the group, who took the premise elsewhere.

Looped into the Beatles world in January 1967, subversive British playwright Joe Orton — whose play Loot was financially backed by Paul — took the idea and worked off an unreleased novel as a frame for a very different Beatles film, Up Against It.

From a February 1967 entry in Orton’s diary, as published as the introduction to the screenplay for Up Against It:

I hadn’t the heart to tell [producer Shenson] that the boys, in my script, have been caught in flagrante, become involved in dubious political activity, dressed as women, committed murder, been put in prison and committed adultery. And the script isn’t finished yet. I thought it best to say nothing of my plans for the Beatles until he had a chance of reading the script. We parted at five o’clock amicably. With the contract, according to him, as good as signed. And on my part, the film almost written.

Orton wrote the script so rapidly, he asked his agent to wait three weeks before submitting it to the Beatles in early March 1967. A month later, the Beatles had moved on. Again, from the published version of Up Against It:

By March 29, Orton had still heard nothing from the Beatles. He fixed on Brian Epstein as the culprit: ‘An amateur and a fool. He isn’t equipped to judge the quality of a script. Probably he will never say “yes” equally hasn’t got the courage to say “no”. A thoroughly weak, flaccid type.’ And then on April 4, Up Against It was returned. ‘No explanation why. No criticism of the script. And apparently, Brian Epstein has no comment to make either. Fuck them.’

Decades later, in Beatles at the Movies, Paul offered a direct explanation why the script was rejected.

“The reason why we didn’t do Up Against It wasn’t because it was too far out or anything like that. We didn’t do it because it was gay. We weren’t gay and really that was all there was to it. … Now it wasn’t that that we were anti-gay – just that we, The Beatles, weren’t gay.”

(Thirty years later, Blur’s Damon Albarn performed in a BBC Radio production of Up Against It, another link from the Fabs to ’90s Britpop).

The cover to the 1979 UK edition of Joe Orton’s posthumously published and modified script for Up Against It. Cover art is by Nick Price, who you may recognize as the illustrator of Kate Bush’s Never for Ever album cover.

Aborted efforts of film adaptations of The Three Musketeers and Lord of the Rings starring the Beatles never got far, either, despite the rumors in the late ’60s.

Even after the Get Back sessions, with the Beatles straining to simply stay together as a band, much less as an acting troupe, George enthused over a script for a potential late-stage Beatles film. From the April 5, 1969 DISC and Music Echo:

BEATLES have decided on a script for their next film and shooting should start before the end of the year.

George Harrison told Disc on Monday: “It will be at least as big as 2001 visually with full stereo sound and Cinerama.

“The story is fantastic. It’s based on an idea we had a year ago, but which fell through because of a lot of technicalities at the time. The tables have turned now and we have access to the script again.”

All four Beatles have agreed to do the movie – their third group film – provided they could make it their way.

“And we’ve agreed to let each other do exactly what he wants to do with it. We’ve got to a point where we can see each other quite clearly. And by allowing each other to be each other we can become the Beatles again.”

My emphasis on those last few lines, which is an interesting window on what George believed – or very much wanted the public to believe in what well could have been a giant leg-pull – was happening in Beatledom in springtime 1969.

On January 14, 1969, however, it was the very lack of one George Harrison that prompted further film ideas, as they killed time and entertained each other in this period the Beatles were a temporary trio. Creativity flowed at Twickenham, even if it wasn’t always in song. If the Beatles really wanted to make a new movie, and even if it was completely as a joke, they could define it exactly as they wanted.

“We could make a film, you know,” Paul said, sidelining the film the Beatles were actually making – what would later become Let It Be (1970) and ultimately Get Back (2021) – which remained stalled as the second Tuesday of the year went on.

“Let’s get a script and all that, and really not waste all this camera time and do a little sort-of film today. … We all get parts, and get an old Fabian script or something.”

George wasn’t landing a role — he was still AWOL from the band after walking out four days earlier. John Lennon wouldn’t pass the audition, either, but at least he had an excuse: He was presently joining Yoko Ono in an interview with a Canadian TV network elsewhere on set at Twickenham Film Studios. More on that next time.

Paul was there, and so was Ringo Starr, and the ideas flowed freely from the rhythm section and an increasingly desperate Michael Lindsay-Hogg, with Mal Evans and Glyn Johns chipping in.

We get this sequence in part, chopped up and out of sequence in Get Back. The docuseries gives an accurate if incomplete vibe of what they talked about, but while it was a couple minutes in Get Back, it was more than 20 minutes of real time on the Nagra Tapes, long enough to justifiably dig into it here.

Mal, Glyn, Ringo, Michael and Paul on January 14, 1969, as seen in Get Back.

Let’s start with the cast of characters, led by the public safety staff. Sgt. Badger and Private Cluff (“happily known as ‘Ginge’”) had yet to be cast, but by Ringo’s suggestion Mal would play the “policeman gone wrong.”

The “church-hall lout who commits the robbery” was given to Glyn, who gave the impression he didn’t want to be a villain, at least by Paul’s interpretation.

“Do you want to be a goodie then, Glyn?” Paul said to laughter. “Come on now, you’re sulking, aren’t you? [Glyn] wants to be a goodie.”

It was unclear who would play “the roughneck that changes, the hard-drug-peddling yob turned to religion” but Ringo accepted the role of the schoolteacher on vacation who was just taking children on a tour to see the famous masks of Damascus before finding himself yanked into a crime thriller.

Tony Richmond (pictured left of Ringo) is the fence.

Michael offered to direct, and suggested Tony Richmond do his usual work behind the camera.

“No, Tony’s in it,” Paul countered. “He’s the fence, where Glyn gets rid of the drugs, through him.”

“You’re the traffic sign,” Ringo deadpanned to Michael.

Eventually they worked on diversifying the cast, eyeing a few women present at Twickenham for a Magic Christian casting call, seeking a “couple of groovy-looking blondes,” per Michael, for the spy girl (Lavinia or Titania) and the sex interest – the last of which Paul called for a “closed set for the nude bathing scene.”

While the farcical script took shape, so to speak, an authentic prop appeared on the soundstage, a locomotive slated to be used in the imminent filming of The Magic Christian, as starring Ringo.

The train sets for The Magic Christian are loaded into Twickenham, as shows in Get Back.

The Twickenham train, as seen with Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, et al., in The Magic Christian.

“Hey, we’re getting a train in!” Michael said excitedly. We weren’t left any timetables, but we can be clever and even call that train the one after 9:09 if we wanted to get in the spirit of things and tie things together.

It was a full-circle moment: Less than five years earlier the Beatles filmed the opening performance of A Hard Day’s Night – the sequence for “I Should Have Known Better” as performed on a train – on this same Twickenham soundstage, a point that couldn’t have been lost on Paul and Ringo.

More full-circleness: A Hard Day’s Night led the Beatles to draw no shortage of comparisons to the Marx Brothers. And it just so happened Paul – who to this day owns Groucho’s old bed, by the way (check this excerpt from Alice Cooper’s autobiography) — had a Marx Brothers script in his hands. You can see it in Get Back: He’s reading from a couple of thick, comb-bound, soft-covered books.

“[We can do a] remake,” Paul suggested as he read from the “A Night at the Opera” script. (Ringo conflated this film with “At The Circus,” referring to “A Night at the Circus.”)

As read by Paul:

Groucho: I’m glad you told me.

Maids: (in high voice) We’ve come to make up your room sir.

Chico: Are those my hard-boiled eggs?

Groucho: I can’t tell till …they get them out of me

Fun fact: A Night at the Opera, filmed in 1935, employed backwards masking a generation before the Beatles popularized it on record. Just another little Marx Brothers-Beatles link to share with your friends.

Ringo, still considering “At The Circus,” broke into harmony with someone who sounded like Mal on that film’s “Two Blind Loves.”

“We’re going to make a train movie,” Michael said. “Why don’t we do ‘A Night on a Train’?

“We’ve got a spare few thousand feet [of film], we don’t tell [Let it Be and The Magic Christian producer Denis O’Dell] we’re doing it.”

Remembering one of their missing members, Paul suggested the film crew capture John and Yoko being interviewed by the CBC.

John, Yoko and CBC’s Hugh Curry on set on January 14, 1969.

“But John and Yoko should be shooting Ringo and I,” Paul said. “And we should be taking Instamatic shots of the crew [laughing].” Drifting back into fiction, Paul adds: “And the crew is reading Playboy.”

Earlier Paul pitched a remake, then Ringo suggested a throwback. “Let’s make a silent movie. Slow ‘til its speeded up when we play it back, ’cause they’re always funny to watch.”

For pretty much the first time in this sequence, someone came up with a reasonable idea, and it’s the director of the only film that actually was on the other end of the camera.

“What we could do to save a little money is,” Michael pitched, “figure [we] take one of these songs we’re recording, make it a single and do the promo film for the single here.”

Paul only chuckled a “yeah, right” in reply – while the idea was justifiable, George wasn’t there, and there weren’t many songs in decent enough shape to fully record.

But if they were going to make a “train movie” then maybe Michael was thinking of their completed train song: “One After 909.” He had worse ideas (and I say that as an MLH advocate).

Whether it was for a song promo or fake film, Michael set his sights on the star backdrop in a moment we catch in Get Back.

“Hey, should we shoot the train coming in? Chug, chug.”

Tony shut him down to widespread disapproval, repeatedly rejecting any filming of the set intended for The Magic Christian. “It’s copyright,” he said.

“It’s a documentary. … It’s a good shot for the part of the atmosphere,” Michael said, incredulous. “Oh, c’mon Tony. Oh, fuck.”

Ringo and Paul likewise objected, the latter mocking Tony as Parisian New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard.

Godard was a bit of a dirty word in Beatle parts, especially around John, so pardon the Frenchman and this huge tangent that revolves around another Beatle movie that wasn’t made.

One obituary for Godard, who died in 2022, called the filmmaker “cinema’s north star” asserting “no one did more to make movies the art of youth.” He was deeply important, and this time and place was his as a filmmaker.

A memorable night at the end of November 1968 – certainly fresh in the mind of the gang at Twickenham, it was only weeks earlier — included Godard imploring the audience to not watch his new film (One Plus One, his production with the Rolling Stones), calling the viewers fascists when they did. Then he punched his producer.

But before he worked with the Stones, he set his sights even higher, on our Fabs. Anne Wiazemsky, Godard’s wife from 1967-1979 laid it all out in her 2015 memoir, Un an Après.

Via Google Translate, from the original French to English:

At the instigation of an English producer determined to make a film featuring Godard and the Beatles, I had accompanied him to London. He had even scribbled a rough outline of a plot in which a young woman unable to get an abortion (me) tried to commit suicide by throwing herself in front of a car. Alas, she kept running into a Beatle behind the wheel of a Rolls-Royce, and her attempt would fail. What would happen next? Jean-Luc didn’t know, but he was counting on the Beatles to provide further inspiration.

…

A meeting was arranged with John Lennon and Paul McCartney at their Abbey Road offices. The former was immediately hostile, unreceptive to any of the enterprising producer’s suggestions; he seemed miles away and intent on ending the meeting as quickly as possible. The latter, by contrast, was all charm and kindness, eager to make a film with Godard—whose cinema, he said, he “revered… all of it.” As the discussion dragged on, John Lennon stood up and left the room without a word or a backward glance. “Come back tomorrow,” the conciliatory Paul McCartney told us. “John isn’t having a good day. But I’ll speak to him, and I hope he’ll be more cooperative.”

Godard returned with an idea based on a script “The Assassination of Trotsky,” with Lennon playing Lenin’s co-revolutionary.

“John Lennon will play Trotsky! Undeniable, right?” … Jean-Luc, in high spirits, had immediately launched into a pitch to John Lennon about the Trotsky story. They would make a real revolutionary film together—the first of its kind. He was speaking at breakneck speed … [b]ut John Lennon soon interrupted them; his face twisted with rage and his voice pitched high, he launched into a torrent of words of his own.

…

John Lennon and Jean-Luc were soon shouting at each other. “I think it’s a bust,” Paul said, and seeing my disappointed look, added, “I’m sorry—it sounded really good, your husband’s project… Will you tell him?”

A September 1968 interview with Godard in the International Times blamed the Beatles for being “corrupted by money,” an accusation John refuted in the November 23, 1968, issue of Rolling Stone.

Now that’s sour grapes from a man who couldn’t get us to be in his film. … Dear Mr. Godard, just because we didn’t want to be in the film with you, it doesn’t mean to say that we aren’t doing any more than you.

Returning to Twickenham ’69, Michael eventually got his shot (even if we never saw it in Let It Be or Get Back). With his voice fading in the distance on the Nagras, we hear MLH saying he’ll be somewhere “just for a minute.”

“Shall we get some seats in the train and pretend we’re on a Tube or something?” Michael soon pitched another stab at a fake film.

In due time, Paul occasionally played some piano, but he continued to be a part of the conversation.

“Can we have it in a club? You know, the atmosphere is a club. … That’s it! We’re in a band [and] peddle drugs.”

They weren’t quite done talking movies, but another stage feature – utility chains – seized their attention. They may be at a soundstage, but to mother nature’s son, it was probably like climbing a rope or tree for Paul, a erstwhile Boy Scout.

(The Scouts weren’t a complete footnote in Paul’s childhood, even though it’s a parenthetical reference here. Paul missed his first gig as a member of the Quarrymen in August 1957 because he was away at Boy Scout camp.)

Ringo was the first to dare a climb even though he admitted he “was never very good on the ropes.”

Paul: That’s the trouble you get the panic about halfway up.

Ringo: You realize you can’t stand heights.

Paul: Seen The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

Paul’s question drew a chorus of noes – the film hit theaters in London the previous August and was presently playing in Piccadilly Circus, a mere six-minute walk from 3 Savile Row. They could have gotten some steps in and killed their time seeing real movies instead of making them up.

Good thing no one else had seen it, though — it would have been an intimidating moment, revisiting the scene he was probably recalling.

In a segment we get to see in Get Back, Ringo playfully calls an end to the day’s filming with Paul stuck high on the chains.

“It’s a wrap!” Ringo said to the camera. “There’s no business like show business!”

Ringo, Paul and Mal all gave it a go, they just can’t get away from these chains. And by the time they were done, the group inched closer to reforming.

“OK, John, rise up the chains to the top,” Paul said to his songwriting partner a few minutes later, after John was reunited with the others after his lengthy TV interview.

“I know you could do this, lad. My money’s on him.”

The tapes reveal nervous laughter from Yoko before a commotion and thud from what we could assume was a minor tumble that gave way to huge laughs from the others on set.

“It’s all right,” John said in an exaggerated pained voice. “Don’t worry about a thing, Yoko.”

Still, she sounded genuinely concerned at John’s physical activity.

“He’s not that young anymore,” she said.

“No, I’m not 18 anymore,” said John, who was, in fact, 28. “I couldn’t do it at bloody 12.”

So what’s John to do instead?

“I thought we might make a film this afternoon,” Paul told him.

John was caught a little off-guard, replying, “Well, what? OK. What should we do?”

Paul: A comedy.

MLH: You rejected the guys in the Tube train and the guy whose pimp is the conductor.

Paul: We rejected it.

A lot of rejections. A lot of ideas. A lot of roles. But amateur hour was over, with multiple BAFTA and Oscar nominee and Beatle friend and muse Peter Sellers — the star of The Magic Christian, soon to be filming on this stage — arriving at Twickenham for an impromptu meet and greet.

Paul makes his pitch to Peter

With the Beatles’ film at a standstill, Paul figured he may as well have some fun with one of his many movie ideas and aim high to land a star lead.

“We’re casting this afternoon,” Paul told Peter.

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Filed under Day by day

Tagged as A Night at the Opera, A Talent For Loving, Anne Wiazemsky, At the Circus, Glyn Johns, January 14, Jean-Luc Godard, Joe Orton, John Lennon, Mal Evans, Marx Brothers, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, movies, Owen Holder, Paul McCartney, Peter Sellers, Richard Condon, Ringo Starr, Shades of a Personality, The Magic Christian, The Yellow Teddy Bears, Tony Richmond, trains, Up Against It, Walter Shenson, Yoko Ono

January 18, 2026 · 2:21 pm

TMBP Extra: Threetles’ Paradox

“It is no criticism of a thoroughly professional work that the Beatles will doubtless make sure it is out of date in a very short time.”

Writing for the Liverpool Echo on Sept. 30, 1968, Jonathan Cundy pointed to the velocity of the Beatles’ lives and musical innovation in reviewing Hunter Davies’ authorized biography that came out the same day.

No matter where they serve their guests, they seem to like the kitchen best: The Threetles in Anthology.

In real-time, the Beatles soared at the speed of light. Together or apart, across the 20^th or 21^st century, the history of the Beatles is fluid usually by their own design. And here we are talking about that again, nearly 60 years on. It wasn’t just their music and style that was constantly reinvented, so has their history in their own telling. Chisel Jonathan Cundy’s line in stone, it stands as an eloquent, evergreen statement on the Beatles biography business. Tomorrow really never knows.

I’m grateful we were served a new iteration of Anthology on Disney+ at the end of November 2025, grateful for enhanced visuals (clunky AI bits aside) and sound, because the more people are exposed to the Beatles and their history, the better. I wanted to weigh in and offer my immediate and subsequent impressions after watching Anthology ‘25. (I’m mainly writing here about the documentary, not the album set or book, although I will refer to both at times). In preparing for this post, I rewatched a broadcast version of the 1995 Anthology on the Internet Archive, my own DVD copies of the 2003 version and the 2025 streaming Disney+ cut. I also used this excellent resource documenting the changes across ’03 and ’25.

Watching the new Anthology exposed some issues in the original Anthology that I hadn’t really internalized after all this time. So I’m here to stare a hole through that version, too.

No time is a good time for a broad Beatles history. It’s always out of date in a relatively short time, even for a band that hasn’t worked as a quartet since 1969. We — the researchers, the curious, the informed — along with the somewhat fickle nature of the surviving members, estates and Apple itself, will always make that the case.

At least they acknowledge the problem. Here’s Paul as quoted in the Oct. 23, 1995, issue of Newsweek, in advance of Anthology’s release (I’ve held that magazine in my basement for decades, knowing I’d need it for this post one day):

I don’t know if you ever understand anything. That’s what happened at the end of the ‘Anthology’: I don’t understand it all any better than I ever did. But it’s all in one place now. That’s the thing.

I love the Beatles Anthology, it’s a critical document. I watched it on broadcast TV (for me it was ABC in the United States) during its first run 30+ years ago. Before that I learned the ropes as a teenager watching The Compleat Beatles all the time, usually starting at the “Strawberry Fields Forever” segment but often consuming the whole thing. That was my Beatles baseline when it came to history entering into the Anthology era. I read plenty of books, owned all the albums and a few bootlegs. I considered The Compleat Beatles as unimpeachable Beatles history, even if it wasn’t directly from Henry the Horse’s mouth. I think it influenced Anthology in various subtle ways, too.

I recorded Anthology off TV, explaining why I never bought the official VHS release in 1996. But I did get the DVDs when they came out in 2003, and it’s been a valuable research tool especially in tandem with the companion book that came out in 2000. A Beatles opinion may be mutable, but at the same time it’s gospel.

Paul, George and Ringo conducted interviews for Anthology in a narrow early-1990s period, and what they said for Anthology ’95 was drawn from the same interview inventory used in Anthology ’96 (VHS/Laserdisc), Anthology ’03 (DVD) and Anthology ’25 (Disney+), even if what was selected varied.

I hadn’t internalized how gone – like far gone — John Lennon comes off in Anthology until carefully rewatching it in Winter 2025. His absence is really contrasted by George Harrison, who isn’t with us either, but is vibrant and contemporary in Anthology. George was the youngest one interviewed in the 1990s, after all. He reminisces along with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr over decades gone by. He can directly debate the others.

“We’d all had enough time to breathe,” George said in Episode 9. “And I think it’s much easier to look at it now from a distance.”

John’s memories are airdropped in, and I can’t see past that anymore with the added distance we have from those clips. John’s contributions feel slight, relatively and understandably.

Obviously, John’s Anthology recollections are forced to come from decades earlier, culled from copious interviews, but those spanned a larger period of time and a wide band of moods. Jools Holland, who interviewed the other Beatles for Anthology, didn’t get to ask John a single thing, leaving his reactions shoehorned in, speaking to different media at different times via different prompts. John was never afforded the luxury of being relaxed for these interviews – he didn’t pilot a boat or sit poolside whilst reminiscing. And he didn’t have the distance that helped George. John’s moments come off lonely.

(Facing the same dilemma, the producers of last year’s Becoming Led Zeppelin used a similar approach to Anthology, mixing new interviews for the film with the three living members with archival clips from the late John Bonham. But at certain points they showed Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones listening and reacting to Bonzo’s quotes, humanizing the moment and bringing the drummer just a little bit more into the conversation.)

Across every release and in subsequent marketing, the Anthology brand held strict that the story was almost exclusively in the Beatles’ own words (e.g., look again at the above Best Buy ad). It’s even in big letters on the back of the Anthology book. The only new interviews outside the Threetles came from the deep inner sanctum of Neil Aspinall, Derek Taylor and George Martin. That meant hearing nothing from the five wives (Cynthia Lennon, Yoko Ono, Linda McCartney, Pattie Boyd and Maureen Starkey). Nothing from sympathetic figures like Billy Preston or Astrid Kirchherr, much less villains Allen Klein or Magic Alex.

Even a genuine Beatle was forbidden to retell the Beatles’ story, with Pete Best silenced in Anthology. All the above were alive and available to be interviewed in the early 1990s (Maureen died late December 1994). But if this is “their” story, the omission can be justified.

(Cynthia’s manager at the time disagreed, telling Newsweek, “They’ve made the be-all and end-all of the Beatles story without her! As if she wasn’t there! It’s ridiculous!”

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Notably, according to multiple contemporary accounts, Yoko was offered the chance to be interviewed, but she turned it down. Would her inclusion have opened the door to the others and steered the entire documentary in a different direction? Would she purely have been a one-for-one surrogate for John as a relaxed 1990s interview? Or was it simply for a first-person perspective on her offering John’s demo tape to the band in the early 1990s, only? We’re left to guess.

The snapshot of the six contemporary interviews are memories based after nearly a quarter-century of post-breakup reflection. It’s the same kind of snapshot we’re left with reading Davies’ biography, which ends with John “happily married” to Cynthia. When the book came out on the last day of September 1968, the Lennons had already been to divorce court. Yoko isn’t mentioned in the original edition.

Davies was conscious of his book’s obsolescence, concluding it with this passage:

Doing a biography of living people has the difficulty that it is all still happening. It is very dangerous to pin down facts and opinions because they are shifting all the time. They probably won’t believe half the things they said in the last four chapters by the time you’ve read them.

Jools took the task of interviewing the Threetles with the appropriate attitude of a serious journalist. From his enjoyable 2007 memoir, Baldfaced Lies and Boogie Woogie Boasts:

The first person I went to interview was Paul … I then moved on to George, and then Ringo. At one point all of them individually mentioned a van they all hated travelling in, but each of them remembered the make and colour of the van differently. I brought this up with Chips Chipperfield, the producer, and he said, ‘Silly detail. Doesn’t matter.’ But my policeman’s mind had already gone to work and I was thinking, ‘Well, it might be a silly detail to you but, if they’re not remembering the same facts about this one horrid van, it might cast a shadow over their memories of other matters?’ And this was borne out throughout the course of the Anthology.

…

Occasionally I would say, ‘Can I just compare your evidence to the evidence put forward by your co-members?’ But they all found their differing memories amusing.

It was a feature not a bug. It’s who they are.

I can be as skeptical as anyone, but the Beatles controlled their narrative from the moment they were able to, and I think they should have — it’s their own history. And that narrative was everything from what they said in radio interviews to the clothes they wore to how they picked the running order of their albums. It’s how they chose to present themselves. Just like they chose the content for Anthology.

We’ve been in the Anthology era nearly as long as the pre-Anthology era existed. Why shouldn’t they update it where they see fit, attract a new audience and take advantage of the better technology? No disrespect to those who are, but I’m not a purist. Stream away, repackage and resell deluxe editions, scrape the bottom of the barrel and I’m on board.

So I have no issues conceptually with the many revisions applied to the new Anthology, from a libertarian angle. Also, I like change, and I’m not stubborn in my day-to-day life (I recommend it!). That said, they should not sell Anthology in 2025 as the same product that existed previously. This isn’t the same as restoring A Hard Day’s Night for Blu-ray or putting the 2009 remastered Rubber Soul on Spotify.

Let the Beatles tell their story, and at the same time, we can tell their story too, on blogs, podcasts, books, everywhere we can communicate.

Given that it’s my home turf, I want to dig a little bit into the Let It Be/Get Back sequences (primarily) for demonstrative purposes, but I’m sure whatever points I make translate across eras and the documentary.

Paul looks into the crystal ball on January 7, 1969, as seen in Get Back.

For those keeping score, the Get Back segment clocks in 5-6 minutes longer on Disney+ vs. the DVDs and the original ABC broadcast. So for a series that was shortened from the DVDs for streaming, this period is actually longer.

Here’s what’s NEW in ’25:

The big add was the January 10 jam with Yoko, post-George’s walkout. At least through the late-70s, George was under the impression this segment made the final cut of Let It Be, referring to Yoko’s “screeching number” in the film in a 1977 interview. Why now, and not in 1995/2003? Maybe George stood in the way then, and its use in Get Back broke the seal for its use here. Whatever the reason, it definitely is a positive addition, reflecting the chaos of George’s departure and dovetailing with the section on Yoko’s relationship with John and the band.
Another excellent, important addition was the “final bulletin” segment, Paul’s fake news show that would break the Beatles’ split. Enveloped by other 1990s-era quotes about a breakup in the air, this concrete and contemporary discussion really ties the room together as a weather forecast for the Winter of Discontent. If you’re keeping track like me, you’ll note the end of this sequence slightly differs from what is in Get Back. This Anthology edit is the real deal, what you hear on the Nagras.
Even though George walked out and Yoko sang from his cushion, George still said it was “a lot of water went under the bridge” and “everyone’s good friends and has an understanding of the past.” George said this in the 1990s, but it was not included in the first passes of the series. It certainly fits the “story of friendship” the Beatles have sold as the brand in recent years.
Paul’s concern that once the sessions ended John would be “off in a black bag” instead of following up with the band was another good addition. More fuel to the argument that the breakup was inevitable.
Also fitting the concept that the four of them could be the only ones who could understand each other is Paul’s worry Billy was joining the band. He was worried in Get Back — we heard his concerns then — and he didn’t change his tune come the Anthology interviews.
Incredibly, one of the greatest moments in filmed Beatles history — “I hope we passed the audition” — was not in any previous iteration of Anthology. So this is a layup, a must-add. The mind boggles how this wasn’t in there before.
As the segment neared conclusion, George said the group became stifling and restrictive and that “it had to self-destruct.” It’s not an earth-shattering line, but just adds to the inevitable breakup.

I found a few significant modifications, too:

George describing the Get Back sessions as his “Winter of Discontent” — such an amazing, biting line, still — was shifted from before the “I’ll play if you want me to play” argument to after it. I don’t see this as anything other than improving the flow of the story. I’m on board.
While the Beatles play “Don’t Let Me Down” on the rooftop, the DVD shifted to street-level audio while the camera showed the audience on Savile Row. Disney+ restored the rooftop audio for those scenes — and that matches the original broadcast. It’s a superficial change, but worth noting.
Paul’s fireside Army buddies story was moved to immediately before the wedding segment, another logical change for story flow.
“Can we giggle in the solo?” The addition of John’s one-liner prior to Let It Be is another way to lighten the mood (as it was when he first said it in 1969).

Looking at those lists, a lot was changed! On balance, I think the updates to this segment are positive, but it’s only positive in the context of Anthology as it had existed. Here’s the real problem: The story Anthology tells of the January 1969 period is really convoluted, especially on the heels of 2021’s Get Back documentary, which now is a well-known quantity for the Beatles community, old and young, immersed and casual. Yet Anthology tells the “original” story of the January 1969 sessions, which was never really right.

I wrote about this at length. Let It Be (the film) dictated opinions for half a century, influencing idiots like me to actual living, breathing non-idiot Beatles. I think it’s clear that Let It Be as an artifact influenced Anthology’s production in the 1990s. The “I’ll play if you want me to play” argument was the deliberate showcase of the Get Back sessions’ dysfunction in Anthology, the jump-off for the breakup conversation, and a reinforcement of what was said otherwise for decades. It continued to define the period until the Get Back documentary era.

I think that “row,” as George describes it, stays as a centerpiece in the new Anthology simply because it’s the one specific incident he comments on directly. We’re tied up because of the resistance to expand beyond the 1990s interview inventory.

Why not also show George suggesting the group “have a divorce” on January 7, 1969? Or saying he could work on a solo record January 29? Both segments were in Get Back and ready to load into Anthology, and either scene (or both!) would be better confirmation of the breakup vibes in January 1969 than a fleeting argument that happened to make the Let It Be film.

The changes to January 1969/breakup sequences went halfway in Anthology ’25, and I think shifting focus off the “I’ll play if you want me to play” scene would have been seen as tearing apart original production, even if, like some of the other changes, it would have proved clarifying.

Here’s Paul in August 2021, in advance of the release of the Let It Be LP reissue, shortly before Get Back came out, too:

I had always thought the original film Let It Be was pretty sad as it dealt with the break-up of our band, but the new film shows the camaraderie and love the four of us had between us. It also shows the wonderful times we had together, and combined with the newly remastered Let It Be album, stands as a powerful reminder of this time. It’s how I want to remember The Beatles.

Great news, even if we didn’t get the reissue of the Let It Be film until 2 1/2 years after this statement. I have something in common with Paul McCartney: This era is how I want to remember the Beatles, too! But it’s also the same period Paul describes in all the Anthology versions as “showing how a breakup works,” and you wouldn’t think that’s how he wanted to “remember the Beatles.”

This wasn’t Paul speaking off the cuff. All four Beatles maintained for a long time that January 1969 was toxic, two of them until their death. So let’s call them mercurial.

If you check the Anthology VHS and DVD liner notes, Derek Taylor concluded the text on the final episode by describing the Beatles’ career arc as “scarcely credible.” The band we’ve known for all these years conceded what we’ve known for all these years.

“Yet,” he continued, “here have been ten hours of unchallengeable evidence.”

The number of hours fluctuated with every release of Anthology – a point of contention nowadays — but the concept holds true: Beatles history borders on the unreal. And we have to admit at the same time the storytellers can sometimes be, to use his words, scarcely credible.

(By the way, one other thing we lose with the streaming-only focus is the beauty of liner notes as a medium. But that’s another, frankly sad, story.)

Deliberately, I only studied in detail the Get Back and surrounding sections for this post, but I’d imagine that if I did the same for another period, I’d reach similar conclusions. I know all about the “cripples” bits and Hamburg condom story being pulled. I took note of the addition of ’90s Ringo saying he and Barbara are inseparable like John and Yoko, and all the extra smiles now in the final Tittenhurst clips. The addition of John’s original “Yellow Submarine” work tape from Revolver deluxe is great and exactly sort of thing we should have after its discovery a few years ago.

I like a lot of the changes! Still … if you’re going to change, really commit to the changes.

I think Apple should have torn it all down produced a completely new Beatles documentary rather than present 2025 Anthology as the unimpeachable, singular career-spanning Beatles documentary. Davies’ biography was obsolete the day it was released. And that’s OK! Beatles Anthology ’95 is obsolete too. And that, likewise, is OK. If we think it can be better, let’s give it a shot. Anthology can be the Beatles’ history circa the turn of the century. Why do we have to work in that documentary’s template alone?

I think it’s been nice for us and the public to forget about the Beatles for a while, let the dust settle and now come back to it with a fresh point of view.

That’s George speaking in Episode 9 again, and making my case.

I haven’t seen a quote from Peter Jackson, whose team restored Anthology, but I did see Oliver Murray, the Episode 9 director, say this, which makes me think it was an overall strategy across Anthology ’25:

It was important to me that the pool of material we were working from had a time and a place. It was made in 2025, but the world that we’re absorbed in is from anywhere between ‘91 and ‘95.

And this is where I’ll plant my flag. Why did this world have to be from 1991-95? I know, it’s because it’s part of Anthology, a product of 1995. But this doesn’t have to be.

The Threetles in Episode 9

We’re in Theseus’ Paradox, if I can overdramatize this. How many pieces of the Beatles’ ship need to be replaced for it not to be the Yellow Submarine anymore, so to speak? Add this clip, shorten this other one, reorder something else — after how many revisions is it not the same documentary?

They promised the “ultimate form” of the product. I think we just got “another” form of it. I can wrap my head around removing some of the more PC-related issues, and I understand killing the Apple Boutique segment (for instance) because it doesn’t flow well or loom large in their legacy. (They could have at least put something like the Apple Boutique segment as a little bonus extra on Disney+ — it already was produced, is pretty harmless and is still part of the history.)

Anthology doesn’t cover anything between April 10, 1969, and 1994, the Threetles sessions. And then nothing after teasing the aborted “Now and Then” session in Episode 9. John Lennon doesn’t die in Anthology (neither does Stu Sutcliffe, for that matter). I get it – it’s not the John-Paul-George-Ringo Anthology. It’s the Beatles Anthology, and John is alive when the Beatles split. In Anthology’s world, the Beatles reunite, but without any context how or why.

“Having not done it for so long, you become an ex-Beatle,” Paul said in Episode 9. “But of course, getting back in the band and working on Anthology, you’re in the band again.”

But then he wasn’t in the band again. They chose not to finish the third song in the 1990s. We know how “Now and Then” turned out. Is this new Anthology for posterity or not? If it is, why end on a cliffhanger? Davies had an excuse when his book came out saying John and Cynthia were happily married, and with no mention of Yoko: He had to send his manuscript to the publisher. “Now and Then” came out two years ago, and this isn’t print. It’s another example of the new Anthology going halfway with that ending.

Maybe a new documentary can be honest about that too: If the Beatles are still together today, then we’re still in its history, and 1970-2026 is part of their history. Embrace it. I don’t mean have a segment on Flowers in the Dirt or John’s immigration case.

Paul said “we were at war” in Episode 9 — so show it. The lawsuits. “Too Many People” and “How Do You Sleep?” Show the collaborations, too. The Ringo LP. Clapton’s wedding. Even if they still don’t want to explicitly mention the deaths of John and George, present “All Those Years Ago” and Paul and Ringo (and Billy, and so many others) at The Concert For George. The Beatles enjoyed shared history after 1970 that gives important background.

Beatles history doesn’t have to be viewed perpetually from 1995, and that’s how Anthology as it stands is presented. It’s an arbitrary endpoint now.

Fly in post-breakup clips from the other Beatles, not just John. Paul in ’76 or Ringo in ’77 or George in ’71 – any of those clips (for instance) would have helped ‘70s John not come off like such a remote figure who didn’t get to have the same closure the other three had. No one could bring John to the 1990s, but they could have brought Paul, George and Ringo back to John’s ‘70s. Isn’t that what they did for “Free as a Bird,” “Real Love” and “Now and Then” anyway? The Threetles played John’s songs and were constrained by his limitations, not the other way around.

(Note that Paul took this very approach with his new Wings memoir, using a wide range of quotes over decades for the oral history.)

Peter Jackson and the technology he’s brought injected incredible life into the Beatles history, and also some questions. Do we want a Beatles history taking advantage of the advances, or improvement to the already existing Anthology? I personally don’t want an original-flavor Anthology that’s altered beyond whatever would qualify as “cleaning up” to account for today’s mediums (streaming, Blu-ray, etc.) I’m fully contented to have it be a product of its time, like Let It Be — which was indeed just cleaned up in 2024 — was as a complement to Get Back (and vice versa). But moving around quotes, removing some and adding others, leaving a bit of old history in and generally shortening the experience isn’t presenting the original document. Knowing the history I know, this feels incomplete.

I think a new Beatles history documentary could play a part in another revitalization of the group in the way the first Anthology did and how Get Back did, while also respecting the fact we’ve lost half of the band too. We may need to wait awhile until only estates are left to have a say. But it could take a replacement of every piece of the ship to truly rebuild and create clarity in their history.

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December 9, 2023 · 12:46 am

Get Back advent calendar: Countdown to the sessions

In my faith, we count down the 25 days to the start of the Get Back/Let It Be sessions. This is completely normal.

To operate this particular digital advent calendar, simply click the day below and read up on what our boys and their extended circle were doing in these days leading up to their Most Holy Assemblage at Twickenham Film Studios on January 2, 1969.

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March 27, 2023 · 1:29 pm

Jan. 13: The Lunchroom Tape (Pt. 3)

To write about the Beatles’ lunchroom discussion on January 13, 1969, is to write about a conversation that has no particular aim and a sudden ending. As I wrote last time — I cut-and-pasted this part — it’s sincerely impossible to give a linear rundown of this 30-minute discussion, as it isn’t a linear discussion. My disclaimer remains: You may have already read some of the below in previous posts. Now three parts in, this isn’t a straight recap — instead I’m trying to follow themes as they moved across different points in the conversation.

If you haven’t already, please read Part 1 first and then Part 2. It’ll get you right where you need to be to start off here.

***

There’s no snark, no playing for the cameras, no sarcasm. Otherwise absent, John Lennon revealed his instinctual charm in his vulnerability.

“I played a weaker game now than ever,” John was recorded saying at one point during the Beatles’ lunchroom discussion on January 13, 1969, as captured by the Nagra Tapes.

He did know, however, that whomever he was speaking to, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Linda Eastman could listen in and follow up. This wasn’t complete privacy.

This conversation, like so much on the lunchroom Nagra tape and so much of the serious discussion around the band these days, is framed around the group’s approach to George Harrison’s role in the group. John and Paul certainly admitted to treating him “like a mongrel.” But much of the conversation is really centered on John and Paul themselves, the conjoined Nerk Twins and compositional heart and soul of the Beatles, the two biggest heads of the mighty four-headed monster that embodied the Beatles.

Much drama lay in store for the John and Paul relationship in years to come, but a lot had developed already. The threat of a further fracture — of the greater four, of these specific two — hung over Twickenham on January 13, 1969. The four were really three at this point anyway, with George gone.

And then there were those two. It was clear the relationship between John and Paul was, at best, impaired. The Lennon-McCartney partnership was discussed at some length before John and Yoko arrived for the day. In the presence of Ringo, Linda and others, Paul admitted his relationship with John — certainly when it came to songwriting, their job — wasn’t the same.

As the tapes secretly rolled in the Twickenham canteen, John came off as sincere in airing his grievances, which he must have held close prior, given how fresh his admissions sound.

“It’s like George said,” John conceded 12 minutes in, a line captured in the 2021 Get Back docuseries. “It just doesn’t give me the same sort of satisfaction anymore, because of the compromise we’d have to make to be together.”

The end result of the records now aren’t enough. … When something came out, like Revolver or [Sgt.] Pepper or whatever, there was still that element of surprise that we didn’t know where it came from. But now we know exactly where it comes from, and how it arrived at that particular noise, and how it could have been much better. Or it needn’t have been at all. The only way to do it satisfactorily, for yourself, is to do it on your own. And then that’s fucking hard.

So what’s the way out? It should have been these very sessions — the Beatles were in the midst of conducting exactly what it seems like John sought. The Get Back sessions weren’t delicately curated, and even if the actual noises weren’t necessarily unique, the process of creating new songs for a show demanded spontaneity unseen in their history.

John didn’t say the above to Paul, who was engaged in conversation with Yoko. Instead, John was speaking to Linda, who challenged her partner’s partner.

Linda: But you were saying yesterday … you write good songs and it can’t be any better way. You don’t want just studio musicians. I mean, that’s how I look at it. You make good music together, whether you like it or not.

John: I like it.

Linda: And making good music is also … it’s really hard working at a relationship.

Issues clearly emerged in 1968, and whether it sprouted from the death of Brian Epstein or the trip to India or during the White Album sessions itself isn’t necessarily relevant to this discussion. While the 1967 noises still surprised, the White Album left John “dissatisfied” (Ringo disagreed), even though “the end result was as good as it could’ve been.”

At once, John yearned for time on his own, while also lamenting that the Beatles had turned more in that very direction – more actively working separately — during the recording of their last album. To this end, The Beatles LP should have been called “John, Paul, George and Ringo.”

“I dig it, individually, far more than Sgt. Pepper,” John said. “But as a whole — as a Beatles thing, I think it didn’t work as a Beatles thing.”

There’s another contradiction. To get The Beatles Thing, they had to be themselves. But that behavior alienated George.

I wrote about some of what’s written below when I recounted Paul’s concept of a “breakup show” earlier on the 13th, but it’s worth not only repeating but going into further detail in the context of the rest of the lunchroom tape. We’re now in the post-Get Back docuseries world, which requires more commentary than before to amplify or clarify what a broader audience has now seen.

“You try and make George play competently, because you’re afraid that how he’ll play won’t be like you want him to play,” John told Paul. “And that’s what we did.

“And that’s what you did to me.”

The accusation came as no surprise to Paul, who simply mustered a “yeah,” like he did so many times during this conversation in response to John.

We can’t pretend this is a surprising point of contention. Paul Was Bossy largely defined the iconic Winter of Discontent. It was why the Let It Be Sessions, as we often called it once upon a time, was a “failure,” and why we believed the Beatles entered the summer of 1969 to produce Abbey Road as a way to go out on a high. This is 50 years of how Beatles history was recounted, whether you like it or not, to quote Linda.

We know better today, but even if it wasn’t the ultimate casus belli, of course Paul was bossy, even if that’s just in the lowercase. The other Beatles struggled with it: George quit at least in part because of it, and at the canteen, John protested. Paul may have placed himself as merely “secondary boss” earlier in the conversation when discussing an expanded lineup, but now, with around seven minutes left on the lunchroom recording, John conceded he felt powerless working with Paul, and had for some time.

“I’d got to a bit where I thought it’s no good, me telling you how to do it, you know? All I tried to do on [the White A]lbum was just sing it to you like I was drunk, you know? Just did me best to say, ‘Now look, this, this stands up on its own.’

“And I’m not doing this quite well this time, ‘cause I — like, even with ‘Don’t Let Me Down’, the first time I sang it. Because I hadn’t allowed meself to say it was a whole song. I couldn’t — it was only after we’d done it that I’d realized it was done. You know, and on The Beatles album, I just sort of said, ‘Here it is, ignore here, this is me singing it drunk, but I’m pretending as if I’m not. What would you do with it? George, you play whatever you like.’”

Paul arranges “Don’t Let Me Down,” from the January 6 sequence of Get Back.

Paul laughed at John’s second mention of singing drunk, but it goes to John feeling he had to be stripped of inhibitions to present and arrange a song to Paul as finished in his ears and in his eyes. John entered these sessions feeling unsure again, though. As he said regarding “Don’t Let Me Down,” it took Paul and George to help arrange it earlier in the sessions after John himself said he wasn’t sure in which order the song’s three sections should be presented.

You know, and that’s what it was. It wasn’t -– it wasn’t the arrogance of, “Listen, this is it, baby.” It was that I can’t tell you what to do because you won’t play, here, like what I think you should play. And I’m not going to tell you what to play.

Paul and John continued to speak to and over each other. It wasn’t angrily, they just were doing everything to make their respective points.

Paul: OK, and that’s great, you know. And then – it’s just being able to say that, on the occasion, just being – say, “Look, I’m not going to say anything about the song, because it’ll be difficult … to sing it to you.”

John: Yeah, I know, but you wouldn’t say – listen to me – you probably arranged it you know?

Paul: I know, I know.

…

John: Well, I’m saying that “Dear Prudence” is arranged. Can’t you hear [John vocalizes part of the song]. That is the arrangement, you know? But I’m too frightened to say “This is it.” I just sit there and say, “Look, if you don’t come along and play your bit, I won’t do the song,” you know? I can’t do any better than that. Don’t ask me for what movie* you’re gonna play on it.

Because apart from not knowing, I can’t tell you better than you have, what grooves you can play on it. You know, I just can’t work. I can’t do it like that. I never could, you know. But when you think of the other half of it, just think, how much more have I done towards helping you write? I’ve never told you what to sing or what to play. You know, I’ve always done the numbers like that. Now, the only regret, just the past numbers, is when because I’ve been so frightened, that I’ve allowed you to take it somewhere where I didn’t want.

[* Author’s note: I swear “movie” is what John said there, even if it doesn’t sound like it makes sense in context.]

What made the last bit a dialogue instead of a monologue was only the occasional “yeah” delivered by Paul.

John was pouring it out. He admitted fear, regret and submission.

“And then, my only chance was to let George … take over, or interest George in it, because I knew he’d …”

“’She Said, She Said,’” Paul interrupted, and John confirmed.

Interestingly, you can hear Linda replying, “yes, yes,” which means this was a big enough deal to Paul that he shared the story of that song’s recording with her (the couple didn’t meet for nearly a year after that session, so she wasn’t around at the time). It’s easy to reason why he did, and why he likely brought it up within the last 100 hours. With George having just quit, Paul probably told Linda about the time he himself walked out on the band – during the recording of the final song cut for Revolver, on June 21-22, 1966.

An anecdote absent from Beatles history until 1997 — the post-Anthology era — Paul recalled the walkout for Barry Miles’ authorized biography Many Years From Now.

I’m not sure but I think it was one of the only Beatle records I never played on. I think we all had a blarney or something and I said, “Oh, fuck you!” and they said, “Well, we’ll do it.” I think George played bass.

Paul’s account had been the single source of this incident. It’s now part of the Beatles’ official history with this passage appearing in the book that accompanied the 2022 Revolver deluxe reissue (along with Paul’s quote):

The disagreement that happened in the dead of night seems to have been about how to resolve differing ideas for the arrangement. A recording sheet in the Abbey Road archive indicates a piano was added to the song at one stage, but no trace of the instrument remains on the tapes.

Back in the Twickenham canteen, John was clear about what mattered to him that night in 1966: “He’d take it as it is,” John said of George before continuing.

“So on [the White Album] … it’s probably George, you know, if there’s anything wrong with it. Because I don’t want your arrangement on it … I only want your … If you give me your suggestions, let me reject them, or if there’s one I like, it’s when we’re writing songs. The same goes for the arrangement.”

Exasperated and resigned, John continued, “I don’t want it to … I don’t know.”

Both Paul and Yoko said they knew what he meant, even if John couldn’t pin it down.

Opposite sides of the same coin. Not captured in Get Back: Yoko chiming in.

In the tape’s final moments, John returned the focus to his in-studio working relationship to Paul and continued to show what, at best, can be called inconsistencies.

And that’s all I did on the last album was say, “OK, Paul, you’re out to decide [how] my songs [are] concerned, arrangement-wise.” … I’d sooner just sing them, than have them turn into, into ‘[Being For the Benefit of] Mr. Kite,’ or anything else, where I’ve accepted the problem from you that it needs arrangement. … I don’t see any further than the guitar, and the drums, and, and George Martin doing the … I don’t hear any of the flutes playing, you know? I suppose I could hear ‘em if I [spoken as if straining] sat down and worked very hard! You know, I could turn out a mathematical drawing, if you like …

Indeed, John was more likely to tell George Martin he wanted “to smell the sawdust” in “Mr. Kite’s” circus atmosphere, or that he wanted to sound like the Dalai Lama chanting from a mountaintop in “Tomorrow Never Knows.” It’s all consistent with John’s outspoken, retrospective dissatisfaction with arrangements on his own songs, like “Across the Universe” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

And I really am relying on your touch: Paul’s hand-drawn instrument charts from the gatefold of 1986’s Press to Play LP.

Isn’t John lucky to have run into a guy like Paul McCartney (and a producer like George Martin) to help him take the song beyond guitar and drums and happily chart out those mathematical drawings?

It’s the archetypal refrain when bands splinter: There were musical differences. The Beatles didn’t really have musical differences. Just listen to the music they kept making and their general output as solo artists. These guys just had differences in how to make music. Despite the protestations, John and Paul weren’t incompatible but perfectly complementary, they knew it and we all know it.

How to fit in George (Harrison) was an entirely different issue. This was all part of the “compromise we’d have to make to be together,” as John said earlier at the canteen.

Paul: I’m onto the same thing, you know. … It is only, like, if you can just remember that we’re, you know, the four of us are trying to do that. ‘Cause I mean, all of those things you say, you know, in some way, apply to me. Not always —

John: Yes, yes, because everything applies a little bit to each other.

Paul: It is just you saying it. They’re all, you know, in some way, to some degree, will apply to me.

John: But there was a period where none of us could actually say anything, about your criticisms.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah.

John: ‘Cause you would reject it all.

Paul: Yeah, sure.

John: And so George and I would just go, you know, “I’ll give you a line here,” “OK,” you know, “We’ll do four in a bar, and I’ll do…” [resigned, sincere] And a lot of the times you were right.

Paul: Yeah.

John: But a lot of the times you were the same as they always are. But I can’t see the answer to that.

The “we’ll do four in a bar” bit is what the Get Back docuseries claimed was “I’m Paul McCartney” — my complete forensic analysis of this sequence is here at CSI: Twickenham. Regardless if the show’s transcription decision was human (or AI) error or a deliberate editorial misrepresentation, even if John wasn’t actually mocking Paul we can understand why Peter Jackson and Co. either thought he was or just wanted that quote to have some traction.

Paul’s ego at this moment was justifiably boundless, and it extended to his thoughts on the band itself. The Beatles’ reputation earned them wiggle room. It ties indirectly to an imaginary scenario he laid out earlier in the conversation: drunkenly playing the piano just because he felt like it and “everyone in that room will dig it, because it’s me really doing it.”

Here Paul insists the Beatles don’t have to play perfectly to sound that way to listeners and critics.

The thing is, like, within each other, within ourselves, we’ve reached something that’s nearly perfect. And everyone else who’s listening to it — “That’s it! We’ve done it!” … OK, so we know we nearly made it, but we’ve really made it for everyone else. ‘Cause, OK, we’re into the fine, finest, finest technicalities, you know, I mean, that’s where it’s at, you know? If one day, we can even keep all the people who are listening to this, nearly, nearly made it, they think we’ve made it. They think that’s it.

The next bit is familiar from the opening moments of the lunchroom scene of the Get Back series, although on the tapes it actually was said very close to the end.

“Like last week,” Paul said, “I say I was doing all right for me, I was really trying to just say to George, ‘Take it there,’ you know? Whereas I wouldn’t have gone, previously — I would have said, “Take it there – with [vocalizing] ‘diddle-derddl-diddle-der.’ But I was trying last week, to say, ‘Now, take it there, and it needs to be like…”

“You see, the point now is we both did that to George this time,” John replied.

The policy that kept us together. The compromise we’d have to make to be together. John had asserted in the canteen several times there was a system, and in not so many words, he believed that system had collapsed and they broke George. This was, like so many issues these four had, a communication problem.

John put it succinctly: “It’s like if I say, ‘All right, take it,” he’ll say, “Well, look, I can’t take it.”

Before the tape ran out in the lunchroom, as John and Paul continued to discuss their inability to get through to George, musically, we get to hear part of an exchange that was introduced in an edited fashion very early in the Get Back version of the sequence.

Paul: So he knows that when we say, “Take it,” we expect [Paul vocalizing]. If I said that, then he’d … [vocalizing George playing a simplified version of that same part]

John: But it’s just that bit. The bit where we’ve — “I’ve Got a Feeling.” There’s no way we could have translated it to him to say …

Paul: He’d have said, “I’ll do it at home.”

…

John: He’s gonna go home. But so have I, you know. I’m gonna go home in a studio, rather than go through this with anybody.

Paul: I’ve never said to George, “Look, George, I think, when I want a guitar bit, I want it exactly like I want it.” And he’s never said to me, “Well, you can’t have it.” … But that’s it, while he’d never said that to me, and I’ll never say that to him, and we’ll go on. But, really, I mean it is gonna be much better if we can actually say, “Look George, ‘I Got A Feeling,’ I want … exactly [like this].” And he’ll say, “Yeah, but I’m not you and I can’t do it exactly how you do it.”

And that ended the near-30-minute reel. It’s unclear how much longer they spoke, and what direction the conversation took.

So where are we left after extensively eavesdropping on the Beatles?

Ultimately we only know what a 1960s-era miniature spy microphone shoved into a flowerpot in an active lunchroom was able to pick up over a single half-hour period. At several points, the conversation is completely indistinguishable. At others we have a conversation being picked up in the foreground when one in the background is completely obscured. Even with Get Back’s AI, we’ve learned it’s not all perfectly heard.

Thanks to the lunchroom tape we know the Beatles better than before if only because there are more data points to draw upon, but that doesn’t mean we understand things proportionally better. These Beatles were never ones to keep a story consistently straight when it was for public consumption, and it doesn’t seem much different in private.

All at once during this same conversation, John wanted to:

Assign song arrangements to Paul because he didn’t want to bother with the job himself
Ask for suggestions on arrangements with the right of refusal
Not have any additional arrangements to his songs

As relaxedly outspoken he was on the lunchroom tape as well as earlier in talking to the others prior to John’s arrival, Paul was likewise levelheaded, perhaps thinking all along, “John, you’re all over the place, as usual” while never coming close to saying as much.

The tape and these sessions overall allow us to witness a maturation in Paul’s temperament and what sounds anecdotally like a softening in his micromanagement style in the 30 months since his 1966 walkout. He could still be very stubborn, but if we assume the “She Said, She Said” situation was comparable to other tense moments in January ’69, he handled these recent situations with greater poise. Paul recognized it himself saying just above, “Like last week, I say I was doing all right for me.” There are several similar snapshots throughout the sessions at Twickenham where Paul can be heard stopping himself.

Get Back was misleading in its presentation of the “I’ll go home to do it” quote. It’s not that George wanted to quit the band — or for that matter that John wanted to also. Home was the space George was more comfortable working on certain things. Witness the “last-night” songs George composed alone at home. When John says George will go home, he didn’t mean he was quitting the band, as Get Back implies. The context is clear it was to be in a different space to work out his parts.

Still, George had quit the band, and attempts to get him back the day before failed. Perhaps John was so vocal at the canteen as a reaction to the complaints others had that Yoko was speaking for him over the weekend. John wasn’t relying on her, or code words or telepathy to communicate with Paul.

The Get Back edit of the lunchroom tape is a very frustrating viewing once you know the contents of the entire original half-hour audio tape. Deceptive at its worst and unreliable at other points, the TV edit simply blurs an already schizophrenic conversation. Even if the two central participants were John and Paul, the active presence of Ringo, Yoko and Linda needed to be acknowledged, period.

An alternate televised account of the lunchroom — perhaps openly presented as a supercut or trailer of sorts of the full conversation — would have come off cleaner. A movie trailer never presents the action in the final order, but that’s OK and assumed by a viewer. Openly presenting the lunchroom sequence as a sampler of the conversation — one that jumps in, out and all around — would have been a more fair portrayal to satisfy the critics (like me) while keeping with the show’s clear time limitations.

Paul was most outspoken when discussing the group’s future, both before and during the lunchroom tape. But to be clear, the Beatles always discussed their future, even publicly, going back to the dawn of Beatlemania. You’ve heard John’s quote from November 1963 before:

You can be big-headed and say, ‘”Yeah, we’re gonna last 10 years.” But as soon as you’ve said that you think, ‘We’re lucky if we last three months,’ you know.

That they were conscious of their future more than six years after that interview should be no surprise. Breakup rumors appeared in the mainstream press as early as 1964 and reignited periodically. They were always expected to break up until they unexpectedly broke up.

The issue date of this Beatles breakup rumor — November 23, 1964 — was the same day “I Feel Fine” was released in the U.S.

How often did the Beatles privately have conversations like this one at the Twickenham canteen? How often over their career during a bumpy period? How often in January 1969? This 30-minute sequence was a one of a kind capture, but it doesn’t make it a one-of-a-kind conversation.

The individual Beatles of January 13, 1969, were closer to 30 years old than 20. Closer to the release of the McCartney LP than Sgt. Pepper. Their egos were developed, and John said he needed to smother his in Paul’s shadow. George’s could hardly develop in the space of John and Paul.

Did John even want George back? That’s not my question, that’s John’s question.

At this point, there are conflicting goals: self-preservation and singing how you really sing it vs. the Beatles Thing. With the luxury of retrospection, we know it shook out OK. Abbey Road was terrific, Let It Be was great and the intermittent singles were fab. It was more in question on January 13, 1969.

Meanwhile, if John was looking for sounds that would surprise, in 10 days time, the embodiment of a new sound and new attitude would walk through the door, giving life to John’s search for an element of surprise.

***

Like “Her Majesty” — the conclusion to Abbey Road that had its origins in the Get Back sessions — the lunchroom tape cuts off unresolved. We only know what comes next some short time later: John, Paul and Ringo head back to Twickenham’s sound stage. George isn’t there. They don’t replace him either. They simply go back to the studio.

But George’s on their mind.

“Let’s go and see George,” Paul said about 10 minutes into the post-lunch Nagras, which were initially filled with idle talk — a little bit about camera work, some about television. There was one problem with that excellent plan, and Ringo delivered the news: George, in fact, had — quite literally — gone back home.

“He’s gone to Liverpool” and would be back Wednesday.

“Oh, then Wednesday’s the day we see him, right?” Yoko replied, cheerfully.

“Yeah, and I think til then … ” Paul said before being cut off by Ringo.

“Should we rehearse the numbers?”

And so the remaining Beatles got back to work.

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TMBP Extra: Threetles’ Paradox

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Get Back advent calendar: Countdown to the sessions

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Jan. 13: The Lunchroom Tape (Pt. 3)

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