Beatles Get Back 18: January 27

This segment begins with a montage of footage, some from the day before and some from today, as the band listens to Glyn’s mixes of some of the music from Sunday, specifically the jams. In addition to the band shots, we also see lots of Heather twirling. This is all part of Jackson’s thesis that the sessions were a lot of fun, despite what we’ve been led to think all these years.

John says he was in a very good mood the night before. George replies that he went to bed “very late” because he was up writing a new song, remembering John’s advice to not walk away from an idea, but to get it down right away so you don’t lose it. John agrees that’s a good method, even though he admits to not having as many ideas at all these days.

The song in question is “Old Brown Shoe”, which George proceeds to play at the piano. As he asks Billy what the actual names of some of the chords are, Paul sneaks over to Ringo’s kit and starts playing, while Ringo tinkers on the electric piano. Then we see Paul playing George’s Telecaster—upside down to accommodate his left-handedness—next to Billy on the six-string bass, and Ringo at the drums. John is shown helping the assistants move a Lowrey organ and Leslie speaker cabinet into the space. (Like most left-handed guitarists used to being around right-handed ones, Paul is rather adept at playing leads on an inverted instrument. Also, when the song is eventually recorded for a single in few months’ time, Paul will be on the drums as Ringo will be otherwise engaged.)

The action cuts to rehearsals of “Let It Be” and “The Long And Winding Road” as the band works on various aspects of the arrangements, honing the dynamics and harmonies. Paul is getting stuck on translating what he hears in his head, and they start blaming the volume of the instruments in the room and over the PA. Because they’re playing in a live setting, as opposed to a studio setup where there would be headphones and more separation to enable the individual instruments to be heard better, they have to maintain a balance between various microphones and speakers. Plus, they’re basically sitting in a circle facing each other, which unfortunately is the least ideal setup for pristine recording. George Martin explains this to them, and very patiently we must add.

The sound presumably sorted out, we cut to a rehearsal of “Oh! Darling”, with Paul on bass and Billy carrying the keyboard part. John is suddenly giddy after Yoko whispers to him, and he announces that “Yoko’s divorce has gone through,” launching into cry of “free at last” sung to the “Oh! Darling” chords. (This had been included on Anthology 3, 25 years ago, but with the visuals we can now see that the other Beatles were clearly happy for them.)

Further work on “Don’t Let Me Down” is made, John still struggling with the best way to phrase the off-tempo verses. Then, as the Beatles appear to break for lunch or a meeting upstairs or something, we get to see a jam involving Alan Parsons at the electric piano, “clapper man” Paul Bond at the drums, engineer Chris Thomas on the Fender VI bass, Glyn on George’s Telecaster, and a tall, slightly balding gentleman on Paul’s Hofner bass. They sneak off before the band returns to look over a montage of news articles about John & Yoko with Ivan Vaughan, who introduced John and Paul to each other back in 1957. (The original broadcast misidentified him as Apple art director Gene Mahon, who designed their distinctive record labels.) Paul plays “Strawberry Fields Forever” on the piano while John noodles on his guitar.

Michael wants to talk about the proposed rooftop show scheduled for two days away, but the boys are more concerned with recording a decent take of “Get Back”. After numerous attempts and the wine has come out, they do, as one of the takes will be used for the main part of their next single. Also, John’s “Sweet Loretta Fart” ad-lib will be included before the same take on the Let It Be album. After much time tuning, they get a mostly decent version of “I’ve Got A Feeling” down, but John has gone a bit sluggish for his sung section.

Glyn and George Martin confirm, with only the slightest weariness, that the band wants to keep playing each song again and again until they feel they’ve hit the perfect takes. This results in a lot of “this one was better than that one but not as good as the other one” discussion.

After the onscreen calendar moves off today’s date, the captions inform us that because of a bad weather forecast, the proposed rooftop performance is pushed back a day. It’s just as well, as both Paul and John have meetings they will need to attend mid-day on the 28th, so this will buy the Beatles more time to whip the songs they want to do into shape.