Why did George Harrison walk out during Let it Be?

John also suggested asking Billy Preston to join as an official member in 1969. Paul, especially, was uncomfortable with that. George may have been open to the idea, and he had brought in Clapton for a guest spot on the White Album. Clearly John and George were both having positive experiences with musicians outside the band and no longer valued the self-contained insular gang-of-four thing so much anymore. I found it strange that John didn't see how bringing Yoko in would mess with the group chemistry and the musical bond they had, but maybe he didn't care about that anymore by that point - if the Beatles had become little more than a vehicle for recording their individual songs and getting out their ideas, I suppose augmenting the group or getting to an actual breakup or wasn't such a big step in John's mind. (Unlike how shocking it seemed to us at the time.)

 

From the tapes, I find John's reaction about George's leaving to be interesting. He first says that the Beatles should get Eric Clapton as a replacement and just keep going. He doesn't seem too upset about losing George.

 

At Paul McCartney's 21st birthday in Huyton, Bob Wooler, knowing that Brian and John had spent a week in Barcelona together, asked "how was the honeymoon". Lennon hit him and later recalled that "I could have killed him". In fact he broke some of his ribs. It was quiite a serious assault and Wooler was hospitalized for several days. Epstein later paid him £200 (equivalent only to around $3,000 today.) Wooler himself of course was gay.

 

I finf that the less i know about John Lennon's personal life the better off i am. I love John's music...but i am not so sure that he wasn't a complete a$$ as a human being...

 

I think that's the right point of view. John wasn't too picky about drumrolls (exept for that instruction to Ringo:"Do me an icepick to give me the courage to come screaming in" at the start of a take of Don't Let Me Down) or guitar licks. Paul was getting more and more into precise instructions, resulting in endless sessions for some of the most simplistic tunes ever (Ob-la-di-ob-la-da, Maxwell's Silver Hammer) or doing everything himself when he refused to wait for the others.

 

Wasn't George also the first one to put forward the idea to stop touring back in 1966?

 

You're not wrong.

I've read the Sulpy book carefully. Unless he is fabricating things, it is incredibly obvious that John Lennon has little interest in anything other than his next fix or Yoko Ono. And that is what rubbed George the wrong way.

It wasn't just that he couldn't move 10 ft without her shadowing his every move. It was that he let Yoko speak for him, that he would barely even acknowledge George, that he was too screwed up or indifferent to try to learn George's songs.

The book is full of quotes and descriptions of John Lennon virtually ignoring George (and the others) and letting Yoko blather on as if she was their equal, as if she had been in the group for 10 years. How could that not piss off anybody?

Sure, Paul was overbearing and tried to tell George how and what to play. But when it came time to rehearse and record George's songs, Paul rose to the challenge, Paul made significant instrumental contributions to George's songs. John couldn't do anything more than play a rudimentary slide guitar on the easiest and most basic of song structures---a 12 bar blues ("For You Blue"). What does he do during "I Me Mine"? Does he try to contribute anything? No, he dances with his groupie-turned-girlfriend.

In all seriousness, I am amazed that George, Paul, and Ringo didn't walk during the Get Back sessions for good.

 

Yeah, but he was in front of the camera when he said it. The Playboy interview made it quite clear that Lennon enjoyed making ridiculously dismissive comments about his songs and bandmates when it suited his fancy.

As for the "I'll play what you want" argument between George and Paul, that happens in every band, it's not personal. I've seen bandmates get way more vicious than that but it all goes out the window when you take off your instruments. I don't think it was a big deal at all, other than being captured on film.

 

I, for one, am stunned that a young rock star with a hectic recording schedule would use drugs and treat his bandmates shabbily.

 

Here's my theory. You have to remember that Paul and George had gone to school together and been friends since they were just little kids like 12 and 13. Even though Paul was 8 months older, a year ahead in school, and more mature for his age, they were good friends who hung out together, played music at each other's houses, and went on hitchhiking trips.

When Paul had just turned 15, he met John who was almost 17. Though Paul looked up to John since he was older and more worldly, it seems John treated Paul as an equal from the beginning. Probably because when they met, Paul was a much more accomplished musician and had already begun writing songs. John had a lot to learn from him and he was apparently eager to do so even though Paul was a lot younger.

Paul worked to get George in the group from the beginning, but John felt he was just too young. If you look at that well-known picture of the three of them playing at a family wedding sometime in the winter of 58, you can see that George is still much shorter than the others and looks like a baby. As a result, for a long time John resisted having anything to do with him. There's a quote where he says he wasn't interested in hanging around with George because he looked even younger than Paul who, with his baby face, looked about 10.

As we know, John eventually relented but by that time he and Paul were already really tight and acted as co-leaders of the group. So the guy who had been George's friend and peer was now in an exclusive partnership with an older guy that they both looked up to.

Given the history, it's not surprising that George would be much more resentful of condescension from Paul than from John. I think all the relationships between the three remained mired in the relationships they established as young kids. It seems it took the break-up and the passage of a good deal of time after that for them to even begin to form more adult relationships.

 

He says: "Do me a nice big (crash) to give me the courage..." not 'ice pick'.

 

Did Lennon seriously believe the other Beatles would allow Yoko to join the band? Good grief, he was farther gone than I realized.

 

That one made me laugh out loud

 

The Peter Ames Carlin book on Paul puts John in a pretty negative light, as in one instance John telling the daughter of a celebrity that her father was dead when he was not.

 

I think Rose Mary Woods got a hold of them!

 

That's one our younger members will not get, unless they google it (or know their political history).

 

The original idea for Sulpy's book was to transcribe all conversations that they listened to - and just publish the dialogue - verbatim.

They either asked Apple for permission - or Apple got wind of their plans - and they were told to cease and desist. The watered down idea where they describe the conversations somehow survived for the book... but I'm sure they were disappointed that they to had to go that route.

I don't believe they were ever given access to the actual Nagra reels... but that might have eventually happened. I know they started by listening to bootlegs.

I lived near Doug when I lived in NJ and I was somewhat friendly with him. I even took some train trips up to NYC with him back around 1989-1991.

I remember Doug talking to a guy at Beatlefest who claimed he knew a guy - who knew a guy - who knew a guy - who knew a guy (you get the idea) whose wife "almost threw out all of the reels of tape" (I'm not sure I believed that boast - it just seemed like idle talk at the time)...

I think they dated the reels by listening to the discussions .... I think John mentions events in the news at at one point ("yeah, my divorce just came thru")... and then there are the audible announcements that come and go every so often.


I went to the the Lou Reed / John Cale Songs for Drella concert at St. Anne's in early 1989 with Doug and his wife. I had traded a few emails with him and I knew he was a Velvet Underground fan so I asked him if he was planning to go.... He was amazed that the concert wasn't being publicized ("this is like Lennon and McCartney reuniting and NO ONE knows!").


Funny thing is I think I have a fairly complete set of mp3s of the Jan 69 sessions but I can't stand to listen to them... not my cup of tea

 

You had email back in 1989?????

 

yes. and I cruised usenet starting in 1987...

email addresses didn't even have "@" signs back then !!!! LOL

My original email address was nvuxe!txb

(if you google search that it might have some hits)


I worked for bellcore... doug worked for bell labs....

Bellcore was the half of bell labs that went with the baby bells... bell labs
stayed with at&t

usenet groups like rec.music.misc were kind of like this thing is... but
nobody ever talked about dead wax and mastering...

 

Eric Clapton recounts a particularly nasty episode with John:

"One night I was on the tube, traveling to Hammersmith for one of the shows, and I got talking to an elderly American woman. She was lost and she was asking me for directions. She asked me what I did and where I was going, and I told her I was going to play guitar in a concert with the Beatles. 'The Beatles?' she said, astonished, and then asked, 'Can I come along?'

'If you want to, I'll try and get you in,' I replied. When we arrived at the Odeon, I told the stage manager she was a friend of mine, and took her over to the Beatles' dressing room, which was on the same level as the stage. They were getting ready to go on, but they took a moment and were really friendly and polite to her. But when we got to John, and I introduced her, he made a face of mock boredom and started doing wanking movements inside his coat. I was really shocked, and quite offended, because I felt responsible for this harmless little old lady, and in a sense, of course, he was insulting me."

Clapton: The Autobiography, (New York: Broadway Books, 2007), 52.

 

I haven't read Clapton's book, but from what I understand, he was very critical of a lot of the big rock n rollers but not so much on his own pretty screwed up past.

 

Probably not. It almost seems like he was trying to become a big enough jerk that the group would just split up by agreement...when that didn't work, he half-a$$ed his way through Abbey Road and then finally worked up the guts to walk.

 

Just for the heck of it, did The Beatles had any kind of current contract at all, binding the four of them as a group, at that point in time? That contract Epstein signed with them in the wee 60s, how long was that supposed to last?

Sorry if this is Fab Four 101... if the implication even makes sense at all...

 

Ain't that supposed to read "...worked up the guts to announce to his mates that he would walk"?