Turns out Abbey Road and Let It Be weren't meant to be the last albums the Beatles recorded
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Anyone who’s watched Let It Be, the documentary made from video of the Beatles recording (and arguing about) their final songs together as a four-person group, would assume there was never any way John, Paul, Ringo, and George would be willing—or able—to release another album together. Fans of the band have long assumed that Abbey Road, which was mainly recorded and originally intended to be released after 1970's Let It Be, was the last proper Beatles album the group had planned to make before their break-up.
As detailed by The Guardian’s Richard Williams, in a profile of Beatles expert Mark Lewisohn, this isn’t the case. A taped meeting from September 8th, 1969 shows that The Beatles had planned to record another album, with its lead single timed for a Christmas release of that year.
The meeting described by Lewisohn and Williams occurred just before Abbey Road’s release. In it, the band (aside from Ringo, who’s in the hospital) talk about the unrecorded album’s format. John “proposes a new formula” that would’ve seen “four songs apiece from Paul, George, and himself, and two from Ringo.” He also “refers to ‘the Lennon-and-McCartney myth,’” hinting his and Paul’s previously shared song attributions “should at last be individually credited.”
This being late Beatles, there’s a good amount of sniping in the recording, too. When Paul (who Williams describes as “sounding, shall we say, relaxed”) hears that George would get “equal standing as a composer with John and himself,” he says: “I thought until this album [Abbey Road] that George’s songs weren’t that good.”
“That’s a matter of taste,” George replies. “All down the line, people have liked my songs.” The tape continues with John “telling Paul that nobody else in the group ‘dug’ his ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’” and that he should instead sell those kind of songs to other artists. “I recorded it because I liked it,” Paul says.
While the passive aggressive dynamic of this period is well-documented already, the really interesting part is the idea that the Beatles may have had at least one more properly recorded LP in them before their break-up. Lewisohn notes that, while recording Abbey Road, “they were in an almost entirely positive frame of mind,” despite what’s shown in films like Let It Be or the hindsight vindictiveness of John and George recording “How Do You Sleep At Night?”
“They had this uncanny ability to leave their problems at the studio door,” he continues. “Not entirely, but almost.” Read the entire piece for more on Lewisohn’s work, the Beatles’ final years, and more.
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105 Comments
“four songs apiece from Paul, George, and himself, and two from Ringo.” Yeah, fuck you Ringo.
We’ve just unearthed an entire lost Beatles album…Ho-Lee……written by Ringo StarD’awwwww
Ringo never really pushed to get cuts on their albums like George did, and hadn’t written much (if anything) by that point. This article also leaves out that John mentioned the 2 tracks for Ringo were“if he wants them”, implying he might not.Also, the meeting was taped specifically for Ringo to hear after he was released from the hospital, so I don’t think it was intended as a dis on Ringo.
I’m sure it wasn’t a dis, it just reads that way and it’s kinda funny.
I’m sorry, but I love Octopus’s Garden. >_<
Don’t Pass Me By is a favorite of mine.
“It Don’t Come Easy” is a better song than “Live and Let Die.” There, I said it.
Perhaps, then, I’ll use this opportunity to ask my one “Don’t Pass Me By” question. What’s that instrument used in the song with the prominent vibrato? A Hammond organ? A harmonium? A regular piano that’s filtered and altered through some audio trickery? Wikipedia doesn’t specify, other than that both piano parts were played into a Leslie speaker, but I’m not sure if that’s it.
The wiki for the song itself says it’s a tack piano, with Paul playing some grand piano, as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Pass_Me_By
Thats it. Leslie’s are the things they use with organs to make them sound all vibratey and awesome. They have a spinning speaker in them that creates the effect.
Which John put his voice through for “Tomorrow Never Knows”.
It’s a tack piano, as well, so it’s gonna be several different layers of wonky.
Yeah, but George helped him a lot with writing it. (And then wrote both of Ringo’s best solo songs.) I love Ringo, and personally think he’s hugely underrated as a member of the band, but a great songwriter he ain’t.
AND Don’t Pass Me By!
Let’s be honest, Ringo was not only OK with this, he was probably vexed that he had to come up with two songs.
If I wrote ‘Octopus’ Garden’ and ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ while getting to play with the goddamn Beatles, I’d be pretty happy with myself. Then I’d retire on the bajillions of dollars I’d made getting to play with the goddamn Beatles, three far more talented people than myself.
And marry Barbara Bach.
Exactly. Ringo’s a god for that alone.
Transcript from the video:George Harrison: I just sit here while my guitar quietly wimpers. Paul McCartney: Well you are the quiet one, so why don’t you shut the fuck up? Ringo Starr: I’ve got a song about an octopus. John Lennon: Jam it up your ass. You’re lucky we still let you play drums!
Enjoyed this on cable on Tuesday night. Just the best.
“You four Beatles! Stop fighting here in India!”
Wow, it seems like there’s a rift happening between the Beatles.
Oh man, I just realized I misread this the first time. Sorry. >_<
You want to give Ringo less, that’s up to you
So now that all this is out in the open, the lads can get back into the studio and get the album out for Christmas, right??
Coachella reunion set anyone?!
I’m here for the Tupak verse.
They wouldn’t make it today. Didn’t you hear? The Beatles had no cultural impact, and literally every new musical act in the last 8 months is superior.
I’m literally waiting for some millennial/Gen Z dipshit to come in here and start spouting that.
Especially those androgynous Korean groups.
Sure! Now where did I put that time machine?
They could get that songwriter kid from that “Yesterday” movie to help ‘em out.
It would be nice to hear the recording instead of a writer’s interpretation of it.
presumably he knows what words mean, but sure
I hope every song was about how they were bigger than Jesus
I never understood why they got so much flack for that. Nearly everyone is bigger than Jesus. People were really fucking short back then.
He’ll come back taller, I imagine.
Well, one hopes.
He also never said “bigger,” though it’s almost universally misquoted:
“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.”
You had me wound up until the punchline.Good job!
This is, of course, the correct take.
“Beatles expert”You think he leads with that at parties?
I like how this fucks with the agreed-upon history of their breakup.
The truth is that Lennon announced he was quitting to the rest of the group on 9/20/69, just 12 days after this recording. At this point, Lennon was probably going through the motions of a business meeting, working up the resolve to just end it. The biggest hit of this recording is just to the myth of the Abbey Road album. I think there’s a sentimentality built around it because its final song is titled “The End”. It just works so well for rock nerds as an intentional last statement. But anyone who knew the actual timeline of when John announced he was quitting should’ve realized there was something off about the Abbey Road myth to begin with. You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After The Break-Up by Peter Doggett is a very good book detailing their final years as a band and how that affected their business & personal dealings with each other for the rest of their lives. Pretty sad book, too.
Solid book. Great recommendation.
We have top men working on how to blame it all on Yoko as we speak. Top men.
lol all men, I’m sure
Side One:
Instant Karma!Every NightMy Sweet LordIt Don’t Come EasyWhat Is LifeLoveMaybe I’m AmazedSide Two:Another DayBallad of Sir Frankie CrispJunkWorking Class HeroRun of the MillPhotograph (I know I’m jumping ahead but it was written a while before release)GodPhil Spector produces of course, while the Eastmans take over band management in a compromise. It’s one of those historical quandaries: if you could go back in time and kill someone, is it Hitler or Allen Klein? Don’t ask for my answer.
Klein and as a side detour I would flat out torture and murder the manager of Badfinger who probably deserves the award for biggest monster in management history not named Jerry Rape-Monster.
“Please, call me Jerry. Mr. Rape-Monster was my father.”
Do you have any siblings?
That’s gonna have to be split up into another double album. Side one alone is going to top out at more than 30 minutes.And after what Spector did to Long and Winding Road it’s highly doubtful that McCartney would ever agree to have him produce another Beatles album. That alone would have caused the group to break-up and never release this.
Well, we’re in fantasy land here, but I think if the others had agreed to bring in the Eastmans he might have been reluctantly OK with being outvoted on Spector. You also assume that maybe the Get Back sessions would have been treated differently if the group were operating somewhat effectively as a unit. And yes, another double would have been doable at that point. Assuming we draw from 71 and 70, it likely would have been more consistent than the White Album.
Am I the only one on this side of the Atlantic who likes “Mull of Kintyre”?
I don’t know what side you’re on, but I like it fine.
That’s many years later, and was co-written by Denny Laine.
About a year ago I was just pulling into a parking lot and Mull of Kintyre came up on my MP3 player and I thought, I’m probably the only person in a 1000 mile radius listening to this song right now.
I don’t know what side of the Atlantic that is, but no.http://tolerabilityindex.freeforums.net/thread/4856/lovesong-wings-mull-kintyre
I would fit Harrison’s “Sour Milk Sea” into there somehow.
Glad I’m not the only one who thinks that was underrated. (Though if I’m not mistaken, that particular rendition is a mix of the Harrison “Kinfaun” demo vocal and the instrumental backing from the Lomax version – with the unbelievable lineup of Harrison, McCartney, Ringo, Nicky Hopkins, and Eric fucking Clapton.)
Paganini or Eddie Van Halen?
You can’t ask that of me. Though so long as we’re talking talented bad influencers, let’s throw in Jaco Pastorius.
Eh, I’d throw on “Well Well Well” or “I Found Out” to rock things up in place of “God” (though in a different place in the track order) which is too much of a “post-Beatles breakup” song thematically to go on a hypothetical next Beatles album. Or maybe even Mother, though this listing generally needs more uptempo numbers from the solo albums you’re sourcing from.Also, I’d speculate that Spector gets fired shortly after, or maybe toward the end of recording of this album, with any subsequent albums (if we’re speculating on a whole “Beatles stay together timeline” here) produced by the band with Emerick and other familiar engineers as support, with occasional return engagements by Martin.
OK, granted, God is only there if it’s their last album, which is sort of precluded by the scenario. In absence of God, I would go with Cold Turkey (you may take that as a general philosophical statement too), clinically ineffectual screaming and all. I do wonder if, as this thing progresses through the decade, Eno gets involved.
I always imagined an album like this if they stuck together.
Have you seen this album that never was compilation? http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-beatles-instant-karma-1970.html
Side A
1. Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)
2. All Things Must Pass
3. Every Night
4. I Found Out
5. Beware of Darkness
6. Working Class Hero
7. Momma Miss America
Side B
8. It Don’t Come Easy
9. Isolation
10. Junk
11. My Sweet Lord
12. Maybe I’m Amazed
13. Love
14. Hear Me Lord
Good, but I can’t condone any project like this that excludes What Is Life. That song is pure joy.
Great call. I didn’t notice this omission. What is Life is one of my favorites. Good call, again good call.
This all sounds very formal. Did they always record meetings? Did they have agendas? Follow Roberts Rules of Order? Did they call the roll like in Flight of the Conchords?
They recorded this one because Ringo was in the hospital and they wanted him to hear it later.
This is bad news for my dumb joke 🙁
Win some, ya lose some.
Man, just imagine how much longer Yesterday could have been.
Probably would’ve stretched into today at some point.
[slow clap]
The Beatles would have become a prog rock band in the 1970s and released a triple LP with average song length of 7 minutes that dealt with Hobbits and druids. Then in ‘79 they would have gone new wave with skinny ties and synths.
Instead, that was the trajectory of Genesis.Going back in time to kill Hitler never works, since history just coughs up a different Hitler.
This article fails to answer the most crucial question: Did Ringo get better?!
He’s still got blisters on his fingers, but yeah, he’ll be fine.
Ringo seems like one of those people who were at death’s door until about 40 then live to be 100. He looks like he’s in his early sixties at most.
Every time I think about the fact that he’s the oldest Beatle it blows my mind. He looks frozen in time.
I love me some later day Beatles gossip.
But if you play the recording backward, it’s Yoko saying “I’m going to break up the Beatles.”
Honestly, if there actually was a box of tapes sitting in an attic somewhere containing a lost Beatles album, I don’t think I’d want to hear it. Or at least I could never consider it a part of the “canon”, sort of like the two songs they cobbled together for the Anthology albums in the 90s.
“I thought until this album [Abbey Road] that George’s songs weren’t that good.” Harrison had the best post-Beatles music – fight me.
Come on, Reid! Just -yesterday- you were championing a “hilarious” Twitter meme throwing barbs at The Beatles.
I remember Paul saying something like this in an interview, that they were always saying they were going to do“one more album” someday.
The other three worked together occasionally (in pairs, at least) over the years, so it stands to reason that if John had lived longer they would have all “come together” again at least for some live performances.
The kind of “relaxed” that gets you arrested in Japan?
“I thought until this album [Abbey Road] that George’s songs weren’t that good.”Truth. Most of George’s songs suck. In fact the average Ringo song on a Beatles album is twice as good as the average George song.I’ve never understood all the love for George. And let’s not forget he ripped off his biggest solo hit.
(Subjective) Counterpoint: While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Savoy Truffle, and Taxman (arguably a Harrison/Lennon song, but still). At least four of the songs he had already written for All Things Must Pass are also top-shelf. He was absolutely deserving of more album real estate on a follow-up additional Beatles LP.
I think I’m mostly grumpy about Within You, Without You. George did write some fine songs. I’d say he was underrated the first half of his career and overrated ever since.
John and Paul really were dicks to George. He showed them with All Things Must Pass.
Paul and George Martin (and Geoff Emerick) were for sure. John less so as time went on, but yes, kind of.
George so strongly siding with John in the early ‘70s was always slightly confusing to me since John so often seemed to be conveniently absent when it came time to record George’s songs. Paul, for whatever flaws he had, sounds like he’s making a genuine effort playing on George’s songs. This meeting puts things into much clearer perspective — George had absolutely become their songwriting equal by this period and had AT LEAST four great songs in the chamber, ready to go, yet in 1969 was weirdly being held back by the most popular band in the world. John, despite his aloofness, at least seems to recognise this.(Also “All Things Must Pass” was more deserving than “Maxwell’ Silver Hammer” of being on Abbey Road and the album would’ve been better for it.)
They were working on Maxwell’s Silver Hammer for the Get Back sessions…eventually, Paul just did it himself.
If ever a band should have realized that they could stay a band AND put out solo albums (beyond the experimental ones), it was The Beatles.
Paul, especially, was just a fucking cunt. few things in life are more satisfying than spinning All Things Must Pass in full and knowing it absolutely annihilates the solo albums by the other Beatles.
“I recorded it because I liked it,” Paul says.
Cuz there ain’t no “we” in Beatles.
I gather the tape illuminates a bunch of things, but I don’t think the assumption that they planned on ending after Abbey Road was ever really held by Beatles scholars/fanatics (I count myself among the latter group). I’m surprised that people are so surprised that they were thinking about their next album, since I’m not aware of any concrete reason they wouldn’t have been. Ringo briefly quit in ‘68, and John made various claims that he was leaving (albeit probably to get attention more than anything), but by most reliable accounts, Paul’s final announcement that he was leaving was surprising to the others. They all had inklings that things were coming to an end, but it wasn’t like “one last album, and then that’s it” – more like “we’ll keep going at whatever speed we can.”
After all, their status as a band was iffy after Epstein died anyway – since they weren’t performing together, they functioned more as a recording collective, the one rooftop performance notwithstanding. They certainly had a bunch of issues dividing them – everyone’s ego, John’s resentment of the others not adoring Yoko, the entire Allen Klein debacle (and fallout therefrom), drugs,Phil Spector, Paul’s micromanagement, George (justifiably) feeling underappreciated, Ringo getting exhausted with the whole thing, etc. – but I don’t think there was ever a “that’s it, we’re done” moment until, at earliest, the end of 1969, six months after Abbey Road was released (when they had some disputes over the release of Mccartney), and possibly until the end of 1970, when Paul sued the others. Even then, the other members gave testimony that the band could continue, so who knows what they might have planned if not for John’s untimely death.
Imho, the shame of it all is that, despite crafting just about all of the blueprints for “how to be a rock band”, they didn’t think up “we can do solo albums and then come back together” . . .
Thing is, that was pretty much the plan – it just didn’t work. Several of them had solo albums in the works before they officially broke up, and George had already done the Wonderwall Music album in 1968. Unfortunately, things got too acrimonious, and then John died, so they never made another album (unless you count the couple “new” songs on Anthology) – but I like to think they would have made another album together eventually if not for John’s death.
I think, though, they were kinda doing those projects almost “on the sly”; if they had just allowed themselves to be open about it—planned a break—instead, feelings could have been spared. I dunno.
I always got the sense that John and George were chafing at Paul’s “leadership” of the Beatles (which is one reason that they pushed for Allen Klein over Paul’s in-laws.) John thought of The Beatles as HIS band…and Paul hadn’t really recognized George’s growth.
So, when Paul told the world that The Beatles were done…they were done. I think George and John would have temporarily quit occasionally but would have come back for official Beatle stuff–but Paul leaving broke things irrevocably.
That The Beatles all hated each other by the time by the time they were recording Let It Be had been so canonised that by the time I actually watched Let It Be, I was surprised and relieved that there was in fact very little of the mythologised bickering between the band.It was simply a band recording a record, good and bad, with the famed rooftop concert at the end. And much of what has come out since supports what I got from watching it: they didn’t really hate each other at all.