Mal Evans’ article about the Get Back album

5 Responses

  1. Unknown says:

    There are so many interesting stories around the Let it Be filming. When I was in London this year I visited 3 Saville Row to take a look at the old Apple Headquarters, but I was disappointed because the front of the building was all boarded up. At least I could still cast my eye up to the top where the famous concert was on the roof.
    Thanks for the article!

  2. bri286 says:

    As reported under a previous entry, I was recently lucky enough to meet Get Back producer Glyn Johns at a Q&A in the former Studio One at Olympic Studios in Barnes, South West London.

    The recording studio is now a cinema, keeping many original features, and made the perfect setting for Glyn to reminisce about his work in Studio One with the Stones, Who, Eagles etc.

    Naturally I asked him about Get Back, which he mixed at Olympic, and he explained what he was originally trying to achieve with the track and take selections he made, with an emphasis on the "fun" element of the sessions – hence the inclusion of busked versions of "Rocker", Save The Last Dance For Me, etc.

    As the project continued, resulting in further variations in the track line-up, Glyn kept the album's ethos faithful to his original idea – and we mused that, with hindsight, perhaps it was the "trousers down" looseness of some of the chosen material which led to the album ultimately being canned.

    One can't help but feel that some minor but judicious editing of the final tracklist, essentially just taking out the busking, would have created an album with which everyone would have been happy – let's face it, "Let It Be" doesn't offer any other significant enhancements (to say the least), as Glyn was very happy to point out in his book "Sound Man"!

  3. David Harvey says:

    Mal made some errors – Billy Preston was actually playing electric piano on “Don’t Let Me Down” and George played electric guitar and John played 6-string bass in guitar mode on “Dig It” (just watch the footage at Savile Row for proof) and Paul obviously played acoustic guitar alongside John on “Teddy Boy”, because he wrote it and there was no bass part.

    I never really cared for the studio version of DLMD, because the tempo was very slow, and that’s why Ali think the rooftop version was better.

    I’m not saying that Mal never got anything correct prior to publication, but he was prone to misremembering things at times and there’s no such thing as a 100% infallible or ironclad memory.

    • admin says:

      In the March 1969 issue of the Beatles Book Monthly, Mal wrote that early in February, Magic Alex installed his own recording equipment in the Apple Studio. Whereas Alex many years later claimed that he never had set foot in the Apple basement, he only had an office in the building which he sometimes visited.Mal's notes

      • David Harvey says:

        Magic Alex dismissed the idea that he made a hopelessly poor recording studio as a fabrication and he also stated that he never got around to actually building one.

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