The Beatles Got Back Where They Belonged In Rooftop Swan Song
The Beatles blasted the London financial district for their last lunchtime concert. The Beatles ended their concert history the way it began. Before the four Beatles were fab, there were five of them and they played to swinging teens during their midday breaks at the famous Cavern Club and the Casbah, an obscure performance space painted in day-glo colors by art students Stuart Sutcliff and John Lennon, in Liverpool. This was before and after the band pulled eight hour live shifts in Hamburg, Germany.
For their last concert, on Jan. 30, 1969, The Beatles took to the roof of Apple headquarters at 3 Savile Row and sang for their last supper, well, lunch. Starting at midday, Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Star and a keyboardist friend they’d known since their early touring days, Billy Preston, strapped on, plugged in and let loose with an impromptu 42-minute set that was closer in style to their earliest and rawest performances than to their half hour pop concerts. The Beatles got through nine takes of five songs, plus sundry snippets, before London’s Metropolitan Police Service told them to turn it down.
The concert was shot as a last-minute idea to end the 1970 documentary film Let It Be. Originally entitled Get Back, the film was supposed to show the band rehearsing and recording a back-to-the-roots, no-overdubs-allowed album. The film was going to end with a concert. The only question was where was the concert going to be held? On top of Mount Everest? Nah, the acoustics would have been terrible and no one would hear it except a couple Sherpas. An ocean liner out at sea? Lennon even suggested doing it in an asylum, which wasn’t as crazy an idea as it might seem.
By: Tony Sokol
Source:Den of Geek
