All language subtitles for [English] The Beatles- Magical Mystery Tour [DownSub.com]

[waves crashing]

[mellow music]

[tape clicking]

[man] I'd like to direct this question
to misters Lennon and McCartney.

In a recent article,
Time Magazine put down pop music.

And they referred to Day Tripper
as being about a prostitute.

And Norwegian Wood
as being about a lesbian.

No, I just wanted to know
what your intent was

when you wrote it

and what your feeling is
about the Time Magazine criticism

of the music that is
being written today.

[McCartney] We're just trying to write songs
about prostitutes and lesbians, that's all.

[audience cheering, applauding]

[pensive music]

First sight, NEMS Enterprises,

Brian Epstein's
management company,

did appear to be amateur,

because everyone was
working really hard there,

lacking a little
in organization.

But everyone was very enthusiastic,

which made up for it, really.

And I don't believe
that any great errors

were made in promotion,
contractual relationships and so on.

No, it worked very well,
it worked very well.

Although there was no great
definition of people's roles there.

Brian invited me to become,
as he termed it,

Chief Administrative Executive.

A title which
I never used at all,

but he subsequently made
me director of the company.

[pensive music]

Brian was a very
hands-on manager.

He was their greatest fan.

He had their interests at heart
in every conceivable respect.

Very, very proper Englishman.

Kind of Englishman
you see in English movies.

Spoke the language beautifully,
dressed beautifully.

And a gentleman.
We never had a contract.

Each time our
contracts were done

over the phone.

I bought them without
having seen them.

And he told me I was the first
American to call him.

And I offered him something
that he couldn't resist.

Carnegie Hall.
He says, "I've heard about Carnegie".

The Beatles were not known
in America at that time.

Not even their records were playing.

But I'd been reading about them.

Their success in the
States wasn't immediate.

I mean, their singles had been
released in the States before

to very little impact, I
mean, roughly like the impact

of feather on concrete, I suppose.

But I Want To Hold Your Hand
somehow

caught the mood of the
act, caught the lightning.

I said, let's bring them here.

They were coming stars, not just in
Liverpool,

but going across the country,

and then doing Germany.

And going on to France later on.

I bought them because the
language was the same.

And kids of England,
Germany, France,

were responding to their music.

But when I saw them
the very first time

when I presented them
with Carnegie Hall

and I met them before they went on

at their hotel, at the Plaza Hotel,

looking out the window
of the Plaza Hotel

and see hundreds of
kids waving to them

from downstairs
below the Plaza Hotel

and singing their songs.

In some ways, the Beatles
had already cracked America

before they even arrived there,

because they already
got to number one

with I Want To Hold Your Hand.

And then there was the
airport arrival where

there was another big PR campaign

and I think Capitol
Records paid lots of fans

to go in and jump up there.

And for a lot of people they
equate the early Beatles

with I Want to Hold Your Hand,
especially in North America.

That song really defines an era.

It was actually quite a lot slower.
It was almost like a ballad.

When they were they wrote it,

and George Martin lifted the tempo.

And that's what made
it click straight away.

It's just a very cool,
simple subject matter,

which was very well done
in the great Beatles way,

with great melodies,
great middle eights,

just very well put together.

John Lennon plays what
would be considered

almost as prehistoric heavy metal,

kind of a rhythm guitar
track, very aggressive.

It's got a really strong
melody against the chords.

And that's why I
think a song like that

stands the test of time, because
of the power of the melody.

It may have been a simple song,
but the way it was performed

and the combination of the two,

plus, of course, the visuals,

remember that television was
beginning to come into its own and

that really the Beatles
made each and every song

of theirs their own.

The vocals explode into an almost
an orgasmic kind of a finale.

I want to hold your...

[piano plays] That's
quite an ecstatic leap.

They may not have been
thinking of the word hand,

What I Want To Hold
Your Hand has is energy

and vitality and self confidence.

And we're taking on the world
and we're going to beat everybody.

Doesn't matter what the words say,

and lots of people have
gone back since and said,

"Oh, the Stones wanted
to take you to bed,

The Beatles just wanted
to hold your hand."

And okay, that's true on one level,

but let's just listen to the
actual sort of impact of the song

that words are meaningless.

What the song is saying is

"we're going to take on the
world, we're going to win."

I think I Want To Hold
Your Hand is iconic.

That is the Beatles number

that became the biggest in America.

This is what started them
in America, you know.

And this is the record
that they were first told

when they were in
Paris, you've just come

number one in the American charts.

And the whole of America fell
in love with them, you know,

it was such an upbeat, happy song.

Just a couple of months after

President Kennedy had
been assassinated.

And America had been in mourning

and suddenly they had
something to smile about

with the Beatles and
this particular number.

And I think it is iconic,
will always be remembered,

and I think with Americans
they'll always think

of that particular number.

Ed Sullivan.

Ed Sullivan had been
traveling across Europe

to get to Heathrow Airport
and take a plane back

to his native New York.

At the airport when
he got to Heathrow,

so a bunch of kids hold up signs.

Now the Beatles
were not known here.

And he saw posters.

"We love John, we love Ringo,
we love Paul, we love George."

[chuckles]

Welcome home Ed Sullivan, he
asks an airport attendant,

Who are these Beatles?

Ed Sullivan used to present
a lot of animal life,

you're too young to
remember that, I think.

[laughing]

He asks to that flight
attendant, is this an animal act?

And the man said, "No, this is
England's

most popular singing group."

He had someone in his office
check out, who are these?

Who are these Beatles?

And he learn that
a New York promoter

with my name

was presenting them.

[nostalgic music]

The secretary call us and said,

Mr. Sullivan asked me to call you

and told me that he found out

that you're bringing the
Beatles over, is that correct?

I said yes.

What do you think of them?

I said they were a phenomenon.

The rest was history.

They came here,

they did the Sullivan Show.

Sullivan bought them
three days prior to my date.

Historically, his
show was over Sunday.

Mine happen to be on a
Wednesday, February 12.

He put them on Sunday, February 9.

[nostalgic music]

The Ed Sullivan Show was
the sort of North American

equivalent of Sunday night
at the London Palladium

and it was transmitted
coast to coast.

And everybody saw it.

And it had roughly the same
effect on the American public

as the Beatles
appearance in, you know,

on Sunday night at
the London Palladium

they had a few months earlier,

and everybody was glued to the TV.

And a significant statistic here
is, well the Beatles are on,

not a single hubcap was stolen
in the whole of New York.

The Ed Sullivan show
was extremely important.

It was a big deal.

They somehow on
American TV show worked.

The whole of America
saw the Beatles.

So as a springboard for
America, it was huge.

[nostalgic music]

By just having one or
two performances for him,

they could basically cover the
whole of America coast to coast.

You know, you hear
stats, like, you know,

the juvenile delinquent crime
rate dropped that night,

because everyone was at home
watching it on television.

You know, just like
everyone who was alive

in that era could tell
you where they were

when they heard Kennedy died,

most people will tell
you that they saw

the Beatles that night in February.

To appear on the Ed Sullivan Show

was like the music
business seal of approval.

When you're on Ed
Sullivan, you are a star.

And I think it to us
young kids at the time,

it solidified the fact that
these guys are mega stars

and they're here to stay.

I think this very sort of
careful, clever management,

that's got the Beatles
to where they are.

But the Ed Sullivan shows were
crucial in their career development.

It was crucial, really.

I don't know if you could
say they were being marketed,

I think they were just being
unveiled, I prefer that.

This phenomenon for Beatles sound,
Americans just love the group.

But you can't, it's
impossible to overstate

the importance of the Ed
Sullivan shows because

I think it was 73 million
people watched them.

And something like one in three
of the American population

watched the Beatles, and that would
have been an awful lot of kids,

obviously, but also parents
who were actually seeing

this group for the first time.

There are two strands here, I
think the American image

of English people at that
time was the bowler hats

and the umbrella type
of guy, you know.

So suddenly, these
guys come along here,

and they clipped.

And they also had the idea
that people had clipped English,

you know, very well spoken people.

Probably like Brian Epstein.

And these four guys come
off a plane, you know,

whatever their moptop heads

which these days you
don't seem outrageous,

it doesn't seem that
long, but it was then.

With their different accent,
with a Liverpool accent.

Then rarely encountered that before

and cracking jokes, you know,
sorts of stuff doing one off,

one off common so.

I think the Americans
were just blown over,

but blown over pious
and fascinating pious.

The Ed Sullivan Shows
introduced the Beatles

to an awful lot of
people who had no idea

what was number one
in the pop charts,

and also marked the point
where they grew beyond

being a teenage band
and actually became

a sort of worldwide
universal old age band.

Because they had been used rarely
apart from when they have people like

Bill Haley, Rock Around the Clock.

But he was then a guy of 30,
which was quite old for teenagers

and he had this kiss curl.

There's Elvis, but Elvis
had gone in the army.

And he was fairly clean
cut sort of guy, wasn't he?

But then these guys
come along, the Beatles.

One of the great myths
about 60s Pop is that

nothing was happening in America.

And the Beatles came along
and revolutionized everything.

It's just not true, the two
biggest groups in America

in '63, '64 were the Beach
Boys and The Four Seasons,

and they were pushing
each other all the time

to do more and more innovative
songs and effective records.

Meanwhile, you've got Phil Spector

making some of the greatest
records of all time.

And there was some wonderful country
things coming out of Nashville,

soul music was kicking
off, you've got Sam Cooke,

his writing was just starting
out, Ray Charles in his prime,

it was anything but a desert.

But what the Beatles did
was bring an entirely new

sort of atmosphere of freshness.

And Englishness,
which hadn't been seen

on the American pop scene before.

The cracking of America was achieved

with contributions from a
number of different sources.

And I mean, on the part
of Capitol Records,

there was also undoubtedly
unusual promotional expenditure.

In their way, they were prepared
to sort of spend money,

they produced all kinds of
gimmicky things like Beatles wings.

They had their executives
going around the place

in Beatles wings and
waving flags and posters

and so forth, and they
certainly provided posters

and banners for the kids to
wave at the airport at New York

when the Beatles first
arrived in February 64.

Yeah, they did.
So it's a concentrated effort

from all aspects, but it
was all directed at

different parts of the market,
and that's what was crucial.

Normally, a Rock and Roll
campaign would have concentrated

purely on the TV and
magazines, probably.

We concentrated on the
widest possible range

from the most
sophisticated magazines

and newspapers across the board
down to the TV fanzines.

[introspective music]

First of all, it was made at
a much more leisurely pace

than Please Please Me had been.

So they have a chance
to have a breath

and actually take a break
after doing two or three songs,

rather than trying to
do them all on one day.

And secondly, they were
allowed to double track overdub

for the first time and
so they could actually

overdub their vocals put
the same vocal on twice

just to make the sound thicker.

In fact, I think later on, I
think it was John who said that

they more or less double track
themselves off that record,

because having discovered
they could do it,

it was a great game, they just
wanted to do it on every track.

But there's some fantastic
material on that record,

the songs like All My
Loving, and It won't Be Long,

which are easily as
good as their singles.

And also some of their very,
very best cover versions.

Particularly Smokey Robinson's song,

You've Really Got a Hold on Me,

which I think is one of the
very, very few white versions

of a Motown song it
actually beats the original.

All My Loving, for me is
one of the great unsung

heroes of the Beatles era,

Though earlier, it's such
an unbelievably great song.

When All My Loving came out

it was on their second album
in England, With The Beatles.

And by the time they came
over to North America,

that song was one
of the first songs

I think they opened up
with the Sullivan Show.

But it was a key song
in the Beatles career.

It was just the right balance
between kind of schmooze,

romanticism and kind
of professional,

quite hard driving rock band.

And there's a sense in
which they're taking further

what they have done previously,

because instead of
basically four chord loops,

which is what we've
had up to this point,

you have a much longer pattern.

[piano music]

Gosh, it sounds like organ
music like that, doesn't it?

But that's what they're doing.

That's that's the
underlying pattern.

You have an eight chord sequence.

And they finish with that.

Now, we happen to be in
any major at this point,

that chord belongs,
that chord is borrowed

from a sort of a blues background.

All My Loving was the very
first song that Paul wrote,

where the words came
before the music.

He said he wrote it a like a poem.

And then the music
came sort of later.

So this was another step in the
songwriting experience of him.

This is about where
they started losing

some of the high end in
their sound, in my opinion,

you won't hear that cymbal crash
and the snare quite as much,

you are starting to
hear a little bit more

of the bottom end of the
song, a little bit more bass.

Bass is a little more
predominant in that song,

and the drums as well
as actual bass playing.

Paul had this walking baseline

that was unheard of before.

There's so many chords in it.

And he just had this beautiful

walking bass line
all the way through.

And it was kind of
overshadowed even by John's

jangly rhythm guitar, which is
very, very hard to execute on stage

or studio or anything.

And Lennon always
said that, you know,

he had a hard time playing that song

because of the complicated sort
of fretting pattern on that song.

So definitely, it was a step up,

the Beatles were experimenting more.

They were doing something
that was different.

They weren't copying so much as
as developing and innovating.

What we have here is
a song I think it's

fairly well advanced,

certainly compared with
their first compositions

on the first album.

To this day, you know, I
can't believe that a song

so good that they would never
have used it as a single.

But that's certainly my all
time favorite Beatles song,

I can listen to that thing forever.

I think All My Loving is
interesting songwriting from Paul,

first of all because of the
counterpoint, or harmony singing,

which is, I think,
the most interesting

that the Beatles have
done up to that point.

Secondly, because it's got
some amazing rhythm guitar work

on it from John, which I think
he was very, very proud of.

And thirdly, because it's maybe

Paul McCartney's
first great melody,

which it's on the road
to things like Yesterday

and so on later on.

I'm being told by a friend of mine

that it's actually
Nick from Tchaikovsky.

I don't know whether
that's true or not.

I've never heard the
better of Tchaikovsky.

But it's just a fantastically
catchy pop song,

and it says something about the
caliber of the Beatles material

at that point that
they could write a song

as amazingly commercial as that,

and then not put
it out as a single.

By then they could have easily
written the whole album.

But I think obviously,
because again,

they're the new band still,

even though they were
knocking at number ones

like, you know, like
anybody's business.

They still obviously
had people around them,

still didn't trust them
to write a whole album

full of their own material,
which I think is a bit sad,

because I think they could have.

It's certainly not true that the
Beatles were the first people

to write their own hit records.

The Shadows have done
it, even Cliff Richard

that actually helped out The Shadows
to write some of its own hits.

And in America, people
like Chuck Berry

had made an amazing career

out of writing some of the greatest
Rock and Roll songs of all time.

But in terms of being an entirely
sort of self contained group

who could come up with an
entire album's worth of material,

the Beatles are the first.

And in some ways, you could say
that they ruined the music industry

because they made
everybody else think

"oh, if I'm going to
be a proper Pop star,

I've got to write my own songs."

And actually, an
awful lot of pop stars

have been far better having
songs written for them

by Carole King, or
people like that.

But they insisted
on doing their own.

So it was a revolution, which
obviously encouraged the Beatles

to come up with the best
music they ever did.

But at the same time, also
produce an awful lot of rubbish.

You couldn't yet get
away with an album

of entirely self penned material.

So you actually had to put
in some standards in there.

Things like Money and Roll
Over Beethoven work well

because they're the sort
of Rock and Roll stuff

that The Beatles have
been playing for years.

They're very familiar
with that sort of style,

and they're beginning to turn
out things in their own style.

A lot of these American
influences were very much

a big draw on the Beatles,

they really wanted to put a lot of
these songs into their repertoire.

And I think, at the time,
when that album came out,

they were still unsure
that their songs

on their own could sell an album.

So you throw a bunch of
different covers on there too,

because the average
record buyers will say,

"Oh, I know that song, Money."

And they'll buy the album
maybe on that purpose.

It's a way of sort of
cementing themselves

within the tradition to
take on a song like that,

which may not belong really
within their repertoire,

but because it uses material that
they themselves use elsewhere,

it's a way of saying, you know,
we're actually firmly within this--

I think about tradition
really for early Beatles,

but that really is what
they're saying, you know,

we're not doing anything outrageous.

I'm not sure whether to
say it's an improvement

A Hard Day's Night album
because it's entirely

Lennon-McCartney compositions.

I actually think there's
there's more consistency there

because this is all
their own material.

It was great to listen to
an album that was all new.

It wasn't covers where "Oh yes,
I've heard that song great cover,

but I've heard the song."

And I think it was a
landmark in that sense

where you knew they
were here to stay.

A Hard Day's Night was
some sort of highlight

of the early years
because every track

was written by
Lennon and McCartney.

And they were all strong numbers.

And also, they were quite unusual.

I mean, for example, that
the final track I'll Be Back,

which wasn't in the film,

the harmonies wander
all over the place.

I mean, it doesn't
seem to have a standard

sort of verse chorus
pattern at all.

And I think they are actually
trying to extend the boundaries

of the common pop song.

A Hard Day's Night,
what an amazing record.

It's completely composed by
Lennon-McCartney, to begin with.

One of the very few
times that had been done

by anybody in a Rock
group up to that point.

And the maturity of the songwriting

within the very sort of narrow pop,

I love you, you love me, kind
of format they were working.

Very, very complex harmonies,
interesting chord changes,

just fantastically
professional songwriting

all the way through.

I think in lots of
ways, and essentially,

the interesting thing
about that record

is the fact that it's
completely dominated by John.

I think, almost for the last time
at any Beatles record,

he wrote more songs than Paul did.

13-14 songs, and John
wrote about 10 of them.

Amazing sort of
purple pants for him.

And I think that really sort of said
he rocked up at Paul's backside.

And as a result, Paul dominated
almost every album after that.

I mean, it certainly
produced, you know,

a modicum of hits,
not by the Beatles

in all sorts of cover versions
of all the songs on it.

Every song was covered
by another artist,

and the Beatles themselves score
with A Hard Day's Night itself,

which was number one for
weeks, throughout the summer.

I mean, what a way
to start an album.

You know, this was still a world
where you expected introductions,

proper introductions to songs, and
all you get is this in a chord,

which rings and actually
suggests nothing about

what's going to follow,
I mean, incredible.

There's no way that
you can't actually

just hear the beginning of that song

and know who it is and what it is.
It's a brilliant song.

This was the start of bringing
in the slightly tougher approach.

And then juxtaposing
it with the slightly

sugary more sort of
softer middle section.

There's a sort of slight
humor in there as well.

It's not completely,
you know, sort of just

A Hard Day's Night
sort of play on words.

So it's still got a little bit of
the kind of sort of romantic Beatles

sort of theme running through it,

but it's kind of
much more confident.

And it was a step
forward in in melody,

and the way the the backing
vocals were arranged,

very, very good song.

I think that there's something
about the art school training

or whatever like that,
and you sort of admire

the fact that three seconds into
this thing you're sitting,

"Oh, what's going to happen next?"

You know, it's not
like somebody's going,

"Oh, look at me I'm wonderful."

You know what I mean, it's
kind of like any face,

you know about this, don't you?

Just that one chord, I mean, how
many of the songs are the way

you can just hit one chord,
and you know what it is?

Very, very self confident piece
of songwriting from John Lennon.

At the other extreme, If I Fell,
which is a John Lennon ballad

that everybody assumes
must be Paul McCartney.

But it's John again, very,
very fragile love ballad

in the sort of early 60s
girl group tradition.

And then a third song from
John called You Can't Do That,

which is as close as the Beatles
ever got to being an R&B band.

He said he was trying to get
that sort of Wilson Pickett feel.

And he actually plays
lead guitar on that

which adds to the sort of
general roughness and rowdiness

of the atmosphere.

And alongside that very, very
smooth that's the songwriting like,

in Things We Said
Today, Paul McCartney,

one of his finest melodies again.

But almost every
track on the record

is a standout, it's very
hard to find a weak moment.

[typewriter clanking]

I suppose the next big
step for the Beatles

was to go on to the screen.

I mean, people have
seen them on television.

But everybody wanted to really
get closer to the Beatles

and see them, hear them talking.
Find out what they were like.

It was the first harder rock movie

that was made-- that was
a success in the cinemas.

A Hard Day's Night was
a fantasize version

of what the Beatles life was like.

In there it was just that
constant being chased.

It was never sitting down
for a minute of peace,

just them being bullied
into doing things.

Yes, bullied into doing things

that you didn't always want to do.

They did have their limits
of how much they would

commercialize themselves.

They just blew everyone away.

They just made the right
film with the right director

with the right script
at the right time,

using all the right material.

They couldn't have done it better.

Because United Artists
thought the Beatles would

probably be just be
a flash in the pan,

sort of overnight success
and then disappear.

They decided to make movie
for 150,000 pound budget,

and in black and
white to save money.

I think that actually
Paul McCartney said that,

"thank God, they made
it in black and white

because if it had been in
color would have been crap."

It could have been a disaster,
it could have gone the wrong way.

It could have proven
to be embarrassing

or perhaps just not at
home in a film medium.

But in fact, they turned
out to be just as confident

and self possessed as they
appeared on stage or in interviews.

A Hard Day's Night was more
or less art imitating life

and showing a beat group
going around the country

in a bus being chased by fans
and never having a moment's rest.

So you could say that it
wasn't exactly challenging

to write the script for that one.

In fact, a lot of people
think that it was all ad libs,

but there was virtually
no ad libbing at all,

little scripted written by
a script writer, Alun Owen,

but because they were sort of
young, and they've never acted,

and they were a little bit nervous.

Each line has a maximum of
six words in it. [chuckles]

It was the first pop film

that actually gave the
impression of being real life.

And obviously it wasn't
because the Beatles didn't go

running off round playing
fields just before gigs,

and Ringo didn't storm off
and in a terrible half,

just when they were about
to go on TV and so on.

And okay, but their
characters were very cliched,

and they were sort of
placed into the pigeon holes

that they then had to occupy
for the rest of the 60s.

But it had an amazingly
documentary feel about it,

which was all down to
Richard Lester, the director.

It was his idea, I think to try
and get away from the cliche.

Let's do a show, kind of
Hollywood musical style.

Obviously what the Beatles
would do for the movie musical,

which in a sense was
what this now was

and updating of the
musical tradition.

That would obviously set
a tone for other groups

to follow and for what was
to come later in the decade.

That's another first
for the Beatles.

["Can't Buy Me Love"
by The Beatles playing on piano]

So you've got a blue third,
and you've got a melody which is

falling all the time.

And it's scalic.

Those characteristics
are all important,

you get into the middle
eighth or the bridge...

[piano music]

You've lost your blue third,

you've lost the falling
nature of the melody.

It's now basically rising,

and you've lost the scaling aspect.

It's now basically an arpeggio.

Can't Buy Me Love was
an interesting song

because it was the first
major Beatles song to feature

one vocal rather than Lennon
and McCartney together.

And of course, seeing
the Beatles in the movie

A Hard Day's Night, eating
around in the giant field,

when that song was
playing, you know,

it just had a real
fun flavor to it.

But what's significant is that
the guitar, electric guitar,

has really come to the
fore, and its mix's louder

and drives the track along.

It was much more sort of aggressive,

not in a mad way. But there
was a tougher sort of sound

and a tougher record and
slightly more guitar-y.

And I think in that way, it
made slightly more impact.

The public responded really
well, they really liked

the kind of more
driving harder edge.

Because by now bands like
The Stones, were starting to

not really give the Beatles
so much competition,

but they were dirtier and harder

and more kind of Rock and Roll.

And the Beatles already
were sort of starting to

take on this kind of
goody goody image,

which I don't think
they really liked.

And I think still at this stage,

George Martin was just
helping them to, you know,

drop that chord there guys, or you
know, that's good, repeat that.

So he was giving them
his arrangement ideas.

Listen to the production, you know,
because there's not a simple thing,

even in the earlier
tracks, you know,

there's bongos going
away in the background.

It's all about feel,
getting the tempo right,

and getting the feel right.

And then seeing them
birds over the top.

When you would go to a concert,

whether it be a big band, or
small group or, or whatever,

you will be sitting in
the audience of the venue

and you would hear a
mixture of direct sound

from the stage, but you
will always get a mixture

of the ambient of that room.

The throwback from
the walls or whatever.

And I had this sound in my mind
that I wanted to try to get through

to that similar sort of sound as I
could and put it on tape as I could.

So what I did, I had a method of

I had to go down to the
Beatles, they were set,

I set them up in a certain way.

We did have a company policy
before I became really established

as their sound engineer,
which I was told to follow.

And that was by the use of
screens, screening everything,

you put a mic in front of an
amplifier, who'd screen it.

So that ideally, when you opened
up that fader, on that mic,

all you would hear
would be that whatever,

that guitar that...

And that would improve the
separation, as it was called.

I didn't like that at all.

Because being a jazz
performer with my own group,

I like being close to the
group as easy as possible.

It affects your own playing, etc.

And I thought this would
apply to The Beatles too,

because they've done quite
a bit in Hamburg anyway,

without having to worry about
the separation, etcetera.

So I brought this to bear
when I started to record,

not for Love Me Do but once
they'd were established with

Please Please Me.

I thought right, this is
where I can now do what I like

because now I'm established
as their engineer. [chuckles]

And so I would go
down and I said right,

you can set the levels
you're happy with yourself,

whatever levels you
want to set, do so.

Unlike in the last two
sessions with other engineers,

when they have mixing
up into the console,

they would perhaps ask
for, "son, son, son, son,

can you turn your
volume down a bit?"

Or this sort of stuff,

but I let them set whatever they
were happy with their sound there.

And I would stand back
at the back of the studio

and listen, see if I could get this

and beyond as I call it.

A sound, a mixture of them and what
was coming back from the studio.

And then I'll replace
my mics accordingly.

Sometimes a long way
back to get the mixture

as I thought of this sound,

sometimes I had to use a little
bit of the echo chamber on voice,

singing, sometimes you
hear a bit of that.

And it was just the sound that I got

from direct and the ambient sound.

In retrospect, I would
consider that George Martin

was the fifth Beatle.

They could do something
he couldn't do.

And he could do something they
couldn't do, perfect marriage.

Without him, we wouldn't have
had such great reference at all.

And it's very hard to work out

where production ends
and arrangement begins.

Because with Can't Buy
Me Love, for instance,

when you hear that song, you
hear the chorus comes first.

In fact, when they played it to
him, the chorus didn't come first.

He said, "well put it up front,
lads, that's where it belongs.

That's where it'll
hit home quickest."

And if you like, if that
was a production hint,

an arrangement or whatever,

it was something George
Martin helped them out with,

that helped made the song.

He allowed an unknown band
to record their own material.

Major step, changed everything for
everyone over the whole planet.

They changed everything,
from then on in

new bands with no track record
with nothing behind them

could record their material.

This has never been done before.
He changed pop music forever.

He was able to write for strings,

he was able to walk into an
orchestra session and say,

"I want you to play this
song," and write it down,

give it to the musicians and
they could play on the piano.

And the Beatles respected him.

And he respected them.

As time went on perhaps
they outgrew him,

but certainly for the for
the early to mid period,

it was a large part of George Martin

that went in with
Lennon and McCartney.

They learned a lot
from George Martin,

and he was at the right
place at the right time,

and thank God for that.

And I Love Her was a good example of

not just sort of screaming
twist and shout. [laughing]

It was John and Paul thinking
about writing more mature,

introspective material.

You know, here was a song that
had a very different beat,

Ringo had it, you know,
the drumming in it was

a very different style.

And it was just basically
Paul and the acoustic guitar.

Very nice song.

Searching for a new way
of communicating an idea,

an old idea, And I Love
Her it's been around--

Love songs have
been around forever,

but they always seem to find a new
way to introduce it to the public,

that would grab you in
some way and kind of go

"hey, that's interesting."

Unbelievably, he
manages to just avoid

sort of tend to ludicrous,
sort of sloppiness,

and I think that's a lot of what's
down to the quality of his voice.

He just had this sort of inbuilt
knowledge to just be tender enough,

but then to put the odd little bit
of kind of angst in there as well.

Here was an indication

that you could switch
from tough Rock and Roll

to writing sweet ballads.

I think one of the standout tracks
on the A Hard Day's Night album

is Things We Said Today,

one of the few McCartney
songs on the whole record.

It's a very simple song.

And I think that
without it on the album,

the album will probably be a
little bit maybe too contemporary.

You know, it was quite a departure
from earlier Beatles material.

Is quite virtuosic, it uses a very
common pattern and cycle of fifths.

[piano music]

It uses it there, but
it uses a different one

in the middle eight.

[piano music]

And that's quite virtuosic.
So you're actually shifting key.

And you're using the same pattern,

but a different
portion of the pattern.

And as it turned out, it's
a brilliant soundtrack

to a pretty good movie.

Hit songs before the
Beatles were more or less

boy girl, moon June.

Something based on what a
guy would buy his girlfriend

or possibly vice versa.

So when the Beatles took
up their songwriting pens,

it was obvious to carry on the
tradition that they knew all about.

It is the Beatles locking into what
everybody else was singing about.

And presumably what their audiences
wanted to listen to songs about.

It was to do with them
speaking to their fans.

And when you look back, I
guess it was a bit repetitious,

but at the time nobody noticed it.

And then John would actually
sit down and they'd think like,

if I was a teenage girl, what would
I want the Beatles to sort of,

you know, say to me kind of
thing, or what would I want?

And so they were really, really
aware of that sort of thing,

and they wanted to make
songs where people, you know,

especially that teen market
would would pick up on that,

and especially the young girl market
that would want them to think that

oh, Paul wrote the song for
me kind of thing, you know.

And this kind of idea. So I think,

originally that really drove
them with their songwriting.

Is part of the Beatles, you
know, sits without that,

I think there would have
been another great band.

But I think the sort of
the whole issue of love

is what established them at
the top in the first place.

So they wisely kept
that sort of theme

running through their output.

Had they been singing about women

and different things or singing
about as opposed to girls,

I think we probably would
have missed the message.

And I don't think they
would have been nearly

as big as they were.

Years later, they began
to write songs about like,

for instance, She's A Woman.

Now, that would be where I
would think they suddenly,

when we were all a little
bit older than two, so...

it was probably their
evolution along with us

that made them continue
on to be strong with

that group of Beatle
maniacs, I guess.

She's A Woman tends to go
back to that bitterness,

it's a very uncluttered
sort of texture,

the emphasis is very much
on the voice and the melody

because there's not
really much else going on.

And I see that as a positive, as
a sort of retrenchment almost,

because that will look
ahead to things like

Norwegian Wood, where
they can approach

a thinner texture in a positive way,

and realize perhaps that everybody
doesn't have to play all the time.

The other particularly
striking thing

about She's A Woman, is the title.

Because up to this point, they've
been singing about little girls,

and all of a sudden they're
singing about a woman.

Well, that says
something, isn't it?

I Feel Fine will always be
remembered for the feedback front.

Big mistake, fairly
genius to leave it.

Now there is some debate
over it wasn't, in fact,

the first song with feedback
and whether it was or not

is up for debate, but it's the
first one that I ever heard.

And it's a fun song again, the
Beatles could deliver the goods.

I Feel Fine, a Lennon song,
She's A Woman, a McCartney song.

A great combination is
Something for everybody there.

I think that the process
of moving from songs

which depend on their
chord such structures to

songs which depend
on riffs is missed.

I mean, we never really focus
on that moment of change,

but it's a fundamental change
and it begins to happen

in around 1965-1966.

So this...

[piano music]

Is crucial.

[upbeat music]

They're now at the height
of their touring period,

so they didn't really
probably have enough time

to get into the studio to give
the thing their full attention.

Two standout tracks
on me for this one,

is I'm a Loser,

with John and Paul, I think the
harmonies on this are actually

first class and I think
it's John's statement.

This is John song, although
Paul is doing some good

harmony on it as well.

And the other one
that stands out for me

was a great influence on the Beatles

in their early days
was Buddy Holly,

it was also a great
favorites of mine.

And they sing Words Of Love.

And because I'm a Buddy Holly
fan, as well as a Beatles fan,

I'm very critical of people
that do Buddy Holly songs.

They don't do them as
good as Buddy Holly.

But this Words Of Love stands
up with Buddy Holly's version,

Words Of Love by the Beatles.

So it's a good album for me

although it has been criticized
as their weakest one.

Beatles For Sale was
the work of a group

that was becoming tired and after

with the previous album
A Hard Day's Night,

every track was a Lennon
and McCartney original.

By the time Beatles
For Sale came around,

they'd fallen back
very much on their old

sort of Hamburg in Liverpool
repertoire, you know,

old time Rock and Roll,

although there were some
classic songs on it,

like, you know, Eight Days
a Week or I'm a Loser.

But I think, you know, that was

almost as if they
were stepping back,

you know, retreating to have
prepared position almost

before going once again, for
the the next album, Rubber Soul.

But isn't to say that
it's a bad album.

You can't dismiss it as some
sort of holding operation.

I think it's a very strong album,

but I mean, they look
tired on the cover

and I think that
it's to do with with

this sort of relentless
touring scheduled

that had been unbroken
since the beginning of 1963.

And their recording
sessions tended to be

whenever they were available. It
wasn't the case of block bookings.

It was a case of, you know,
whenever they could get to London.

You look at the cover
of Beatles For Sale

and you got four Beatles who
look very tired and very bored.

And that's the predominant
feeling you get from the record.

And after the creative breakthrough

of writing all the songs
on A Hard Day's Night,

it went back to the old routine
of doing half their own songs,

half other people's songs.

And the covers sounds so lame,

with the exception of Rock and
Roll music, which is great.

The other ones really don't sound

as if the Beatles wanted
to be there at all.

But at the same time, the
Beatles own songwriting,

this is the moment when
it starts to progress,

you get John's I'm a Loser

when he's obviously been listening
to Bob Dylan for the first time,

he's got the harmonica on there.

And he is writing in
a very sort of open

and rather crass way
about his own fingerings.

And some of the other songs as well,

the things that
people have forgotten,

Every Little Thing,
What You're Doing.

They're not famous songs, but
they're almost the epitome of that

that sort of beat sound.
They take the beat sound

from the '64 as far as it can go.

And I think with that record, the
Beatles realized they had to find

a new direction after that, or they
were going to be going downhill.

As opposed to their earlier albums
the songs were a little bit uneven.

It's actually the last
one I ever bought

because I didn't
know anything on it.

Except Eight Days a Week
and having a hold of it,

I've never listened to it again.

I think it's a marvelous album,
it's one of my favorites.

As a matter of fact, to me, they
didn't sound tired at all, no.

But there is a burnt
out tired sort of elements

that's underlying whole
album, and in fact,

you can see on the album cover,

the photographer Robert Freeman
took the shot and they look tired.

This is sort of
glazed look there is,

opposed to this kind of impish,
springy look, they usually get.

I don't think it was a tired record.

It was like, to me, I think
what we do in this day and age

when we make Rock albums,
we do the first album

than we think the next
album must be different.

They weren't as happy.
That's the other thing.

They were a little
more kind of down,

when their earlier
albums were upbeat.

All of a sudden, we're
seeing songs where

the Beatles aren't just
talking about something.

They're actually talking
about experiences

that they had or inner feelings.

Lennon's often talked about
songs like I'm a Loser or Help

as being sort of how
he felt at the time,

or what was going through his
head and writing that down,

and putting that into a
song very autobiographical.

And that was something
we weren't seeing

two albums before that.

Eight Days a Week, of course
there's a play on words as well.

So the band will probably, yeah,
working eight days a week.

I think so, and I'm
wondering Eight Days a Week

that might have been
another Ringoism maybe.

You think that even though Ringo
isn't writing a lot of songs,

he definitely gave John and Paul
lots of good ideas for things.

Almost harks back a little bit
to their earlier sort of skiffle,

Rock and Roll, period.

Certainly George
Harrison's guitar playing

sounds a lot like Carl
Perkins, one of his heroes,

a sort of countrified guitarist.

It starts off very
slowly faded it up.

And I think up until that point,

there wasn't many Rock and
Roll songs that faded up,

I'd never heard that done before.

So just something a
little bit different.

The Beatles were always
trying looking for different

ways to present their music.

And that was something
totally different.

The texture of the verse changes.

And this is something that's going
to become much more important

for the Beatles
subsequently, and I suspect

is George Martin, his
involvement, saying,

just change what
you're doing there.

The harmony's fine, the melody
is fine, the lyrics are fine,

but let's just change the
way it's being played.

Is it a description of how
hard they're working?

Probably, probably like
A Hard Day's Night.

I've had a hard day's night,

which means they've been
working day and night,

eight days a week.

Yes, they probably feel as though

they've been working
eight days a week.

But I can't be that analytical.

I just put the record on and think,

I wish I could write a song
like that ,unbelievable.

[bright music]

After 1964 the Beatles
weren't filming or doing TV,

they were on the road.

And whereas in '62, and '63,
that meant playing Liverpool,

and various cinemas
all around Britain.

In '64 they went to America,

and they went to
Australia and New Zealand.

And they went all over Europe,

and went to America twice, in fact.

And so by the end of the end of
the year there were exhausted.

And so what did they do at the end
of the year, they toured Britain.

And then they went and played
a Beatles Christmas show

in London where it was
like a Beatles pantomime,

which they really didn't want to do

if they had to go
to the same theater,

three weeks running to
really stupid sketches,

do jokes that nobody could hear

because people were screaming
all the way through.

And so that was really the end
of the sort of a Beatlemania,

around the end of 64 they
said to Brian Epstein,

"Look, we're happy
to carry on touring,

but we cannot work at this pace.

And we're never taking
another Christmas Show."

John Lennon in dark
glasses, white trousers,

blue plum soles, black
socks, lilac shirt

and multicolored jacket, it's
lovely to see you again, John,

after about three months.

I'm glad to see you, Derek
and your gray shirt, blue tie,

gray trousers of a tweedy thingie,

Beatle boots and black socks.

They're not Beatle boots.

They will be to anybody who will
see you in the States, Derek.

What's the film called, John?

They haven't got a title yet,
the director didn't think of one.

We're pleased to
hear from you, Derek.

I tried to help you once with an
album cover but didn't get very far.

Have you had any ideas which
come close to the title?

Oh, they've all been
sort of laugh ideas.

It has all been laughs. He laughs
laughs laughs laughs laughs.

Things like that.

I think George had one which was
something to do with Goldilocks.

Who's been sleeping in my porridge?

That sounds pretty close.
I think you might use that one.

No, because we can't
really sing about

who's been slipping in my porridge.

And will the title also be the
title of a song, do you think?

It'll have to be, will it?

So I heard.

How many songs have you
written for the film, John?

We had 13. We've recorded 11.

They've used seven and
we need titles for songs.

Altogether, I've written 14.

But only 7 will be in it.

The script, which I had
a look at it this morning,

it looks a little eccentric.

The aim of the operation presumably
is to get a different sort of film

from A Hard Day's Night.

Yeah.

[bright music]

[mellow music]

John Lennon in dark
glasses, white trousers,

blue plum soles, black
socks, lilac shirt

and multicolored jacket, it's
lovely to see you again, John,

after about three months.

I'm glad to see you, Derek
and your gray shirt, blue tie,

gray trousers of a tweedy thingie,

Beatle boots and black socks.

They're not Beatle boots.

They will be to anybody who will
see you in the States, Derek.

What's the film called, John?

They haven't got a title yet,
the director didn't think of one.

We're pleased to
hear from you, Derek.

I tried to help you once with an
album cover but didn't get very far.

Have you had any ideas which
come close to the title?

Oh, they've all been
sort of laugh ideas.

It has all been laughs. He laughs
laughs laughs laughs laughs.

Things like that.

I think George had one which was
something to do with Goldilocks.

[Lennon] Who's Been Sleeping
In My Porridge?

[man] That sounds pretty close.
Do you think you might use that one?

[Lennon] No, because we
can't very well sing about

"who's been sleeping in
my porridge," can we?

[man] And will the title also be the
title of the song, the thing, you think?

- [Lennon] It'll have to be.
- Will it?

[Lennon] So I've heard.

[man] How many songs have you
written for the film, John?

[Lennon]
13. We've recorded 11.

We need a title song.

All together we have written
14 but only seven will be in it.

[man] The script, which I had a look at
this morning, looks a little eccentric.

The end of the operation, I presume

is to get a different sort of
film from "Hard Day's Night".

[Lennon]
Yeah. And we've done it, haven't we?

If there's ever a moment
when The Beatles

were being professional
songsmiths,

it's the Help album.

Now in retrospect,
John Lennon always used to say

that the song Help was
his great cry from heart.

I was screaming out for help,
and nobody could hear me.

But I think that was an inference
he added to the song later.

I'm sure the rest of the members of
the band didn't realize that in '65

Help was was the end of a
chapter of The Beatles career.

It was like,
although probably unknowing to them,

a closing chapter on the
first part of their career.

Help came at the end of

pretty much two years of
solid touring for The Beatles.

And as the title would suggest,

John Lennon was quite keen

that the somebody stopped the
merry-go-round and let him off.

They've had this
success for a few years

and I think a lot of it
was getting to them.

They couldn't go anywhere
without being seen

and bothered and disturbed.

So I think it was a
true cry for help.

And I think a lot of the innocence
of the band and music

was coming to an end at
that stage of their career.

Help I think definitely
was an album

that was the last time where you
had rockers like Dizzy Miss Lizzy.

They had more years of experience
as songwriters behind them.

They had a bit more time now to
experiment more in the studio.

They became quite powerful
within the record company,

because they were
selling lots of records,

and they could do a little bit
more of what they wanted to do.

And consequently, what they've
been up to in their private life

started coming out in
the making of the record.

Now,
Help has also got Yesterday,

which is the most covered
song in history still, I think,

and probably will be forever.

An immaculate piece of songwriting.

I have no idea
where it came from.

Paul McCartney has no
idea where it came from.

Various people have tried to
find the melody in old songs

by Nat King Cole or
old bits of classical music.

But as far as Paul
was concerned,

he just woke up one
morning and had that tune.

And then he spent the 18 months
going around everybody he met saying,

"Have you heard this tune before?
It must be somebody else's".

And they go, "No".
"Oh, okay".

And then he ended
up with the song.

Yesterday is certainly
one of the most,

if not the most celebrated
of all The Beatles' songs.

I think that was kind of a crucial
moment in The Beatles career.

People realized that they were
not just the four mobtops.

They really were
masterful songwriters.

And of course, that attracted a
whole other area of audience.

A lot of other people who might not
have listened to a Beatles record

suddenly thought, "Oh, that's nice.
That's different".

Even though it can be
considered sort of a

middle of the road signs
recovered by sight from people.

You know, it really was a
hallmark song for The Beatles,

because they were
a rock and roll band,

and here was a rock and roll
song using a string quartet in it.

The reason everyone fawned
over Yesterday is because

it's the first time they
use strings. Simple.

It's the first time an
orchestra started on.

And they started to expand
their musical ideas.

And that's why everyone goes for,

"Ah, The Beatles
have written a ballad".

Basically, that's because people
haven't listened to the other albums

because there's a few in there.

This is the first song of
The Beatles where I feel

the words have been
really worked at.

He's brought them together
a perfect marriage.

It's a terrific song.

But the rest of the Help
album was very much

sort of Beatles by numbers.

By this point, they knew how
to write a Beatles pop song.

And they could do it in their sleep.

And most of Help sounds as
if they did do it in their sleep.

[psychedelic music]

I think this was a groundbreaking
album in a lot of ways

because this is when,

I would say more or less,

all ties were severed
with the Mersey sound.

Rubber Soul. The second
Beatles-fully-written album.

By the time Rubber
Soul came around

most of their recording sessions were
started like nine or 10 o'clock at night

and go to four or
five in the morning.

This was basically
because of their lifestyle

and the fact that they had
a bit more carte blanche

to do a lot more different
things in Abbey Road.

More than ever before they
started recording their music

just using single tracks,

rather than playing so
much live in the studio

as they did when
they first started out.

George Martin, great musician,
started to help them arrange,

started to put strings,
started to put brass,

he started to help them.

He would say, "Well, chaps,
you know, we've got an oboe mix

and interesting sound there,
a flugelhorn".

And they'd say, "Well,
let's hear it, George".

And he would get the
classical musicians into play.

And they say, "That's great!

So here was a very different
approach to recording.

They didn't see any reason for
changing keys at the wrong time.

They didn't see any
reason for not doing this.

They just saw no reason for
not doing anything like that.

So when it came to Rubber Soul,

they kicked in big time.

That was the first of five
classic records to be made.

Once The Beatles knew that
they'd got the public here

and that they didn't have
to fight to be heard.

The music became more interesting.

The songs became
more interesting.

Perhaps it was the lyrics that
really became more interesting

because Lennon and McCartney started
putting their own problems into songs.

You see The Beatles not
trying to write a love song,

or trying to write something
for a specific group.

They really wanted to
broaden their scope

and to write songs that were
either based on life experiences

or on the way they
felt about things.

Lennon and McCartney are
seeing the possibilities

of the popular song as
an expressive form,

rather than simply as
a set of procedures,

a set of formulae that
had been handed down.

I think a lot of
songs at that stage,

they were taking their time
and they were looking inside

and asking, "Is this really
what it's all about?"

They were young guys growing
up in this madness,

and they'd seen everything.

They'd done it all,
they'd seen it all.

They'd probably taken it all,
God knows.

I think you at some point, they
must have had some tea. [laughs]

Lots of it, with biscuits.

No, I don't know.

It's difficult because their
fans put them in that position

where they couldn't go anywhere.

I mean,
when they used to come and see us,

they had to put their
false mustaches on,

and dark glasses.

What's going on?

And so they were
screened off the road.

And so they went into the studio.

And when they
got all these toys,

and they had all the
time in the world,

and all the money in the world
to sort of experiment with it.

1965 was the year The
Beatles discovered drugs,

mind-expanding
drugs in a big way.

They spent most of that
year listening to Bob Dylan

under the influence of
mind-expanding drugs.

And they hung out
with him in London.

And they met people like the
beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

And so all in all,
they started to think,

"We should be doing more
with our songwriting

than we are at the moment".

And the results of that
are on Rubber Soul,

where you actually get them trying
to stand outside themselves,

and then look back at
their own experience

in a self consciously artistic
way for the first time.

They weren't just
writing pop songs,

they were writing songs for
themselves, about themselves.

And in popular music terms,
in pop terms,

I don't think that had
really been done before.

Okay,
Bob Dylan had done Highway 61

and Bring It All Back
Home by that point.

But he was a folk artist
to become a rock artist.

The Beatles were still trying to
be a pop band at that point.

And so it was a very brave
sort of tightrope walk

that they were taking,

trying to bring all their
new artistic influences

into the mainstream
pop business.

There was a period of time I
can't think how long it was,

but it was sometime

in between the previous
album to Rubber Soul

and the start of Rubber Soul.

What had happened in that time,
I don't know.

They had changed so
much so that when...

You see, up to the previous album
before Rubber Soul, we were like,

a happy family, the six of us.

It was that tight.

It was so enjoyable,
up to that time, everything.

I mean, George Martin used
to call himself the fifth Beatle.

Well, I argued with him on
that when I did interviews.

He said I was the sixth.

But I used to reverse it.

I was the fifth,
he was the sixth.

Anyhow, that's the sort
of relationship we had.

It was lovely, you know.

Up until they came in
and started Rubber Soul.

And I noticed that distinct change
which I did not like one little bit.

Personality change,
particularly between Paul and John.

They look different in any case.

With their beards and whatever.

And they looked
completely different

and they acted so different.

And the nice family
life had gone now.

Now it was this...
Well, I didn't like it.

They were bickering.

They were taking much
longer to do tracks.

Arguing about what
they should do.

There was that distinctive,

I wouldn't say dislike,
but it was the start of dislike,

growing,
which upset me terribly.

And fortunately,

I say fortunately because I was
able if I wish to get out of it,

simply because the offer
of becoming a producer

came about soon after
we started Rubber Soul,

and I thought to myself what good
timing for me now to get out.

Because I don't know
what's going on.

So I said to Epstein
and George Martin,

I can't stand this...

I got the offer for
taking into Parlophone.

Become a producer myself.

So I went out.

So of course I mean,
that caused great disappointment

and upset amongst the boys.

And what they did,

to soften me up,
I suppose, I don't know,

they were that upset they
went out to New Bond Street

they bought me a gold clock,
a carriage clock.

Inscribed it to me from them,

I still got it of course,
locked away, naturally.

And I thought, well, you know...

It brought me to tears
that they would do that,

what they thought of me.

Would I please continue and
finish the album, Rubber Soul.

Which I agreed to do.

And but after that, I said,

"You know that I can't
continue anymore,

because simply I've got now to get
on with my new job as producer".

So it was a mixture really for me

in terms of enjoyment,

enjoyment of the sounds
that I produced, yes,

in Rubber Soul.

Quite impressive.

But disappointment and upset

in terms of the relationships.

And I could foresee,
quite honestly,

it was the beginning of the
breakout of the end of the group.

Well, the bunch of us were in
Abbey Road Studios recording

My Brother Makes the
Noises for the Talkies.

It was a very, very silly song.

And it required obviously
a lot of sound effects.

And while the guys were figuring out
what a razor scraping noise would be

or steam escaping,

I went down the corridors.

And I was all the way back.

And the layout of
the building is such

that you come back up the
main corridor and you're facing

the front door.

And they're in the front door.

Silhouetted from the
sunlight outside,

were four guys with
very distinctive haircuts

and pointy shoes
and dark glasses.

And, you know, two big minders.

And of course, it's them.
It's the Fabs.

So I did.
I snuck out the corridor later on

to see what they were up to.

They were working on
one of George's songs.

It's funny because I was
telling him about this,

you know, years later

and and he immediately
remembered the riff,

you know, this wonderful riff.

[piano music]

♪ I want to tell you ♪

♪ I feel hung up,
but I don't know why ♪

I know they're not the right words,
but this piano going...

[piano music]

It was probably one of the most
exciting things I'd heard at the time.

You know, it's quite bizarre, because
then I had to go back into our studio

and finish off My Brother Makes
the Noises for the Talkies.

A wide range of music
available there in 1966.

Up until 1966, every time
George Harrison came up

with a song,
everybody laughed at him.

Particularly George Martin,
The Beatles producer,

who would always sort of pat him
on the back patronizingly and say,

"Well, it's not bad, but go away
and do something better".

And I think John and Paul were
also very, very cynical about

their younger brother as
they would have seen him.

Because don't forget he's three
years younger than John Lennon.

They're very cynical
about the idea

that he suddenly wanted
to be a songwriter as well.

And in fact, in '65,
he'd already started to write

interesting, unusual songs.

And he had a very sort of cynical,
open-eyed, realistic take

on romance as well.

And that came through in '66

with the three great songs
he wrote for Revolver.

Where he he really started to
exert his influence on the band.

The most important way in which he
changed The Beatles' songwriting

was by introducing
the Indian influence.

Not quite the first time it had
been done on a pop record.

The Yardbirds,
and maybe The Kinks got there first.

But as far as the outside
world was concerned,

he was the one who
was leading the world

into some sort of Oriental mysticism

and the whole sound of the sitar
and the tabla and so on.

And in 66,
for something like Love You To,

George Harrison's Indian song to
turn up on the Revolver album,

I think it opened people's eyes,
amazingly.

And I think people couldn't really
believe what they were hearing.

I think George was very
underestimated and had

tremendous talent.

And unfortunately,
because John and Paul,

historically, I think you've
got to put this into context.

John had started the band.

Paul had joined the band later,

but became very much
an integral part of it.

And George,

it might not seem a lot,

but I think when you are 19, 20,

and somebody's only 16,

they're the little kid.

And George had joined the
band even younger than that,

when he was about 14 years of age.

And John was very reluctant to
take him on because of his age.

And I think,
in John and Paul's eyes,

he was always seen as a little kid.

Now, consequently,

he didn't have the greatest
singing voice, George,

but he could write material and
was a very, very talented man.

But he would only get the statutory,
sort of obligatory, two tracks

if he was lucky on an album.

Now, the interesting thing is

that when The Beatles disbanded,

George really I think
in came into his own.

Really came into his own.

With his own work.

Right through to the end
of his life, you know,

the stuff he was doing.

But when he was with The Beatles,
I do think he was seen

as sort of the young one.

It's quite striking that the
first song on Revolver

is a George Harrison song.
Taxman.

John, he always used to
claim he wrote half of it

and George should have
given him the credit,

but it is very much George.

It's about money.

It's about worrying about
what was going to happen

to him as a person if all
the money ran out on him,

because The Beatles were paying,
I think it was 98% of their income

at that point to the
Inland Revenue.

And so not surprisingly,
it was a very major preoccupation,

particularly for George
who already had

the reputation of being the
one member of The Beatles

who was interested in
the business affairs.

But for the youngest
member of the band,

and the one who had
been treated as the joke,

to suddenly have the
lead track on the album

was quite a breakthrough
for George, I think.

Okay, okay.

Yellow Submarine
was written by Paul.

It was all about a
dream that he had had.

He always thought it was, you know,
a kind of a children's song.

Again, it was written
specifically for Ringo to sing it.

And so the vocal
range is very narrow.

And they would deliberately do
that when they wrote for Ringo.

George Martin helped out,
he had a closet

he showed The Beatles full of all
kinds of different weird, instruments

they could use,
and they used tons of sound effects.

It was just time for them to
have a lot of fun in the studio.

That was one of the
joys of The Beatles.

They could be a
group for all seasons

and appeal to so many
different social groups.

It wasn't just a band
producing clever music

for the critics to mull over.

They would come up with these
daft little ditties now and then,

and that's certainly a
daft little ditty. [laughs]

So if you look at the
album as a whole,

they take a number of
different approaches,

and are opening wide
the possibilities of what

a popular song can take on
in terms of subject matter.

Yellow Submarine is
simply one of those.

It goes on an album that's
packed with classics.

I mean, Revolver, nearly the
best album they ever made.

May be the best album
they ever made.

Eleanor Rigby.
Here, There and Everywhere.

She Said She Said.
I'm Only Sleeping.

I mean,
that album has 14 classics on it.

[man] Do you consider that now

since you've been here in the
United States for almost a week,

that this religious issue is
answered once and for all?

Would you clarify and repeat
the answer that you gave in Chicago?

[John] I can't repeat it again because
I don't know what I said, you know.

The most traumatic occasion,
from my point of view,

in the 6 years that I was
with The Beatles as their PR,

concerned, again,
John and his outspoken interview

with the London Evening
Standard's Maureen Cleave,

who as part of a series
of in-depth profiles

of each of The Beatles
for the Standard,

spoke in depth to John.

And John,
at one point in the conversation,

talking generally about religion and
social circumstances of the era,

made the remark The Beatles are
more popular than Jesus now.

He didn't say bigger.

An awful lot of people
have misquoted that,

saying in a boastful
kind of a way,

"We're bigger than Jesus now".
He didn't say that.

He said, "We are more popular".

And by this,
he meant that more people

were going down to the local Empire
theaters or the ABC cinemas

to see concerts by The Beatles

than were going to their
local church or chapel

or whatever, to worship God,
worship Jesus Christ.

And it wasn't so
much a boast at all

as very valid social comment,

buried way down in the
Evening Standard article.

It raised no eyebrows at all.

But I guess silent nods of
approval amongst the readership.

Certainly, it didn't startle me
as the group's PR anyway,

it didn't worry me greatly.

And in fact,
I've never talked about this before,

but I can say that
I was actually

directly instrumental

in helping to get that story
reproduced in America,

which became the
cause of a massive furor

were Beatles albums were burned.

There was a threat that the whole
of the tour that year of America

would be called off because
of the Ku Klux Klan

and all kinds of threats,

death threats were
coming particularly

from the religious zealots

in the Deep South,
the Southern states of America.

And I was directly
concerned in that, in that,

in the pre-tour months,
when the Beatles were extremely busy

and doing lots of other things,

I was unable to get them as much
as I would like to have got them

for interview time with American
journalists for American magazines.

But I appreciated that the
buildup in America was crucial

to this massive tour that
we were about to undertake.

And when the publisher
of Datebook Magazine,

a guy named Art Unger,

when he came on to me and said

there was a chance he could do
some interviews with the Beatles,

I said," No, it's just going to be
impossible at the moment, Art,

to meet your deadlines,

but what I can do is put
you on to Maureen Cleave

at the London Evening Standard.

She just did a series of superb
in-depth profiles of The Beatles,

which I think would sit well
in Datebook Magazine...

And he negotiated to
get hold of that material.

[man] Well, would you clarify the
remarks that were attributed to you?

[John] You tell me
what you think I meant,

and I'll tell you
whether I agree or not.

[man] Well, some of the
remarks attributed to you

in some of the newspapers,
the press here,

concerning the
remark that you made

comparing the relative popularity
of The Beatles with Jesus Christ,

and that The Beatles
were more popular.

This created quite a controversy
and a furor in this country,

as you are obviously aware.

[Paul] Did you know that, John?
You created a furor.

[man] Now,
would you clarify the remark?

[John] Well, I've clarified it
about 800 times, you know.

I could have said TV or
something else, you know,

and that's as
clear as it can be.

I just used Beatles because I know
about them a bit more than TV.

But I could have said
any number of things.

I remember seeing John
Lennon beforehand.

It was my job to kind
of prepare him for this

very unusually serious
press conference,

which we were holding on the
eve of the tour in Chicago,

at which the world's press
would be represented.

And they were there
for one purpose.

Not for a lighthearted,
show-business style

party come press conference at all,

but a very serious
interrogation-type press conference,

where they would
be all sort of saying,

"John, you've got to apologize,
you've insulted the church," etc.

And I remember sitting in Brian
Epstein's hotel suite with John.

And John was saying,

"I will say whatever you tell me
I should be saying.

I don't feel I have to
apologize, I should apologize.

I've said nothing blasphemous
or intentionally blasphemous,

but I will say whatever
you want me to say...

And at one point during
our conversation,

John was sitting there
most uncharacteristically,

with his head actually
down in his hands,

and he was sobbing,
he was weeping away.

Not at the prospect of the press
conference itself so much

as the fact that he realized
that if he didn't get it all right,

the tour might be canceled,
you might be letting down the group.

[somber music]

This is cited as one of the
reasons why they stopped touring,

apart from the boredom of it,
as well, you know.

They will cooped up in
hotel rooms and you know,

they couldn't get out of theaters
and walk around

like they used to do.

Like the Paul McCartney design,
you walking down Matthew Street,

pass it all go.

And John Lennon in
particular didn't like the fact

that you couldn't hear them.

You know, all you could hear
was this den of screaming.

For a lot of people,
Beatlemania was for life.

I mean, even now, in every
major city across the globe,

people have Beatle
festivals regularly.

And The Beatles are
acquiring new fans all the time

with every successive
generation.

But I think that it was
starting to ease up a bit

by about 1965, 1966.

For example,
when they toured the States,

I mean, they wasn't always
guaranteed that, you know,

when the stadium
would be full anymore.

That was very much an attitude of,
you know, it was like London buses.

If you missed one Beatles concert,
there'd be another one

if you waited long enough.

But at the same time,
I think that touring was becoming

almost, well, very definitely
dangerous at the time.

Certainly very
tedious for them.

I saw The Beatles twice,
at Hammersmith Odeon

on their Christmas shows.

You couldn't hear anything.

The noise was mental.

The girls were
wetting themselves.

It was all getting silly.

You got to remember
back in those days,

guitar amplifiers were 30 watt.

You didn't really have the
amplification systems that you have now.

You didn't even have the amplifications
you would have at the end of the 60s.

So really,
when it came to playing live,

The Beatles were
always on to a loser.

In a lot of cases,

they had to just kind of wing it

and hope that they were
all playing together.

When you listen to the
old tape recordings

of these performances,

they did pretty darn good.

You know, considering they
couldn't hear themselves.

It was an event, you know.

Musically, maybe you probably didn't
couldn't even hear The Beatles.

I mean, The Beatles couldn't
even hear themselves play.

So I mean, you went there
to be there kind of thing.

I think that was the whole idea with
The Beatles concerts at that time.

So you know, what are your
criteria for a great live band?

If the criterion is was
somebody who can whip up

a hell of a lot of enthusiasm,
they didn't even have to play a note

in order to do that.

So yes,
they were a great live band,

but were they great
musicians on stage?

Um... possibly not.

They were a very good band,

but they were never given the
chance to be a good band

once they became really popular,

because you could just
hear nothing but screaming.

I only saw them when everyone
was going mental and potty.

And it was a great privilege
to say I've seen The Beatles,

but I didn't actually hear them.

The Beatles played
rock and roll very well.

And they also came out
with all these extraordinary,

original songs which
didn't talk down to people.

I think that's an important thing.

That's why The Beatles struck
a chord with so many people.

Not just teenage girls
screaming at John and Paul,

but the whole adult world as well
loved The Beatles very quickly.

I'm afraid I'm in the
school that thinks that

Sergeant Pepper is one of
the most overrated albums

in rock history.

Individual songs,
I think some of them are wonderful.

I mean,
you can fall to A Day In The Life.

I desperately trying
to describe what

I think what the other
really good songs are.

I think the ones that have
stood up best over 40 years.

And they were the ones that
people don't really remember,

like, the Paul McCartney songs
Fixing A Hole and Getting Better,

which are very concise, tight bits
of sort of pop rock songwriting.

But the stuff where they're
self-consciously trying to do

something new and make a play,

or a movie or a
musical out of it,

The Sergeant Pepper song itself,

and also Lucy In The
Sky with Diamonds.

I don't think they've
dated very well at all.

I think they're very
much of their time.

I think that Sergeant Pepper

was just a little
bit self indulgent,

a bit over the top,
a bit over-waxed, over-cooked.

I prefer my Beatles music much
more raw than that, if you like.

And so mainly,
I prefer the earliest stuff.

Although there was an
amateur-ishness about it,

Sergeant Pepper was too contrived.

And it was natural that it
should go that direction,

because after they
came off the road,

all eyes were upon this first
product of their studio era.

And the Beatles were
producing something

not just for their thousands
and millions of fans,

But something I guess,
that they felt would be

professionally strong enough
to impress their own peers,

ie, The Rolling Stones,
The Beach Boys, etc.

One wonders what would
have happened if they'd

had the same kind of gear
we've got now, you know.

Because Sergeant Pepper, I think, was
recorded on four four-track machines.

And it's because of them 24-track
machines evolved, you know.

When The Beatles started out,
George Martin was the boss.

He had a tie,
and he wore a suit.

And they did what he
what he told them to do.

Very early on,
he started to realize that

there was actually some mileage in
letting them off the reins for a bit

and then indulge their ideas.

But he would still very
much be there to say,

"I don't think that's
going to work boys".

By the time they get
to Sergeant Pepper,

I think that relationship
has entirely changed.

And George Martin's role is
not anymore to direct them.

It's to enable them to carry
out the ideas that they want.

And so they would
come to him and say,

"Can we make a sound
that sounds like

monks chanting,
or an orchestra playing backwards?"

And he would then
settle down and go,

"Right. I think if we do
this and we do that,

we can actually achieve it".

And the result was that then
after that, John and Paul

would come in with even
more outlandish ideas

and poor George
Martin and his staff

would be forced to
innovate.

And that actually had quite
a big influence on the

development of the recording
studio in the late 60s.

The fact that The
Beatles engineers

were being forced to come
up with unusual sounds

to keep the group happy

actually helped the
engineers to create

all sorts of innovations that
are still being used today.

Sergeant Pepper fated as
The Beatles true masterpiece,

I put it down to one thing
and one thing only.

The Times gave it a great review.

Stamp of approval.

For me, bit of a smoke screen.

If you're hip,

then Sergeant Pepper is not
the greatest Beatles album,

it's Revolver.

If you're not,
and I guess I'm not,

then Sergeant Pepper is,
I suppose, the pinnacle.

It's not something that The Beatles
themselves had tried before.

The mixture of different images,
sound styles.

It really does stand
as a one of a kind.

The packaging was
unbelievably clever.

It came at you.

It had the whole psychedelic
swinging 60s thing about it.

It just came at you.

Them in uniforms, the whole lot.

It was just unbelievably perfect.

You had the lyrics
on the sleeve.

You know,
this is really the first signal that

hey, when you're
listening to this stuff,

you should listen to the lyrics,

as well as just the
groove and the melody.

It was definitely a real departure.

It sort of set the standard for
other bands to try to come up

with the same standards as what
The Beatles were doing at that time.

And it only came about because

The Beatles, I believe,
had more free time in their hands

and they weren't
touring anymore.

I thought that they hadn't really
finished what they set out to do,

which was to write one
big piece of music.

I mean,
it's full of marvelous things,

but they don't really link together.

I think it was supposed
to be a concept album,

but I mean, When I'm Sixty-Four,
A Day In The Life,

they really link symmetrically.

As a concept record,
which had never been made before,

yes, it was brilliant.

Rubber Soul and Revolver,

I think, in some ways,
they're probably stronger records.

But if you say what
was their masterpiece,

I would have to say it would
be Sergeant Pepper's,

because it also captured the era.

It's a work of exploration
and experimentation.

It could have fallen flat on its
face, commercially speaking.

I think the world was shocked
by Sergeant Pepper's,

but within months, I think the
world loved Sergeant Pepper's,

and it was being hailed as a
masterpiece way back then.

Riding on the coattails of
Sergeant Pepper's album,

it seemed The Beatles
could do no wrong.

[dramatic music]

The Beatles were very much
affected by Brian Epstein's death.

And they really didn't want to be
managed in full by anybody else.

As I said, they turned down
one person in particular.

Who can tell really what would
have happened if he'd lived?

Yeah, it wasn't until The Beatles
physically stopped touring,

that there was any sort of
breakdown in relations with Brian.

It suddenly dawned that you
didn't actually need a manager.

If the record contracts
and all those things

were already set up and done,

and they weren't going
anywhere or doing anything,

what does the manager and
an agency can do for them?

I suppose the last job gig
production, whatever,

that I saw The Beatles do
enthusiastically as a group,

as a team together,
working solidly together,

with mutual enthusiasm,

must have been the making
of Magical Mystery Tour.

Towards the back end of 1967,

immediately after Brian
Epstein's death, in fact.

Now, a lot of people at
the time thought that

Paul McCartney was
being very callous

in forcing the group
to go back to work

within a few days of Brian Epstein's
death and few days of his funeral.

But in fact,

if Paul had not pushed them
into working at that time,

I believe that they might
well have gone off to India,

with their newfound
little giggling Guru,

the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,

with whom they wanted to study
Transcendental Meditation.

George in particular
had got the bug.

The Mystery Tour was like
a hangover after Brian died.

Plus hangover after Sergeant Pepper.

The songs that were nearly all written
pre-Sergeant Pepper weren't used.

And Your Mother Should
Know was a song Paul wrote

as a possibility with All You Need
Is Love for the satellite thing.

Because All You Need
Is Love was the first one on that one,

so he had that
and George had his songs.

And John had written I think
Walrus during that time,

but not during Pepper sessions.

And then Paul had this idea to
go on Magical Mystery Tour.

They needed to do something to
recover from Brian's disappearance.

And the thing with the NEMS
people was just unbearable.

There were all those people who
instead of holding NEMS together

as what it was, huge, big.

They were blathering about
"We still manage The Beatles".

These agents and people and
men in suits who worked there,

NEMS had just gone into nowhere,
you know.

The Bee Gees, and Jimi,

and The Who, and the Cream
and all those good people had left

because of this.

So The Beatles just
wanted to get something,

and particularly Paul wanted
to get something done.

So they just went off and
did Magical Mystery Tour.

There's another way that you could
look at Magical Mystery Tour

coming as it did in the immediate
wake of Brian Epstein's death.

It was a shattering
experience for The Beatles,

because whilst on the one hand
they had found him to be

a much less effective,
influential or necessary manager,

in the last years of his life
they did value his friendship,

and remembered all the things
that he had done for them.

And all four Beatles were very,
very upset indeed by his death.

You can look at
Magical Mystery Tour

coming only a week
or so after his death

as being escapist.

It was the Beatles' essential
escape route, if you like,

from the horrors of the fact
that somebody so close

to them as Brian Epstein, so young,
of their generation in fact,

had died in front of their eyes
almost as it were like this.

You could see
Magical Mystery Tour as

something where they were
going to a magical world.

It was a world of
magic and mystery.

And it literally transported,
it took them away

in a bus down to
the West country.

So that they were so busy
messing about in the bus,

that they didn't have
time to be as mournful

as they might well have been
in such serious circumstances.

Everything they'd done
from the first hit up till then

had received everybody's praise.

Magical Mystery Tour
basically was the first full step

where the public and all the critics
could have a bit of a go at them.

When it was shown on
television in black and white

at Christmas time that year,

it didn't go down terribly well.

The public were confused by it.

The critics didn't like it.

So it was like the
first bad reviews

The Beatles had ever
really experienced.

It was quite a bit
of a blow for them.

And The Beatles
were so worried, in fact,

that they had it shown again
in color about two weeks later.

But strangely enough,
the damage had been done.

A lot of people said,
"Well, it would

never have happened
with Brian Epstein".

"When Brian Epstein was alive

he wouldn't allow it
because it was too obscure".

"It wasn't direct enough",
etcetera, etcetera.

They just thrown all
these elements together,

got in a bus and driven around
and filmed what happened.

And it never really came
across as this happy,

magical mystery tour that
it was supposed to be.

It came across as
a bit of a mess.

People loved it.

The proper Beatle people loved it.

It was just the
critics at the time.

But then the Beatles
no longer had

that protective wall of
Brian around them.

They were open for

this open season
on them by then.

They never quite re-captured

that belief that the media
had in them after that.

They were pretty unsinkable
up until Mystery Tour.

And I think

the critics needed to

give them a little bit of hell.

Consider that for six
years I had been part of

the greatest phenomenon
of the show- business world

in working at such
close quarters

and within the inner circle of
the Beatles.

So of course,
when that era came to an end,

there was sadness about it.

But I also recognize

that I had been part of the
whole Beatles situation,

the Beatlemania situation,

and that was no longer around.

The era had gone.

The Beatles were no
longer the Fab Four.

They were individual people.

There was Paul McCartney,
John Lennon,

Ringo Starr, George Harrison

going out to do their
separate things.

And therefore there
was no sadness

in the fact that
all that was over

because they had done everything

that they could do
as a unit, as a band.

It had been a memorable
part of history,

but I was ready to move on
just as much as they were.

["While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
by The Beatles playing on guitar]

Okay, While My Guitar Gently
Weeps starts in C minor.

[guitar playing]

And then he keeps
the C minor chord

but he puts a B flat root on it.

And then he keeps
a C minor chord

and he puts in an A root in it.

And then it actually changes to
an A flat major seventh chord.

And then he plays
a C minor chord,

a B flat major chord,

and F major to a G major.

And then you repeat
the whole process

[guitar playing]

Except this time
he goes C minor,

to B flat,

to E flat major,

to G major.

That brings them to the chorus of C.

So, it's a beautifully constructed
piece of music there.

I think the White Album might be
the greatest rock album of all time.

Not necessarily my favorite,

but I can't I can't
think of anything else

that has so many
different styles,

so much pizzazz,

so much innovation,
so much intelligence, so much fun,

so much pain, so much pleasure,

all across 30 songs,
90 minutes of music.

And okay, at the time,
George Martin said

he wished that he could
have compressed the record

and made one great album out of it.

But I think it actually
works better

as a sprawling monster of
a record with 30 songs.

And often the ones that stick in
the mind are the throwaways.

They're the one-minute songs.

Why Don't We Do It in the Road
or Honey Pie.

Stupid little things
that shouldn't work,

but which is still great fun
to play 40 years later.

[hopeful music]

Abbey Road is an
unbelievable piece of work.

Absolutely, probably close

to their best piece of work
they've ever, ever made.

Everybody talks about the great
medley of songs on the second side.

And it's entirely meaningless.

And it's wonderful pop music.

It's the absolute high point
of 60s pop production.

ELO made an entire career out of

trying to reproduce it
through the 70s and 80s.

It's the last time when John and
Paul actually worked together.

John always was very sarcastic
about that medley in retrospect,

if you go back to the
newspaper cuttings,

it reveals that was actually as
much John's idea in the first place

as it was Paul's.

John was equally
enthusiastic about it.

And it suited him later when he
was writing very personal songs

to pretend that,
"Oh, no, I don't know.

I was forced into doing
that kind of thing".

The same time you've got George
Harrison's real emergence

as a world-class songwriter.

Frank Sinatra said that Something

was the greatest love
song ever written.

After that, he was used to credit
it to Lennon and McCartney,

which was a bit of a shame,

but it was a nice thought.

And it is one of
the great ballads,

I mean by anybody,
Nevermind a Beatle.

And at the same time,
George also wrote

Here Comes The Sun on a day
when he had a business meeting

and he got really fed up

and he'd gone back and
sat in Eric Clapton's garden

and got his acoustic
guitar out and thought,

"I'm not going to get caught
in all that Beatles nonsense.

It's sunny. It's lovely".

And amazing song came out of it.

I think by the time
Abbey Road came out

The Beatles were
really looking into

sort of what they were going to
do when they finished as a band.

The end was in sight
for The Beatles.

And so although still wouldn't say

they'd run out of steam as writers,

perhaps it is becoming
slightly evident

that it was more of a chore really,

it was a lesser kind of inspiration.

They left the best epitaph to
a band they could ever leave.

That was probably one of
their best records ever,

and it was phenomenal.

If you're looking at
the times of recording,

the final Beatles album
was really Abbey Road,

but Let It Be emerged after
Abbey Road as the final release.

Obviously, that meant
that people considered

that the Beatles career
ended with Let It Be.

And they by themselves
weren't happy with that.

The last thing which, you
know, could have been,

you know, thank you.
Thanks very much, everybody.

You know, it's been fun, but
we're not going to do it anymore.

It ended up being a really
bitter and nasty divorce.

It would have been far better
in fact, had Abbey Road

been the final release
Beatles album but

fate decreed that it wouldn't
be but even at the end,

the Beatles are still making
great records and still producing

wonderful pieces of music,
timeless pieces of music.

And it's quite a sad end

to watch what was an
absolutely fantastic career.

I felt sorry for those
poor kids who worked out

and all those fans, they're just
like, what are they going to do?

It was just a big source of...
[scoffs]

The fan club, there's
millions of them.

They're going to be so upset.
[laughs]

Of course they were.

But is this what happens
when people get divorced.

It's always people
get to the end.

The whole point is that Let It Be
was supposed to be The Beatles live.

They were going to do a concert,

then they didn't
want to do a concert.

That was too much effort, they
didn't like the fans anymore anyway,

and they couldn't be asked.

So they make a record
pretending to be live

and that's why they went up
onto the Apple roof and so on.

But the concept got flawed

as soon as they started over
dubbing and adding things and so on.

And then it got flawed
even more when Phil Spector

came in a year later,
and adds orchestras

and girl harmony
choirs and so on to it.

So what was supposed
to be a live record

of what The Beatles
really did sound like,

as John Lennon said,
with our trousers down,

got perverted as a concept.

Now the other main problem
with Let It Be is that

John Lennon was on
heroin at the time.

And so his creative
input was virtually nil.

If you listen back to the
recording tapes for the sessions,

the number of times you can hear
Paul McCartney saying to John,

"have you got anything,
you've got anything to offer?"

And John just doesn't say anything,
Yoko answers on his behalf.

Or George will come
up with a new song,

and George was coming
up with a good new song

almost every day at that point.

And he played to John who
just go, "Ugh, that's boring."

And start playing an old
12 Bar blues song instead.

So when you've got the
person who has been

effectively the leader of the
group saying, "I don't care anymore,

I'd rather take drugs
than play music with you."

It's very hard to get a cohesive
album out of that situation.

I think The Beatles broke a mold

that said that pop
music is of its time.

Because for Beatles
fans and for pop fans,

Beatles music is forever.

They could rock with
the best of them.

But they could do a ballad,
as sweet as anybody.

Even if they're
playing Rock and Roll,

it's very balanced and tasteful.

That's the trick I think
that they achieved, really.

They gave a whole
generation a meaning.

And they gave the whole
music industry its start.

The world needed something different

and they came around
at the right time.

So if you think about it
in modern day context,

how long does a band
last, two or three years.

Well, the Beatles did that
and a bit better than that.

And produced an incredible
amount of music.

An unusual request.

I would like to say...

[audience laughing]

[mellow music]

[upbeat music]