Original subtitles

Downloaded From www.AllSubs.org

Suddenly one day, Neil or somebody said "Ringo's gone on holiday"

I felt two things. I felt I wasn't playing great

and the other three were really happy and I was an outsider

So I decided, fuck it, I'm leaving

I went to see John, who was living in my apartment in Montagu Square

I knocked on the door and said "Hi"

"I'm leaving the group because I feel unloved and out of it

"I'm not playing well and you three are really close"

And he said "I thought it was you three"

Then I went over to Paul's, knocked on his door and said the same thing:

"I'm leaving the band. You three guys are really close and I'm out of it"

And he said "I thought it was you three"

So we had to reassure him that we did think he was great

You know, that's what it's like in life

You never stop and say "Hey, I think you're great"

I don't think we'd ever done any of that with Ringo

and he felt insecure, so we had to-and he left

So we had to say "You're great, man, you're the best"

Then he said "Oh, thank you." I think he was pleased to hear that

I knew we were just in a messed up stage, all of us

It wasn't just me, the whole thing was going down

I came back into the studio and George had had it decked out with flowers

Flowers everywhere and John had sent me telegrams saying:

"You're the best rock drummer, come on home!"

I felt good about myself again and we'd got through that little crisis

It was great, and then the White Album really took off

Like Yer Blues was great

We all left the studio and went to a little room, so there's no separation

There was lots of group activity going down. I loved the White Album

There was a lot more individual stuff

For the first time I think people were accepting that it was individual

I remember having three studios operating at the same time

Paul was doing some overdubs in one, John was doing something in another

I was doing horns on something else in another studio

because maybe they'd set a release date and time was running out

Hey, I'm getting cramp

If we do that again... are we ready, we'll sing the song

I wanna hear that... I wanna hear that

OK, Robert? - Take 29

Reach for this one. Were any of them any good?

I'll just be singing to guide you...

Can you turn it down in my cans a bit?

The last mistake was entirely when I just took my mind off it for a second

A lot of the recordings would have a basic idea, then a jam session to end it

which sometimes didn't sound too good

But this is a fairly small criticism

When they did the White Album

George Martin Record Producer I thought we should have made a very good single album rather than a double

I agree, we should have put it out as two separate albums

the White and the Whiter album

A lot of information on a double album

What do you do when you've got all them songs?

You want to get rid of them so you can do more songs

There was a lot of ego in that band

and a lot of songs should have been elbowed or made into B sides

I think it could have been made a fantastically good album

if it had been condensed a bit

But a lot of people think it's still the best album they made

It's not my view but... horses for courses

You can always say that, you know. 'Perhaps' I'll go with, not 'definitely'

I think it's fine. The fact that it's got so much is one of the things that's cool

It's varied stuff, Rocky Raccoon, Piggies...

Happiness is a Warm Gun, that kind of stuff

I think it's a fine album

I'm not a great one for 'maybe it was too many of that... '

It was great, it sold, it's the bloody Beatles' White Album, shut up!

There was a little trauma with a song called Revolution

I thought it was 'au courant' as they say

It was about what was going on at the time and I wanted it to be a single

I said "Put this out. We should say something and this is what I want to say"

And they said "No, it's too slow"

Neil Aspinall Head of Apple The Apple boutique closed down

I think we just got to the point where we didn't want it any more

We ended up selling Marks and Spencer underwear

Not the image we started with of Simon and Marijke, all these colourful clothes

Great sixties hippy gear

Then to make it pay we ended up selling...

St Michael underwear... and it wasn't the image we wanted

Apple Shop Giveaway London 31st July 1968 We came up with the idea to give it all away

and stop fucking about with psychedelic clothes shops

We just gave it to the people who showed up on the day

You could have one item each, not take two, in the spirit of the thing

Well, they cleaned out the shop

Only one free dress for each customer

But I think personally it was a good way to do it

We weren't seriously in the rag trade. It was "Look, it didn't work, so..."

"That's it!"

We went round the night before we gave everything away

and took what we felt we wanted

I didn't go

Derek Taylor Apple Press Officer I saw a half-acquaintance outside Apple and said "Where are you going?"

He said "I'm going to join the queue to get some of those clothes"

I thought that was awful

I didn't want them to close the shop and wrote an impassioned open letter:

"Dear boys, you know, if you do this..." and a lot of other hoo-ha

because I dreaded to see the thing falling apart

Frost On Sunday 8th September 1968

Beautiful... absolute poetry

Welcome back to Part III with the greatest tea-room orchestra in the world

Are you in colour? - No, black and white at the moment

But as you can see, making their first audience appearance for over a year

Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles!

I was driving out to John's house after John and Cynthia had got divorced

I was just going out to say hello to Cynthia and Julian

I came up with these words in my mind as if talking to Julian...

Hey Jules, don't take it bad. Take a sad song and make it better

So I got the first idea on the way out there

with this 'Hey Jules' as I thought it was going to be called

It seemed a bit of a mouthful so I changed it to Jude

I liked the song a lot and I played it to John and Yoko when I'd finished it

I actually had finished but I thought there was a little more to go

with the words: The movement you need is on your shoulder

I'm playing it and I say to John "I'll fix that" - He said "What?"

I said "The movement you need is on your shoulder...

"I've used the word 'shoulder' once and anyway it's stupid, I'll change it"

He said "You won't, that's the best line in the song"

He said "I know what it means. It's great"

The great thing about John. I'd have knocked it out, he'd say it's great

I'd see it through his eyes and go "Oh, OK"

So that is the line now, when I do that song

That's the line when I think of John and sometimes get a little emotional

This was the period when everything was going up and up and rosy

Then suddenly it started to go down like everything goes in a cycle

Once it starts going down, as anybody can tell you...

when you get knocked to the ground, they start kicking you

The world was a problem but we weren't

That was the best thing about the Beatles

Until we started to break up like White Album and stuff

then even the studio got a bit tense

It was evident on the White Album

I think it was evident in India

when George and I stayed there and Paul and Ringo left and it was a slow death

It was like the wind-down to a divorce

A divorce usually doesn't just happen, there's months and years of misery

They were going through a very revolutionary period at that time

They were trying to think of something new

They actually had a good idea which I thought was well worth working on

They wanted to write an album completely and rehearse it

then perform it in front of a large audience, a live album of new material

We started rehearsing at Twickenham Film Studio and I went with them

Twickenham Film Studios London I'm not sure whether everybody was behind the idea of going to Twickenham

They decided to film whatever they were doing

and they were going to start making a new album

The original idea was that you'd see the Beatles

rehearsing, jamming, making up stuff

getting their act together and then finally we'd perform somewhere

as the big end of show concert

Michael Lindsay-Hogg was going to direct it

This should be built like a film set

so you can glide all over the place on tracks with your cameras

Go places that TV cameras don't go

You can come down from that roof on one long shot, down on a thing

Slowly like a chair-lift

Right down into Ringo's face on the one shot from right back there

Have all sorts of cranes and lifts for your cameras to float around us

Just all that flowing movement and then the songs

Just stay with us and that will create your sets, with cameras hanging all over

I thought, it's a new year and we've got a new approach

but it soon became apparent that it wasn't anything new

It was just going to be painful again

The days were long and they could get boring

Twickenham wasn't conducive to a great atmosphere. We were just in a big barn

I'd just spent six months producing a Jackie Lomax album

and hanging out with Bob Dylan and The Band in Woodstock, having a great time

For me to come back into the winter of discontent

with the Beatles in Twickenham

it was very unhealthy and unhappy

It was just a dreadful feeling, and being filmed all the time like that

I just wanted them to go away... and we'd be there at 8.00 in the morning

You couldn't make music at 8.00 in the morning in a strange place

with people filming you and coloured lights

As everybody knows, we never had much privacy

They were filming us rehearsing

There was a bit of a row going on between Paul and I

You can see it where he's saying "Well, don't play this", or something

I'm saying "You know I'll play what you want, or I won't play if you don't want

"Just make up your mind." That kind of stuff was going on

They were filming and recording us having a row. It was terrible

But it's complicated in the bit... - It's not complicated

I'll play the chords if you like

I'm trying to help you, but I always hear myself annoying you

OK, look, look, I'm not trying to say that

You're doing this as though I'm trying to say...

And what we said the other day, you know, I'm not trying to get you

I really am trying to just say... Iook, lads, the band...

Shall we try it like this?

It's funny how it only occurs...

It's like, should we play guitar all the way through Hey Jude...

I don't mind, I'll play whatever you want me to play

or I won't play at all if you don't want me to play

What it is that pleases you, I'll do it

I thought, I'm quite capable of being relatively happy on my own

I'm not able to be happy in this situation, I'm getting out of here

The whole pressure of it finally got to us

So like people do when they're together, they start picking on each other

It was "You got the tambourine wrong so my life's a misery." It became petty

But the manifestations were on each other as we were the only ones we had

It was wait a minute, George has left and this isn't good enough

I'm not sure what happened. Maybe Neil or one of the people looking after us

would probably ring George and say "They're sorry, it was a mistake"

I remember being called to a meeting in Elstead in Surrey

It was Ringo's house that he'd bought from Peter Sellers

It was decided it would be better

if we got back together and finished the record

Also, Twickenham Studio was very cold and not a nice atmosphere

so we abandoned that and went to the Savile Row recording studio

In the end we recorded in the Apple studios in Savile Row

There was a guy called Magic Alex, who was a great friend of John's

John thought he was the bee's knees because he gave John electronic toys

He said EMI was no good and he could build a better studio. Well, he didn't

Hello. I'm Alexis from Apple Electronics

I would like to say hello to all my brothers around the world

and to all the girls and all the electronic people around the world

And that is Apple Electronics

When we finally got him to do a recording studio...

We had a 16-track studio and we walked in there, it was chaos

We had to rip it all out and start again

He had 16 little speakers all around the room

There wasn't anything he did-except a toilet with a radio in it or something

So we just took the same portable equipment in there

But the studio itself, the actual room to play in there

was much cosier and much more at home

Apple Recording Studio Savile Row London

I think everyone was getting a little tired of us by then

because we were taking a long time

and there were many heated discussions

Billy Preston was a great help, a very good keyboard guy

His work on Get Back alone justified him being there

He was an amiable fellow, very nice

He was a kind of emollient, if you like

He helped to lubricate the friction that had been there

It's interesting to see how people behave nicely when you bring a guest in

They don't want everybody to know they're so bitchy

This happened back in the White Album

when I brought Eric Clapton in to play on While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Suddenly everybody's on their best behaviour

So I put a message out to find if Billy was in town

and told him to come into Savile Row, which he did

Straight away there was 100o/o improvement in the vibe in the room

Everybody was happier also to have somebody else playing in the band

Every number's got a piano part

Normally we overdub it... but this time we want to do it live

We were working on a good track and that always excited us

His part was also part of it

Suddenly, when we were working on something good

the bullshit went out of the window

We got back down to doing what we did really, really well

I think it works OK with just the two verses...

Sweet Loretta Martin, the first verse - Just have two for now

I'll sing it and shout where I think it should go. If you disagree, I'll change it

Maybe if we had an intro, a verse and a chorus...

To me the Beatles were always a great little band

Nothing more, nothing less, for all our success

When we sat down to play, we played good from the very beginning

From when we first got Ringo into the band, and before

But when we first got Ringo, the band really gelled. We played good!

We've never had too many of those times where it's just not working

We had them like any other band but for a great little rock'n'roll band -

we could play any little blues or rock'n'roll thing-and it seemed to work

The original idea to rehearse all these new songs

and then make an album in a live show never really happened

because the album became us in the studio

As we rehearsed the songs, they were recorded

They were talking about doing a concert on a boat

or in an amphitheatre in Greece

or maybe at the Roundhouse in London

There were lots of ideas about where they should maybe do a concert

and nothing was ever really agreed

What do we want to do? - I'll tell you what

We're still rehearsing and we'll get it together

So then you must collect...

We'll all collect our thoughts on what we want

You still expect us to be on the chimney with a lot of people or something like that

Or even a stage at the Saville or anything

We won't worry about that so don't give us that one

'Expecting' is not a word we use any more... 'thinking about'

'Praying'

What about the move tomorrow, do you want to...

No, let's decide on that a bit later, let's keep off that

We're getting into too diverse... we'll do the numbers, we're the band

Whatever, I'll do it... if we've got to go on the roof

But I mean... I don't want to go

I would like to

I'd like to go on the roof - It diverts people

That's all right. Anyway, we won't discuss it

I want to record them as tracks and I want to do 14 numbers

Any time is paradise when I'm with you

That was looking for an end to the film

and it was "How are we going to finish, there's not going to be a big concert"

By then it was looking like... can we do this, finish in two weeks' time?

Then it was suggested that we go up on the roof

and do a concert there, then we could all go home

30th January 1969

And in the end it started to filter up from our roadie, Mal

who crept in, trying to keep out of the camera:

"Police are complaining. You've got to stop." We said "We're not stopping"

He said "The police are going to arrest you"

"Good end to the film. Let 'em do it. Great!"

We thought that's an end: "Beatles busted on rooftop gig"

The thing on the roof that always I feel let down about were the police

Someone called the police and I was playing away and I thought, oh great!

I wanted the cops to drag me off - "Get off those drums!"

We were being filmed and it would have been really great

Well, they didn't. They just bumbled in: "You've got to turn that sound down"

It could have been fabulous

By the time we got to Let It Be we couldn't play the game any more

It had come to the point where it was no longer creating magic

and the camera in the room with us made us aware that it was phoney situation

In fact what happened was when we got in there

we showed how the break-up of a group works

We didn't realise we were actually breaking up as it was happening

Just the same as it was before

The year before when we were last in the studio

There was a lot of... kind of trivia

and games that were being played

I think it shows as an absolute fact that we were going different places

I've mentioned it before, the energy for the Beatles was waning

We put in 1000o/o but it was dwindling now

"Oh dear, do we have to turn up?" "Do we have to do that thing again!"

"I want to do this and John wants to do that"

And George was off and people were... you know, we had families

I remember thinking of it like army buddies

One of the songs we used to love in the past was Wedding Bells

Those wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine...

and this idea that you'd been army buddies but one day...

you kiss the army goodbye and get married and act like normal people

It was like that for the Beatles, we always knew that day had to come

London, weepy time down south

The last bachelor Beatle was no longer a bachelor

12th March 1969 Paul McCartney married New Yorker Linda Eastman

at Marylebone Registrar's office

Paul's new step-daughter Heather

was one of the shrieking, sobbing, devoted fans

who surged round the newly-weds as they made for their car

London bobbies and photographers tangled with tear-stained teenagers

bidding farewell to the bachelordom of the Beatle who resisted marriage so long

At last the new threesome found sanctuary in their car

But clearly Paul's plan for a quiet wedding had gone drastically wrong

Exit the McCartneys, a very popular group

And they chose Paul's wedding day to bust me

George was in my office

Pattie rang, saying that Sgt Pilcher, if that was his name...

was swarming all over the house in Esher

George said to me "What should I do? What should I tell Pattie?"

I said just tell them where the stuff is because they'll find it anyway

Save yourself a lot of hassle

He said he had a bit of grass and maybe some hash in a box on the mantelpiece

So he rang Pattie and told her to tell them where it was

By which time they had found a chunk this big

in a boot in his wardrobe

Sgt Pilcher was gaining great notoriety by busting pop stars

such as George, Mick, Keith and John - always was the same cop

Nobody realised, nobody put two and two together

There was a kind of social pecking order

that was in the pop world

The drug squad decided to go round

and this fellow thought he was Oliver Cromwell

He decided to go round and clean up what was going on

They busted Donovan first

Anybody who was in England at that time will remember

Then they bust the Rolling Stones and they worked their way up

They they busted John and Yoko and me

Sgt Pilcher's successful career with the drug squad was short-lived

He was later sent to prison for perjury

Sentencing Pilcher to 4 years in prison, Mr Justice Melford Stevenson said:

But now my life has changed in oh so many ways

We wanted to get married on the cross-Channel ferry

That was the romantic part - when we went to Southampton

She couldn't get on because she wasn't English and couldn't get a day visa

Anyway you can't get married. The Captain's not allowed to do it any more

We called Peter Brown from Paris. "We want to get married, where can we go?"

He said "Gibraltar's the only place"

So "OK, let's go" and it was beautiful

When John hooked up with Yoko so intensely

it was obvious there could be no looking back after that

I always felt he had to clear the decks of us in order to give her enough attention

It takes a lot to live with four people for years and years, which is what we did

We'd call each other every name under the sun

We'd got to blows, we'd been through the whole damn show

We knew where we were at, we still do

We've been through the mill together for more than ten years

We've been through our therapy together many times, you know

On a lot of days, even with all the craziness, it really worked still

Instead of working every day, it worked two days a month

There were still good days

We were still really close friends

then it would split off again into some madness

It was quite obvious that the Beatles became...

The thing that it started out being...

gave us a vehicle to be able to do so much

when we were younger, and we grew right through that

But it got to a point where it was stifling us, there was too much restriction

It had to self-destruct

It's easy for people to say about Apple and the Beatles "Why didn't you...?"

You sit there with millions of dollars and try and work it out

It's so easy afterwards to say "Why didn't you?"

With Apple we were great creators and we could do all of that

but nobody had half an idea about a budget

So we were spending more than we were earning

There was nobody managing Apple

It was wasting away all this money

Nobody had any ability to be a business manager

So it was a question of who was going to do it

I was doing it but only on the basis

that I'll do it until you find somebody you want to do it. Because I didn't

That's why somebody like Allen Klein

had the opportunity to say he could do it, but so did a lot of other people

Klein had been managing the Rolling Stones...

and I believe Donovan... and John had met him

He came in one day and said:

"I'm going to get Klein to manage me, and that's what's happening"

And Allen was... a human being

the same as Brian was a human being

It was the same thing with Brian in the early days, it was assessment

I make a lot of mistakes character-wise but now and then I make a good one

The alternative to Klein was possibly Lee Eastman

but I'm not at all sure

that Paul wanted Lee Eastman to be a manager

in the sense that Brian Epstein had been a manager

or Allen Klein to be a manager like Brian Epstein had been a manager

I put forward Lee Eastman, Linda's dad

as a possible sort of lawyer and possibly someone to do it

But they said no, he would be too biased for you and against us

Oh yeah, we had great arguments with Paul

We felt the three of us have gone this way, why don't you?

So there it was, and it was a three-to-one situation

In the Beatles, if any one doesn't agree with the plan

it was always vetoed, it was very democratic that way

So the three-to-one thing was very awkward

Things would happen like...

at Olympic Studio one evening we were supposed to be doing Abbey Road

and we all showed up at the studio ready to record

and Allen Klein showed up as part of the party with his henchman

They said "You've got to sign a contract for Klein to take to his Board"

I said "It's Friday night, he doesn't work on a Saturday

"Anyway, Allen Klein's a law unto himself, he doesn't have to report

"We can easily do this on Monday. Let's do our session now

"You're not going to push me into this." They said "You're stalling"

They said "He wants 20o/o"

I said "Tell him he can have 15o/o." They said "You're stalling"

I said "No, I'm working for us. We're a big act"

My exact words: "We're a big act, the Beatles. He'll take 15o/o"

I think they were so intoxicated with him that they said:

"He must have 20o/o and he's got to report to his Board tomorrow

"Sign now or never"

I said "Right, that's it. I'm not signing now"

There was a big argument and they all went, leaving me at the studio

What changed at Apple after he arrived? Everything!

It was a completely different situation

First and foremost, Paul wasn't there

Let It Be was such an unhappy record, even though it has some great songs

and I really thought that was the end of the Beatles

I thought, what a shame to go out like this

But Paul rang. "We're making another record, would you produce it?"

My immediate answer was "Only if you let me produce it the way we used to"

"We want to do that." "John included?" He said "Yes, honestly"

So I said "If you really want that, let's get together again"

And it was a very happy record - everybody knew it was to be the last

I think the deal was that through Let It Be

I left and we got back just to finish it, to make it tidy

Then everybody decided we ought to do one better album

I think it shows on the record

that when we were excited the track's exciting

It really all comes together

It doesn't matter what we're going through individually on the bullshit level

When it gets to the music

you can see that it's really cool, we'd all put in 1000o/o

Nobody was sure it was going to be the last one, but everybody felt it was

The Beatles had gone through so much, and it was a long time

They'd been incarcerated together for nearly a decade

It was a very happy album. Everybody worked frightfully well

And that's why I'm very fond of it

There was always a possibility that we could have carried on

We weren't sitting in the studio saying "OK, this is it

"Last record, last track, last take"

But when we'd finished Abbey Road the game was up, we all accepted that

It was magical

There were some really loving, caring moments between four people

A hotel room here and there

A really amazing closeness, just...

four guys who really loved each other. It was pretty sensational

They gave their money and they gave their screams

but the Beatles gave their nervous systems

which is a much more difficult thing to give

I'm really glad that most of the songs

dealt with love, peace, understanding

Hardly any said "Go on kids, tell them to sod off, leave your parents"

It's all very "all you need is love" or John's "give peace a chance"

There was a very good spirit behind it all

It's just natural. It's not a great disaster

People talk as if it's the end of the earth. It's only a rock group that split up

You have all the old records there if you want to reminisce

22nd August 1969

That's what they ask you. On tours round the world and press conferences:

"Getting the Beatles back together?" You say "What are you talking about?"

They say "How about Julian?" I feel sorry for him in the middle of all that

Or Sean or somebody

Well, let me ask you this way: "Are you getting back together?" No!

And yet with Free as a Bird we somehow did, yeah

Subtitles: Screentext

Downloaded From www.AllSubs.org