The Beatles Rarity Of The Week

Welcome to this week's BROW. During the first half of January 1969, The Beatles rehearsed at Twickenham Studios in London for what was planned to be a television special of them at work on new recordings. It was a tense time for the band and most of the digestible material from these two weeks is seen in the Let It Be film. The Twickenham sessions ended in disaster however when George Harrison walked out with the intention of quitting the band on January 10th. When he agreed to return on the 15th, one of the conditions was that they abandon the television special idea and simply return to Apple Studios to put an album together. That being said, there was still some upbeat moments of good old fashioned rock and roll jams during the period. One such moment was with a stop-and-go rehearsal on the 10th (well before George got irritated and left) when, after a warm up run through of Chuck Berry's "Hi Heeled Sneakers" and Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally", John breaks into a song only recently introduced to them by Paul called "Get Back". John, with the verse structure down pat, just makes up most of the words as he goes along. Paul joins in and provides a little coaching as George has fun with some enjoyable guitar embellishments and Ringo gets over-energetic on his drums. After reconvening at Apple Studios, this song was perfected and when released as a single, became the first product to emerge from the much talked about Let It Be sessions of January 1969. The single was a number one hit for the band, backed with John's "Don't Let Me Down". Both tracks enjoyed some great keyboard accompaniment from the late Billy Preston.

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The Beatles at Twickenham Studios, London, January 1969

This week's BROW is proudly brought to you from my collection of 6856 Beatles-related recordings. If you want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week, let me hear from you. To help you decide what you'd like to hear you can visit my Beatles collection web site (www.MyBeatlesCollection.com) and hit the "Tracks" button and search my collection, then let me know what you'd like me to feature.