Loading ...The Beatles began rehearsals for their latest album (and proposed live performances and film) at Twickenham Studios on 2 January 1969. The group disliked the cold, cavernous sound stage and the early hours necessary to fit the film crew; Lennon later observed, “no one wants to make music at that hour”. Lennon also found the continuous presence of the film crew to be highly intrusive and the other Beatles had similar feelings about the attendance of Lennon’s girlfriend Yoko Ono. No professional multi-track recordings were made of these sessions at Twickenham, as the Beatles were simply rehearsing for a proposed live performance rather than attempting to record releasable versions of any songs. Phil Spector later used a snippet of dialogue from one of these rehearsals (Lennon announcing “Queen says no to pot-smoking FBI members”) to introduce “For You Blue” on the finished album, sourced from the film crew’s monaural soundtrack recordings. Numerous bootleg records taken from the many hours of these soundtrack recordings are in wide circulation and various bits of music and dialogue from the same source was eventually used on the second disc of the 2003 release Let It Be… Naked.
The group spent their time at Twickenham running through a number of new compositions by Lennon, McCartney and Harrison. Many hours were spent jamming various covers of rock and roll numbers and standards from other genres, as well as some instrumentals and even versions of some old Beatles songs. As a result of the unpleasant working environment at Twickenham and the group members’ personal differences, the rehearsals quickly disintegrated into acrimony. George Harrison was increasingly resentful, while he was treated respectfully by musical colleagues such as Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton, within the Beatles his songs were either derided or ignored (at one point during the rehearsals, Lennon responded to Harrison demonstrating his new song “I Me Mine” to him by stating “We’re a rock and roll band – run along, boy” and later chose to waltz with Ono rather than join the other three Beatles as they arranged and rehearsed the song). With the band seemingly unable to generate much enthusiasm or focus their attention, their playing was largely ragged and unprofessional, not helped by the fact that they were severely out of practice at playing as a live ensemble. McCartney tried to impose some form of order and encourage his bandmates, but his attempts to hold the band together and rally spirits were seen by the others as controlling and patronising.
Matters came to a head on 6 January, when Harrison had a heated argument with McCartney during a rehearsal of “Two of Us”, which later became one of the most famous sequences in the Let It Be film. What is not shown in the film is another, allegedly much more severe argument Harrison had with Lennon on 10 January. Harrison had become fed up with Lennon’s creative and communicative disengagement from the band and the two had a blazing row. According to journalist Michael Housego of The Daily Sketch, this descended into violence with Harrison and Lennon allegedly throwing punches at each other, though in a 16 January interview for the Daily Express, Harrison said, “There was no punch-up. We just fell out.” After lunch, Harrison announced that he was “leaving the band now” and told the others “see you round the clubs”. He promptly walked out, getting in his car and instead of returning home to his wife Pattie at his Esher home Kinfauns, he drove straight to his parents’ home in Speke, Liverpool.
After Harrison’s departure that afternoon, the three remaining Beatles attempted to continue the rehearsal. As a practical solution to the problem of Harrison’s absence, Lennon suggested hiring Eric Clapton to replace Harrison, possibly as a full time member of the Beatles if Harrison stuck with his decision to quit the band permanently. McCartney and Starr vetoed this suggestion, with the former arguing that the group could not truly be considered as the Beatles without all four traditional members of the band.
