by Ken McNab
‘Paul had told me, “Go and see Lord Beeching,” so I went. I mean I’m a good boy, man, and I saw Lord Beeching and he was no help at all. Paul was in America getting Eastman and I was interviewing all these so-called top people, and they were animals. 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 an assessment; I make a lot of mistakes character-wise, but now and then I make a good one and Allen is one, Yoko is one and Brian was one.’
In later years he would offer a more telling observation: ‘He was the only one that Yoko liked.’
Klein was thus now convinced that he could seize the Ultimate Prize: management of the biggest band in history. After John and Yoko had left the Dorchester, he stayed up most of the night, poring over newspaper cuttings about their finances and Apple’s future, while rehearsing a sales pitch that would pick apart John Eastman’s suggestion that The Beatles lay out a million pounds to buy Nems.
When Klein met all The Beatles the next day, he was high on braggadocio, low on detail. Over a couple of hours, he set out his stall to save Apple while making each of them richer than Croesus. Fuck You Money! Harrison and Starr, while not rushing to early judgement, committed themselves to at least hearing more, but McCartney’s disdain for Klein was instant and uncompromising. He was the first to leave the meeting, signalling he had heard enough. It was a grievous, tactical blunder because it ceded the higher ground to Klein and allowed him to impose a chokehold on Harrison and Starr.
He told them bluntly they were being royally screwed by the business establishment: Lockwood at EMI, Clive Epstein at Nems, Dick James at Northern Songs. All of them (allegedly) creaming off the top, and that’s before we talk about the leeches bleeding Apple dry: Peter Brown, Neil Aspinall, Derek Taylor, Alistair Taylor, all their Liverpool buddies-turned-hangers-on.
Klein’s words, coated in a thick, expletive-filled Brooklyn brogue, zeroed in on their darkest fears. With Lennon already in his corner, victory was a foregone conclusion. Harrison and Starr gave tacit approval for Klein to, at least, examine their financial affairs as well as Lennon’s.
For Harrison, the pull of Klein’s working-class aesthetic won him over. ‘Because we were all from Liverpool, we favoured people who were street people,’ he said. ‘As John was going with Klein, it was much easier if we went with him too.’ McCartney, though, remained unwavering in his opposition: ‘I didn’t trust him,’ he said.
It was for now an awkward stand-off but, unknown to all of them, a fateful die had been cast. A meeting was scheduled for the following Saturday – the first day of February – to try to map out a future course. Office politics, however, would have to be put on the back-burner. The reason? Astonishingly, they had a gig to play.
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After weeks of arguing, all four Beatles had finally agreed to film a live performance to bring the curtain down on ‘Get Back’. Even Harrison had finally relented. Over the years, a handful of people have claimed ownership of an idea that ticked the simplest of boxes: Why Don’t We Do It On The Roof? Starr, Glyn Johns, Lennon, McCartney have all been credited with being first to suggest climbing the stairs of 3 Savile Row. Michael Lindsay-Hogg had mixed feelings. He said: ‘There’s no balls to the show at all … I think we are being soft. You are The Beatles, you aren’t four jerks.’
In any event, on 29 January it was decided that the impromptu show should take place the next day. All they would have to do was build a makeshift stage on the roof of the premises, run the electric feeds from the basement studio mixing desk, set up the cameras . . . and go for it. The fact that they would be playing to an invisible audience five floors below on the street played into Lennon’s idea of the absurd. So, too, was the possibility that they could be busted for causing a public nuisance – the West End Central Police Station was only a few doors away, after all. That clinched it, especially for Starr: ‘I thought it would be great if we were all hauled off in handcuffs. Brilliant ending.’
Fine, but what to play? Again, they felt insecure about performing new material in case they screwed it up. In the end they felt only five songs were up to scratch – ‘Dig A Pony’, ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’, ‘Get Back’, ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ and ‘One After 909’, a jaunty pre-Beatlemania number that they had frequently exhumed at Twickenham and Savile Row. There were to be no Harrison songs. Nor would they make a pass at ‘Let It Be’ or such acoustic songs as ‘Two Of Us’. Similarly ruled out were any of the other golden oldies and rock ’n’ roll staples they had flogged to death throughout January.
On the morning of the show, Apple staffers Kevin Harrington and Mal Evans began hauling all the instruments (including Preston’s Hammond B3 organ) up from the basement via a small lift. Elsewhere, sound technicians, including a twenty-year-old tape operator named Alan Parsons, recruited from Abbey Road to help Glyn Johns, worked with the camera crews to get everything in place. Downstairs, beside the front door, a secret camera was installed to catch any possible police intervention.
‘I think the reason for the rooftop session was to generate a little excitement,’ says Parsons, who would go on to achieve fame as one of rock’s best-known producers. ‘They were sick of just playing the same tunes over and over again. They just wanted to get a solid performance recorded, and I think that, until they did go on the roof, they hadn’t really achieved that. Or at least they didn’t think that they had. They announced it just the night before. It was just, “Let’s go up on the roof tomorrow morning.” So we worked late into the night to get it happening. Part of my job was to run multiple cables from the basement up to the roof.’
Parsons also had to deal with the wind lest it wreak havoc with the microphones. ‘Glyn sent me out to buy some pantyhose to stick over the mics to minimise the wind noise,’ he later told Guitar Player magazine. ‘I walked into this department store and said, “I need three pair of pantyhose. It doesn’t matter what size.” They thought I was either a bank robber or a cross-dresser.’
Les Parrott, the cameraman, recalls the logistical problems presented by playing on the rooftop, which was extremely damp as a result of recent heavy rain. He told me: ‘The first thing they had to do was get a builder in. He had a look on the roof and [had to] to get half a dozen Acrow props [telescopic tubular steel props] to make sure the ceiling didn’t cave in on the accounts department which was directly underneath.
‘It was just a pitched roof so they put down these Acrow props and then placed the wooden beams on top of them. Then it was a big deal to get sufficient power up to the roof for the lights and their amps. They were running feeds back down to the basement studio. That is why one of the numbers on the roof didn’t get fully recorded because they were changing tapes down in the basement.
‘Then someone said – it might have been Paul – “We should get a helicopter to film it as well.” Then the next thing you hear someone say, “Oh, there’s a girl in accounts and she has a lot of helicopters.” Eh? Turns out she was related to Bristow’s Helicopters. So they rang Bristow Helicopters and they said, “Yeah, yeah what do you want?” But the space was only 1,600 square feet so it would all have been a bit pointless really, not to say pretty dangerous. You have this image in your head of everyone on the roof either being hit by rotor blades or being carried away by the downdraft. Can you imagine it?’
By noon, the stage and The Beatles were ready. There were last-minute doubts, Starr’s nerve especially beginning to waver. Typically, it was Lennon, who led from the front. ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’ What then followed was something akin to miraculous. For forty-two minutes The Beatles looked and sounded like the rock ’n’ roll gods they were.
Lennon, wearing a three-quarter-length fur coat as protection against the biting cold and with his long hair blowing in the wind, took centre stage. To his right stood McCartney, heavily bearded and wearing his favourite black Tommy Nutter suit; his Hofner bass still had the setlist from The Beatles’ last live performance, at Cand
lestick Park, taped to its underside. Starr had borrowed his wife Maureen’s red plastic mac as a shield against the elements for one of his best-ever performances on the drums. Only Harrison, wearing mint-green trousers and a black fur coat, and playing his custom-made Fender Rosewood Telecaster, gave off the air of a reluctant conscript. He can be seen only providing back-up vocals to five Lennon-McCartney numbers.
But it was a happy occasion for Preston. ‘I didn’t need to be out front or anything like that,’ he said. ‘I was an invited guest but it was one of the best moments of my career. I got to play on the last live performance of The Beatles and, let me tell you, it was magical.’
Altogether, The Beatles played five versions of ‘Get Back’, two rollicking run-throughs of ‘Don’t Let Me Down’, ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’, ‘One After 909’ and two passes at ‘Dig A Pony’. At one point, when the tapes are full, they even strummed an irreverent version of ‘God Save the Queen’.
Several friends and family were given a front-row seat to watch history being made. Most of them squatted down beside the chimneys, anxious for a decent vantage point. The only key ally missing was Neil Aspinall, who was in hospital having his tonsils removed.
On the street below, dozens of passers-by gazed upwards, most of them unaware who was playing. Others quickly joined the dots. Up above and in the band’s eyeline, a knot of secretaries and office workers, some perched precariously on chimney-tops, watched the scene in wide-eyed wonder. Not everyone was happy, though: bowler-hatted accountants harrumphed at the unwanted noisy lunchtime intrusion and complained to the local constabulary. Squatting at Lennon’s feet was Kevin Harrington, who held a cheat-sheet of lyrics – but, even so, Lennon frequently fluffed the lines to his own songs.
Somehow, though, it all worked out. All the backstabbing bitterness of the previous month was cast aside for a short time. Then, all too soon, it was over, with Lennon’s immortal ad-lib carried away on the January breeze: ‘I’d like to say thanks on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we passed the audition . . .’ But not before, as they all predicted, the police intervened to warn them to turn down the volume or pull the plug.
One of those on duty was a young constable called Ken Wharfe, who eighteen years later would be appointed as the personal protection officer to Diana, Princess of Wales. On that day, he was just another traffic cop following his sergeant’s orders to tell The Beatles to ‘cut out the bloody noise’. Wharfe returned to the scene on the fortieth anniversary of the rooftop concert.
‘I arrived as a young cop from Piccadilly Circus and there were about fifty or sixty people spread around the roof. One of the things I remember was the music was fantastic and every available roof space was taken up by people. They were sitting on chimney stacks to get a better view. And despite my instructions to arrest The Beatles, no one would have done that, because it would have ended perhaps the greatest concert that had ever happened. Thirty minutes later, I left absolutely buoyant having witnessed one of the greatest bands in the world. I don’t think the police were ever going to stop The Beatles [playing]. It was a great party atmosphere. There was no disorder. I remember John Lennon making quips like “I’ll come quietly” and things like that. It was a lucky day for me and a lucky day for London that they had this free concert by The Beatles on the roof.’
Someone else rubbing his eyes in disbelief was Chris O’Dell, an American whose friendship with Derek Taylor had helped her land a job in the Apple press office, clipping newspaper files.
She said, ‘I was lucky to have been there because the roof was actually very weak at the top of Apple and so they told all of us that we couldn’t go up there. None of the employees could. I always got to know the right people so I got to know the cameraman. And he said, “Come up, you can help me.” So I went up and I just sat there thinking, “God, I hope nobody realises that I’m not supposed to be here”. But it was . . . it was freezing cold. That is, I mean that I remember more than anything – how cold it was up there. But also it was just so exciting to think originally the idea was that they were going to . . . they were doing it so that everybody in the whole West End of London could hear the music and in fact the amps weren’t that big. So the people on Savile Row could hear it, and it was fun to watch them looking up trying to figure out, what was that?
Those who were there were indeed witnessing musical history being made. Parsons said, ‘That was one of the greatest and most exciting days of my life. To see The Beatles playing together and getting instant feedback from the people around them, five cameras on the roof, in the road, it was just unbelievable. The only regret I have is that I intentionally set up behind all the cameras on the roof, so there is not one picture of me up there!’
Harrington remembers the whole thing passing in a blur. ‘When you look back on it now it was an incredible thing just to be there,’ he said. ‘It really was historic. But at the time you’re just trying to make sure everything goes okay. I was used to seeing them so I wasn’t, like, starstruck or anything. But it’s only when you look at the pictures that you think, I was really there.’
For Lindsay-Hogg, the rooftop brought a bittersweet combination of relief and a feeling of what might have been. He recalled: ‘They’d been through everything together. It was kind of like a marriage and people were starting to not get along as they had when they first got married. But when they got up on the roof they really loved it. It was cold but they had a very good time together. It proved to them that they were such a great rock and roll band. They could still connect and they could connect as beautifully as they’d always done.’
Of course, the real wonder of the rooftop concert was the fact that it happened at all. Given the tumultuous events of the previous seventy-two hours, no one expected Lennon and McCartney to share the same space, let alone actually sing harmonies together as they used to. It was a measure of the musical bond that could still be resurrected on occasion. When they came off stage, all four felt the adrenaline rush of playing before an audience again. But that was as far as it went.
The next day, appropriately the last one of January, they were back at Apple, with Preston again present, to record ‘Let It Be’ and ‘The Long And Winding Road’ as well as another version of ‘Two Of Us’, all songs considered out of reach for the rooftop show.
And then ‘Get Back’, the most tortuous recording of The Beatles’ career, was left to languish on the shelf. All that was left at that moment was the lingering memory of Lennon’s parting shot as the amps were finally turned off and The Beatles shuffled off the stage for the last time.
Lindsay-Hogg said, ‘Since you know it’s their last time playing in public, and since you know they didn’t know themselves it was the last time, it’s kind of beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time because if anyone ever passed any audition it was them.’
The real question though, was this: was it a rebirth or a requiem? The answer would be quick to arrive.
© C. Maher/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Allen Klein’s divisive pitch to take over the management of The Beatles quickly won over John and Yoko but arguably caused the biggest schism between Lennon and McCartney.
FEBRUARY 1969
High noon for The Beatles, Allen Klein and John Eastman arrived on the first day of February, a Saturday, at Apple. At one end of an oak-panelled table alongside Klein stood John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Staring them down on the other side were Paul McCartney and his future brother-in-law. It was a straightforward face-off between two very different adversaries. Park Avenue privilege poured from Eastman, a scion of the family law business. Contempt for the class system, meanwhile, oozed from Klein.
It was the first time Eastman had set eyes on the three ‘rebel’ Beatles. The euphoria of the rooftop concert was already dust in the wind. And the battle for what author Peter Doggett would later call the ‘soul of The Beatles’ had now shifted inexorably from the studio to the boardroom.
In th
e aftermath of the initial confrontation between The Beatles and Klein on 28 January, each side had pondered their next move. Klein, with three Beatles locked in, had dissected every contract they had ever signed, especially those that contained Brian Epstein’s imprimatur. He had pored over the small print contained in their royalty agreements with EMI in Britain and Capitol in America. And he scrutinised agreements with United Artists Corporation over their film commitments.
Then there was Lennon and McCartney’s publishing deal with Northern Songs. The two principal Beatle songwriters still received a relative pittance under a deal struck in 1963 with music publisher Dick James and his business partner Charles Silver. Six years later, they were still shackled to more or less the same miserly terms while James and Silver, as the majority shareholders of a highly prosperous company, raked in a fortune. What Klein found was that virtually every deal they had ever made was a rip-off in some shape or form. And thanks to a crippling ninety-five per cent tax rate for the UK’s highest earners, and a business that was tanking financially, The Beatles were cash poor.
Klein had also uncovered duplicity closer to home. Encouraged mainly by Lee Eastman, McCartney had been secretly asking fellow Apple director Peter Brown to buy shares in Northern Songs, an act that made a mockery of his gentleman’s agreement with Lennon that their holdings in their company would always be split 50–50. Klein knew he had scored a vital scoop, but for now he did not even tell Lennon. The information might come in handy further down the road, he mused, if for any reason he needed to gain a tactical negotiating edge over the Eastmans and McCartney.
