I thought this would be an appropriate choice for this week’s video feature since the date is September 9th. The Beatles, along with friend and keyboardist Billy Preston, made their final concert appearance at around 1:00 pm on January 30, 1969, on the roof of their Apple headquarters and studio at 3 Savile Row, London. It was an unannounced performance that the London bobbies eventually put a stop to, due to the disruption in the city during the middle of the business day. The Beatles themselves were actually hoping to be arrested for disturbing the peace because it was all being filmed, and that would be the perfect climax of their Let It Be documentary. As it turned out, they were permitted to complete a final version of Get Back before having to stop. The show included multiple takes of Get Back, Dig A Pony, Don’t Let Me Down and I’ve Got A Feeling, along with this performance of One After 909. The Beatles played for 42 minutes before being shut down, and the best 20 minutes are included as the conclusion to the Let It Be film.

One After 909 was actually a song The Beatles revived during their January 1969 Get Back Sessions. Originally titled The One After 909, it was one of the very first songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. This was in 1957, during the time when they were part of The Quarry Men. On March 5, 1963, The Beatles recorded it in the studio during the same session when they recorded their From Me To You/Thank You Girl single, but they were not satisfied with the result and it was shelved. Some of this early attempt of the song (takes 3-6) is now on the Beatles Anthology 1 CD set.

The rooftop performance of One After 909, seen here, was also used for the Let It Be LP.

Click the image above to play the video.

Here are some Amazon links to read more on, or purchase, some music related to this post:

1) Let It Be (Remastered) – 2009 remaster of original 1969 album, including rooftop performance of One After 909 seen here.

2) Let It Be… Naked – the “stripped down” version of the Let It Be album released in 2003, including One After 909 with the Phil Spector mix “undone” (also includes bonus disc Fly On The Wall with snippets of The Beatles in the studio in Jan. 1969).

3) Anthology 1 – 1995 2-CD set of out-take versions and concert performances of the early days of The Beatles, including a 1963 recording of takes 3-6 of One After 909.

4) More Amazon links for any of your favorite Beatles-related music: The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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Since today marks the 45th birthday of the Beatles classic Eleanor Rigby, I thought it a nice fit for this week’s video. It was April 29, 1966 when Paul recorded his lead vocal for the song. Producer/arranger George Martin conducted a doubled string quartet for the backing track the previous day. It consisted of four violins, two violas and two cellos. Paul only came up with the first few lines of the song and the melody, and although it isn’t credited as such, he enlisted help from other bandmates and friends (such as an old mate from the Quarry Men days, Pete Shotten) to complete the rest of the lyrics. Who contributed what is now in dispute, but who can deny it is an ingenious track for it’s time. After Paul recorded his lead vocal, George and John added harmony vocals for the choruses. The final bit of genius came on June 6, 1966 from George Martin, when he got the idea to add an overdub at the final vocal refrain of Paul singing the chorus in counterpart (ahhh…look at all the lonely people…). The song ended up as a double A-sided single with Yellow Submarine as well as a key track on the Revolver album, later in the year.

The version of the song I’ve chosen here is from a much more recent performance. A record 350,000 braved a very inclement storm to see Paul at this June 14, 2008 show. The charity concert, in the former Soviet republic’s Independence Square, was the Ukraine’s biggest ever. The gig was simultaneously broadcast on giant screens in six other Ukrainian cities and on television, with an estimated 10 million people watching. The charity event raised money for equipment to help children with cancer. Paul’s band included Rusty Anderson, Brian Ray, Wix Wickens and Abe Laboriel Jr. Paul also treats us to a little of his Ukranian before beginning the performance.

Click the image above to play the video.

Here are a some links from Amazon to read about or purchase releases related to this post

1) Revolver (Remastered) – 2009 remastered stereo edition of Revolver, containing the original Beatles version of Eleanor Rigby

2) 1962-1966 (The Red Album) – 2010 remastered Beatles hits compilation featuring original stereo version of Eleanor Rigby

3) Good Evening New York City [2 CD + 1 DVD Combo] – Coverage of Paul McCartney’s historic opening concert at New York City’s Citi Field on 2 CDs and 1 DVD. See Paul McCartney with his current touring band do a July 2009 performance of Eleanor Rigby and many, many other McCartney solo, Wings and Beatles classics

4) More links for your favorite Beatles-related music: The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

No related posts.

David Bedford’s 2010 book Liddypool: Birthplace Of The Beatles has been gaining a lot of recent recognition and has even been dubbed the most comprehensive book on The Beatles and Liverpool ever written. The book has been hailed as such by people who should know. To name a couple, there is official Beatles biographer Hunter Davies as well as Bill Harry, a very close friend of John Lennon’s from way back in his days at art college who also was the founder of the Mersey Beat paper. The forward is by Beatles drummer Pete Best, who describes the book as totally enlightening.

March 27, 2011: David was a guest at the 2011 New York Metro Fest for Beatles Fans and I had a chance to speak with him there about the book and it’s complimentary Liddypool CD and DVD (both offered separately).

David Bedford and Happy Nat at the NY Metro Fest For Beatles Fans, 2011

…and there’s more –

November 28, 2010: As a bonus, my friend Judith Kristen, who is a writer herself (A Date With A Beatle), interviewed David at BeatExpo 2010 in Connecticut where he speaks in more detail about the selection of tracks on the ‘Liddypool’ CD that were major influences during The forming years of The Beatles. My apologies for the ‘fuzziness’ of the recording and the background noise. Some technical problems could not be avoided, yet I didn’t think it should prevent you from hearing what David had to say.

For more information about David and his book, CD & DVD, go to his website at www.liddypool.com. Copies are somewhat limited, so check it out soon.

Liddypool: Birthplace Of The Beatles, 2010

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Welcome to yet another installment in the Beatles Rarity Of The Week series.

When The Beatles Anthology 1 CD set was released in November 1995, I was truly in awe over it. While I had heard some of the recordings on my own unofficial releases, there were many that were new to me. And in most cases, the quality of the recordings I already had in my possession were significantly upgraded.

One fascinating example of a historically significant set of songs is explained in the set’s accompanying booklet. In the spring or summer of 1958, The Quarry Men (John, Paul, George, John Lowe & Colin Hanton) heard about a guy named Percy Phillips. Percy owned a disc cutting machine, and for a small fee could make them a 78rpm vinyl 10-inch record with one track on each side. So, of course, John’s band had to make the trek across town with their instruments and make their first record. The A-side was idol Buddy Holly’s That’ll Be The Day and the B-side was an original song written mostly by Paul, but had a guitar solo by George that earned him a composition credit too. It was called In Spite Of All The Danger. Both of these songs have lead vocals by John Lennon and both are on The Beatles Anthology 1 CD set.

However there are two more pieces to the story that were not included in the CD booklet:

1) Since there was only one copy of the disc made, it was passed around amongst the band and ended up being saved in John Lowe’s private collection, and in July 1981 he made an attempt to auction it off. Paul McCartney had him served with an injunction until he could make an offer on it himself, and ended up purchasing from Lowe what was really already partially his, for a generous price. Afterwards, Paul made copies so that the original would not be degraded any further from playing.

2) While recording In Spite Of All The Danger, Percy Phillips was signaling frantically for them to wrap it up because they were running out of time on the disc (at 3 and half minutes!). Similarly, when the track was prepared for the Anthology disc, a repeated verse and chorus (around 45 seconds) were edited out of the recording. What you are hearing here is actually a forgery, created from the Anthology 1 account by inserting a second copy of the included verse and chorus that was repeated into the appropriate section that had been removed by EMI. Note that the repeated verse begins with the line I’ll look after you like I’ve never done before.

It’s actually a pretty charming recording with Paul harmonizing and John missing his vocal entrance cues in spots. At George’s guitar solo, an unidentified Quarry Man shouts out “honky tonk!”. Paul claims to have been inspired by Elvis’s Trying To Get To You when he wrote it. And now for your listening pleasure, you have a BROW-version, restoring the song to it’s original length.

Quarry Men photo at The Casbah Club (Liverpool) opening, August 1959

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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Welcome to this week’s BROW, which turns out to not only be a triple feature, but also a salute to a very significant man in Beatles history known as Chris Barber. Read on…

One of the main things that inspired John Lennon to form up his band The Quarry Men was the “skiffle-craze”. When UK musician Lonnie Donnegan’s fast-tempoed skiffle account of Lead Belly’s Rock Island Line came out in 1955, John was motivated to get in on the action. When his mother Julia bought him his first guitar in early 1957, he realized that all he still needed to form up his band were his friends, a washboard and tea chest bass.

Rock Island Line was not only a gold record in the U.K., but also a top 10 hit in the U.S. and Lonnie Donnegan (aka “the king of skiffle”) recorded it in 1954 while a member of the Chris Barber Jazz Band. At the time, Chris Barber was an already-established jazz trombonist who was recently responsible for launching Donnegan’s career. So if not for Chris Barber, there would have been no stardom for Lonnie Donnegan, no “skiffle craze” and therefore, no Quarry Men. It’s very arguable that The Beatles, in turn, may have never existed.

So thank you Chris!

Years later, in 1967, The Beatles in a relatively small way returned the favor by giving Chris one of Paul McCartney’s instrumental compositions he had first recorded way back in 1962 called Catswalk.

The audio featured here is a 1962 Beatles rehearsal of the track actually recorded at The Cavern Club in Liverpool. As intended, Chris made a spiced-up jazz arrangement of the song, renamed it Cat Call and released it as a single in the U.K. in October of 1967. It’s interesting to hear the life Chris breathed into this simple little demo, so I’ve included a recording of it here too. Cat Call was also released again in April 1979 on the compilation album The Songs Lennon & McCartney Gave Away.

The Beatles - Catswalk

The Chris Barber Jazz Band - Cat Call (excerpt)
This is part of the orginal 45 version also on the Battersea Rain Dance LP*.

The Chris Barber Jazz Band - Cat Call
This version is from The Songs Lennon & McCartney Gave Away.

* Many thanks to Andreas Wandfluh, Archive and Web Team Member of the Big Chris Barber Band / Chris Barber’s Jazz Band, who has provided this recording to me and allowing me to update this post with more information.

Chris Barber

1979 Compilation LP: The Songs Lennon & McCartney Gave Away, released April 1979, w/Chris Barber pictured in lower right corner

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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It’s Friday already, which is my self-established deadline for the Beatles Rarity Of The Week, so here we go. It was on this day in 1958 that 15 year old George Harrison joined The Quarry Men. George had been watching the group and hanging around with them since February of that year and his friend Paul McCartney had already been in the band for over a year. Despite group leader John Lennon’s reluctance over George’s age, Paul insisted that George be “let in” because of his skill as a lead guitarist. George fit in well with the group over the following few years and not only played guitar but sang on many of their performances. It wasn’t established at this point that John and Paul would be the primary vocalists. When they had their big audition with Decca records on New Year’s Day 1962, George sang 4 of the 15 songs, and this week’s BROW was one of them. George was a big Buddy Holly fan and covered Buddy’s Crying, Waiting, Hoping with a vocal flare that equaled or exceeded any of the other performances at the audition. George’s overly cheerful guitar break also brings beaucoup happiness to my ears. Of course, Decca producer Mike Smith turned the band down at the audition saying that groups with guitars are on the way out.

Left to right: Paul McCartney, Pete Best (drummer at the time), George Harrison, John Lennon.

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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It’s that time of the week again. Happy Friday.

This week’s BROW is not a very good quality recording. In fact, it’s not even complete. The playing is not very good on it either. So what gives it the worthiness to be this week’s BROW? Well, it’s a piece of history, that’s why.

Last week’s BROW went back very early to a Beatles recording from the BBC made even before The Beatles met producer George Martin. This week goes back even earlier, when the name of the band was The Quarry Men.

When this recording was made on July 6, 1957, John Lennon was 16 years old and Paul McCartney was not yet in his band. In fact John and Paul were only to meet later that same day since Paul happened to be in the audience at The Woolton Garden Fete where this song fragment was taped.

The song The Quarry Men are playing was a British number 1 at the time called “Puttin’ On The Style” by skiffle artist Lonnie Donnegan (1931-2002). John Lennon is singing (his vocals are unmistakable) and playing guitar with Pete Shotten (washboard), Eric Griffiths (guitar), Len Garry (bass), Rodney Davis (banjo) and Colin Hanton (drums).

I believe this is the earliest known recording by what was to become The Beatles. Isn’t it great that someone happened to have a tape recorder going?

The Quarry Men

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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