The lyrics, or extracts therefrom, of Designed by John Kosh the undermentioned compositions Produced by Neil Aspinall are produced by permission Additional material of Harrisongs Limited supplied by Mal Evans Published Copyright for the World © 1969 by Apple, London Printed in Harrisongs Limited England by Garrod and For you Blue/1969 Lofthouse International Limited All things pass/1969 Copyright © 1969 for the world by Apple Publishing The lyrics, or extracts therefrom, of the undermentioned compositions are produced by permission of Startling Music Limited Copyright for the World © Startling Music Limited Photographs by Ethan A Russell Octopus s Garden/ 1969 The lyrics, or extracts therefrom, of the undermentioned compositions are produced by permission of Northern Songs Limited Copyright for the World © Northern Songs Limited You ve Got to Hide Your Love Away/ 1965 1 m Only Sleeping/1966 Magical Mystery Tour/1967 Hey Jude/1968 Back in the U.S.S.R./1968 Blackbird/1968 Maxwell s Silver Hammer/1969 Get Back/ 1969 Carry that Weight/ 1969 Don t let me Down/ 1969 Dig a Pony/1969 Two of Us on our way home/1969 I got a feeling/1969 One after 909/1969 Copyright 1967 by Dwarf Music, Inc. New York U.S.A. Reproduced by permission of B. Feldman and Co. Ltd. I shall Be released Bob Dylan
Text by Jonathan Cott and David Dalton
Things as they are there. You can glide down from Ringo: Around the Beatles. Paul: As a dream the roof on a one shot on to . . . just sit back in a wide shot, As they are as a dream Ringo s face, float around, being then go to someone, like a news careful not to miss anything. It s event. Paul: I think we re getting the like Warhol s things; he goes to Ringo: I d like it like a Country wrong idea about the film. It s the other extreme, but he reckons programme where you have one like in the Stones Circus. there s a pace in Empire . Even a camera, just step in and do your I couldn t really get into that. It Tunisian amphitheatre can be bit, like on the Grand Ol Opery, was an event and that kind of boring. I don t dig Flatt and Scruggs; they d all thing is all over. I say, just stick underestimating what s here. If it move in when their solo came on it and leave it. Just leave the s going to be scenery, we should around and take the centre so shot and the whole bit and not go the whole way and get they acted out the shots. just this excellent little galloping horses. You should get Paul: It bugs me when they zoom movement. Like on really close up, like right into one Ringo. He does this and he in and out. I d like it to be like an of John s eyes. Can you do that? old movie. If you want to say does that and it s all great, and That direction, rather than John that to music. anything, you walk up to the and the moon. Linda: The world camera. The only thing that Linda: Like a study. is dying to see them. I ve never doesn t need to move is the Paul: A study, yeah, like seen a study of them. You want camera. It s like oriental medicine Picasso paints. You just saw the to be there. Lindsay-Hogg: I just and western medicine. We whole thing right there. These thought of going to Africa prescribe for the symptoms; they songs are our paintings. Get very because we colonised it. are into preventing it. It s like a bright lights so you see Paul: But we could have like a switch—get us to do the everything, instead of moody game of musical chairs, a movement. lighting, that kind of thing. With computer set up with chairs. You Ringo: They asked some people everything here, it hardly needs ve got the scenery here. It s like to stand by a wall, just stand scenery. Really, it all should be The Potter s Wheel ; they d make there, not do anything, but they about him and his drum kit. Look a pot before your eyes. The couldn t do it. They all had to do at his drum kit, it really looks camel won t be doing anything their bit, all the old jokes we used great live ; you ll be lucky if you catch to do and that .. . Kids always win beautiful sitting there. Then John him crapping on camera. on those. Paul: Dreaming in and his guitar and his amp, sitting Linda: It s like being a great public is the thing. You know there, actually showing it at that photographer. Like there are those dreams where you go down minute. The scenery would just be only certain men I m a Helter Skelter? And the scene the other things around, like the interested in photographing. I changes? But doing that awake. scaffolding, the other cameras. It s can t photograph women at all; The latest thing from Apple! like in a news event. The man it doesn t involve me .. . Well, shooting is maybe like Greta Garbo. Paul: news, not the man on the ground If you go away, you re going to afterwards. I d really like to look at be hamstrung by the scenery. If Pete Townshend s face; he you could shoot the steadiness, fascinates me . . . like on Jude like you re flying over... the little screams were more Lindsay-Hogg: What was your interesting than the postman. If favourite of the TV shows? you can think slow, not bang! bang! bang! Instead of getting all the pacing, a chair lift, the flow, the pace is already Paul: Hi Ringo. Hi lads. always think that sounds Paul: Can you play that back Ringo: Hi. Happy New funny, like having trumpeters. now, Glyn? New Year. singing) Glyn: Coming up. Paul: It s the happiest belated Don t let me down .. . Paul: The thing I don t want hogmany for marmalade. f you could have Don t let is a TV show. They always seem John: It s a feeling . . . it s me down , say, twice at the to have that farty little sound on enough to make a haggis grow beginning. It sounds like a TV. legs; but tonight we ll celebrate middle 8 all the time. I wouldn t ; Glyn: Don t forget you re on Irish Whiskey said Gene crap that; use it somewhere near hearing it on a TV speaker, which is a grotty speaker, but Pitney, the only Sassenach in the end. you can get a good sound. the group. John: We ll do it a couple of more times right through. Paul: But even so, whenever Paul: I tried to call you this George: Do you want us to you used to get Cool for Cats, morning. sing in unison or harmony? when they played the record or John: I know, I complained to Paul: Harmony. anything, you d hear the the operator about it. George: We ll need three mikes old mine shelves, in the old days. Paul: I get the horrors every then. Don t let me down morning about 9:00 when I get Paul: Something like (singing): Don t let me down .. . my toast and tea .. . Love for the first time JUMBLE OF VOICES So don t you let it get away (Tuning up, drums, cymbals tintinabulating, a riff gets It lasts forever and a day moving. John, Paul, and George Start off with a corny one. singing I Shall Be Released ) John: I think the words should They say everything can be replaced be corny cos there s no clever They say every distance is not near words in it. Yet I remember every face Paul: Just repeat what you were Of every man who put me here. doing, but not as high as we were George: It s echoing; we have doing it. (singing) a bit of echo. We could get a I m in love for the first time in PA like in the Top Ten in my life Hamburg. Don t you know it s going to last. John: (singing) Don t bring George: The corny bits I me down .. . thought were the notes, how Paul: It s the first time I thought we were doing it, not the words. it was this high; I thought it was Paul: Let s try it again and see if low before. John: I think it s it s all right. when you re trying to sing over . . Don t let me down . You see I ve no order for it at Don t let me down all—for all the bits. I m just going George: That bit is even cornier; to see which should come where . . . Don t bring me . . . Paul: The the harmony—it s too pretty. point is, are we going to do it, Paul: We can make it better as can we do it? John: We ve been we go along. Do it once more. I, trying. Paul: I think we should 2, 3, 4, learn it then, see what s needed. I m in love for the first time The idea of a piano does limit it. George: That one was great. Try this, it s these three, 1st 2nd 3rd fret, an open bottom E .. . Don t let me down In a Play Anyway Date: little group of chairs that floats 2nd January 1969 like Huck s raft on the blue- black ektachrome floor. The Location: Twickenham director, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Film Studios in a brown pin-striped suit, Cast: smoking an early Hollywood John Lennon cigar, wears his 30s. Yoko s Paul McCartney in black, visible, invisible, silently George Harrison present. Her hair, Noh curtains. Ringo Starr Drinking tea from a styrofoam cup, Director: picking nervously at her hands, a Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Bird of Paradise Yoko Ono perching for a moment on an electric wire. Glyn, immersed in Linda Eastman sound. Indispensible Mal, Sound Engineer: Beatles oracle, Where are the Glyn Johns, machines from EMI, Mal? Malcolm Evans Get me some more of these Scene: A large sound stage at heavy gauge strings , a friendly Twickenham. At one end, a giant giant. semi-circular backdrop screen, Lindsay-Hogg: Cut! I curling around 180 of space, with take 2 silent turnover colour like light under water. The colours on the backdrop screen John: (singing: his voice like glow side by side: red, green, a nasal organ) purple bands, a technicolor Don t let me down rainbow. A spacious platform is Don t let me down set up in the centre. Ringo, Don t let me down wearing a turtleneck, is sitting high Don t let me down up on the drum rostrum above a I m in love for the first time pyramid of drums and cymbals, Please don t let me down Below, a triangle of chairs facing Don t let me down Don t inward. George with moustache, let me down Don t let me beside him a table with a bowl of down Don t let me down flowers. He is wearing a pinstriped Nobody ever loved me like shirt and a red scarf that reminds You do you of the cowboy photos of him If somebody loved me in the first Beatle concert book. Half as much as you do me John, dressed in white, wearing As you do .. . sneakers, peers through glass like (The sound is hypnotic. Words a wise old fish, like St. Augustine, drift sleeping into each other— like John Lennon. Paul has not yet azure doomy ( as you do me ). arrived. In the half-light, the crew Paul arrives, bristling black move about furtively, four camera beard, in a grey overcoat, men, clapper, grip, boom men, disguised as God. This camouflage around the rostrum and the allows him to travel undetected into town on the 74 bus from St. John s Wood.) Charity Begins at Home Paul: I as possible. But I think we need in on it until you get it how you mean we ve been very negative a bit more if we are going to get want it. since Mr. Epstein passed away. on with it. Paul: Last year you were telling That s why. We haven t been George: Well, if that s what me: you can do anything you positive. That s why all of us in doing it is, I don t want to do want, Paul; anything you desire turn have been sick of the group, anything. you can do. you know. There s nothing Paul: Well, you see nowadays George: But you have to desire positive in it. It is a bit of a drag. you ve grown up and don t have to do it. The only way for it not to be a bit to do that any more. You don t Paul: But these days you are of a drag is for the four of us to have to put the pancake on and saying we re not going to be able think, should we make it positve go out front and sweat and shake to do it, you know, we re going to or should we forget it. your heads because we re not come out a compromise. Now I John: The whole point of it is that any more. We ve grown up a don t think that, I really don t. I communication. We ve got a bit. So what I mean is, we did it think we ve got it. I really think we chance to smile, like All You then, but it doesn t mean to do it re very good. And we can get it Need is Love . So that s me again we have to do all that. I together if we think that we want incentive for doing it. Lindsay- think we ve gone a bit shy. I think to do these songs, great, we can Hogg: All You Need is Love