Humanizing the Beatles

For those of us who grew up listening to our parents' vinyl copies of the Beatles, the band is nothing less than a monolithic presence. We did not have the benefit of having watched the band evolve in real time, nor a full understanding of the cultural milieu from which it sprung. All we had were records, films (some of which are animated), and the steadfast assertions of many critics and listeners (myself included) that the band was the finest the world has seen since the rock 'n' roll era began. As such, we tend to put the Beatles on a pedestal, treating them less like a band of individuals and more like a group of folk heroes. Hell, the first visual representation I saw of the band was in the form of the animated Yellow Submarine, a film that endowed the band's music with magical liberating powers. These guys are rock 'n' roll Paul Bunyan figures to much of my generation, and I suspect that they will remain as such for generations to come. The pity is that this folk hero status has, to a large extent, stripped the band of its humanity.

The task of humanizing the Beatles was something I stumbled upon accidentally. A long while ago - several years before the Anthology series was released - a friend of my father's made a cassette copy of a Beatles bootleg (which, after doing research a number of years later, turned out to be Glyn Johns' Get Back mixes). Much of the bootleg contained similar versions of the songs from Let it Be (in fact, some of the versions on the bootleg later appeared on Let it Be... Naked). It also contained a couple of tracks I had not heard before - including some very off-the-cuff cuts. Having only heard the band's proper records (which are models of studio perfection), I was shocked to hear an aborted half-assed version of "Save the Last Dance for Me" in which nobody knew the lyrics. "These were the Beatles, as well," I thought, "studio perfectionists, but fuck-offs like the rest of us." I wore the cassette out completely within a year or two, playing it incessantly. It finally died in my Walkman one fateful day while I was mowing the lawn. I would not hear its contents again until nearly ten years later - with a little help from a Russian MP3 site, of course.

My experience with the tape led me to seek out as many Beatles bootlegs as I could - a difficult prospect in the days long before MP3s ruled the world, but quite a bit easier now. Today, I've amassed a fairly large amount of them - my pride and joy being a 17 disc compilation of the Get Back sessions. There is no better way to study the evolution of the music - or the evolution of the group dynamic, for that matter - than by listening to these unreleased recordings.

Today, I am posting three separate items. First - a video of the Beatles performing "Besame Mucho" during the Get Back sessions. The song had been part of the band's repertoire during its early days in Hamburg, Germany. Here, they reprise a sloppy and sluggish version over eight years after they originally played it to German club patrons. Note Paul's faux-operatic singing:





I am also posting "Rocker/Save the Last Dance for Me," the track that sparked my fascination with Beatles bootlegs in the first place. The Rhodes piano player is Billy Preston, who accompanied the band for much of the Get Back sessions.

Finally, in the "odds and ends" department, I'm posting a clip from the "Think for Yourself" sessions. It's a short one involving all studio chatter. Most interesting: around 17 seconds into the track, John Lennon can be heard singing "Do you want to hold a penis" off mic to the tune of "Do You Want to Know a Secret." Amazing the band was able to get any work done...

Rocker/Save the Last Dance for Me

Think for Yourself chatter