TOP 100 SONGS OF THE BEATLES: 41

"Get Back" (McCartney – May 5, 1969)  

Let It Be – Side 1, Track 7

YouTube (McCartney live)

From Wikipedia, Rolling Stone, and About.com, and Google –

"Get Back" is a song by The Beatles, written by Paul McCartney and formally attributed to Lennon/McCartney. The song was originally released as a single on 11 April 1969, and credited to "The Beatles with Billy Preston." A different mix of the song later became the closing track of Let It Be (1970), which was the Beatles' last album released just after the group split. The single version was later issued on CD on the second disc of the Past Masters compilation.

The single reached number one in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, France, West Germany, and Mexico. It was the Beatles' only single that credited another artist at their request. "Get Back" was the Beatles' first single release in true stereo in the US. In the UK, The Beatles' singles remained monaural until the following release, "The Ballad of John and Yoko"

History –

Created during the rehearsals for the band's film/album Get Back project, which later saw release as Let It Be, this song was crafted from a jam on January 7, 1969 at Twickenham Studios in London. It was subsequently reworked on the 9th, 10th, 13th, and 23rd-25th, and on the 27th was recorded at Abbey Road Studios. Although 14 takes were done on this day, Take 11 was judged the best, and is the version heard on both the single and the LIB album. At this time, Paul unwittingly gave the song its title by ad-libbing "Get back to where you once belonged," a reference to a song by Apple label artist Jackie Lomax, "Sour Milk Sea" (written by George Harrison): "Get back to where you should be."

The original take ended abruptly, however, and so the whole band went back into the studio on January 28th to record yet another version, this time with the band kicking back in and completing the song after the breakdown. While the ending on Take worked well, the body of the song was judged inferior to the previous day's Take 11. The finished song, therefore, is actually a mix of two takes: Take 11, which ends with McCartney's falsetto "wooo-ooh!," and the outro from Take from the next day, which fades out after a few seconds. (On the 29th and the 30th, the band also rehearsed "Get Back" for the rooftop concert; see below.)

Adding to the confusion are the five rooftop performances of "Get Back" recorded for the film itself; these took place in one session on the roof of London's Apple headquarters on Savile Row on January 30. None of these takes appear on the original single or Let It Be soundtrack; rather, producer Phil Spector, brought in to salvage the project after the band broke up in 1970, added some dialogue from the rooftop concerts to the Take 11 breakdown. This is why, on the album, you hear Paul saying "Thanks, Mo" (a reference to Maureen Starkey, Ringo's wife, who was cheering the group on very loudly), and John's famous comedic closing remark: "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition." (These sound bites actually occurred at the end of the "concert," when the local police were shutting the performance down due to noise complaints.)

The original Get Back project was envisioned as a return to the Beatles as a straight rock'n'roll band: simple songs, spare arrangements, a loose atmosphere, and no excess production. However, tensions were so high in the group at this point that the project dissolved in a now-infamous display of bitter recrimination (captured in the LIB film). Despite the death of the project, the group was so enamored of the song "Get Back" that it decided to release the song as a single a-side anyway, which is why the single precedes the eventual release of the album by a full year. (Capitol resurrected the LIB project against the Beatles' wishes after the bands dissolved, bringing in iconic producer Phil Spector to sweeten the sound; the original bare-bones vision of the album, often bootlegged, can now be heard legally on 2003's Let It Be... Naked.)

The words to "Get Back" reference Tucson, Arizona, where Paul's then-fiancee Linda Eastman was from. The character "Jojo" in the song is thought to have come the name of a popular bar in Tucson, though rumors have persisted for years that it actually referred to Linda's first husband, Joseph Melvin See, who left her (and their daughter, Heather, whom Paul adopted as his own) to move to Los Angeles.

Composition – Musical Development

"Get Back" is unusual in the Beatles' canon in that almost every moment of the song's evolution has been extensively documented, from its beginning as an offhand riff to its final mixing in several versions. Much of this documentation is in the form of illegal (but widely available) bootleg recordings, and is recounted in the book Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of the Beatles' Let It Be Disaster by Doug Sulpy and Ray Schweighardt.

The song's melody grew out of some unstructured jamming on 7 January 1969 during rehearsal sessions on the sound stage at Twickenham Studios. Over the next few minutes McCartney introduced some of the lyrics, reworking "Get back to the place you should be" from fellow Beatle George Harrison's "Sour Milk Sea" into "Get back to where you once belonged". (McCartney had played bass on Jackie Lomax's recording of the song a few months earlier.) On 9 January McCartney brought a more developed version of "Get Back" to the group, with the "Sweet Loretta" verse close to its finished version. For the press release to promote the "Get Back" single McCartney wrote, "We were sitting in the studio and we made it up out of thin air... we started to write words there and then...when we finished it, we recorded it at Apple Studios and made it into a song to roller-coast by."

The released version of the song is composed of two verses, with an intro, outro, and several refrains. The first verse tells the story of a man named Jojo, who leaves his home in Tucson, Arizona, for some 'California grass'. (Paul's soon-to-be wife Linda had attended the University of Arizona in Tucson, where the couple later owned a spacious ranch.) The second verse is about a sexually ambiguous character "Loretta Martin" who "thought she was a woman, but she was another man." The single version includes a coda urging Loretta to "get back" where she belongs.

At the beginning of the Let It Be version of the song, Lennon can be heard jokingly singing "Sweet Loretta Fart, she thought she was a cleaner, but she was a frying pan." The album version of the song also ends with John Lennon quipping "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition". (Originally John said that at the end of the rooftop concert, but Phil Spector edited it into the "Get Back" song on the Let It Be album.)

John Lennon in 1980 claimed that "there's some underlying thing about Yoko in there", claiming that McCartney looked at Yoko Ono in the studio every time he sang "Get back to where you once belonged."

Early versions – 

Around the time he was developing the lyrics to "Get Back", McCartney satirised the "Rivers of Blood speech" by former British Cabinet minister Enoch Powell in a brief jam that has become known as the "Commonwealth Song". The lyrics included a line "You'd better get back to your Commonwealth homes". The group improvised various temporary lyrics for "Get Back" leading to what has become known in Beatles' folklore as the "No Pakistanis" version. This version is more racially charged, and addresses attitudes toward immigrants in America and Britain: "...don't need no Puerto Ricans living in the USA"; and "don't dig no Pakistanis taking all the people's jobs". In an interview in Playboy magazine in 1980, Lennon described it as "...a better version of 'Lady Madonna'. You know, a potboiler rewrite."

On 23 January, the group (now in Apple Studios) tried to record the song properly; bootleg recordings preserve a conversation between McCartney and Harrison between takes discussing the song, and McCartney explaining the original "protest song" concept. The recording captures the group deciding to drop the third verse largely because McCartney does not feel the verse is of high enough quality, although he likes the scanning of the word "Pakistani". Here the song solidifies in its two-verse, three-solo format.

Recordings and post-production work

Billy Preston joined the Beatles on keyboards from 22 January, having been recruited by Harrison partly with a view to deter bickering among the Beatles. The group with Preston playing Fender Rhodes electric piano recorded about ten takes on 23 January. On 27 January they made a concerted effort to perfect "Get Back", recording about 14 takes. By this time the song had the addition of a false ending and reprise coda. After numerous takes the band jammed some old numbers and then returned to "Get Back" one last time in an attempt to record the master take.

This performance (Take 11) was considered to be the best yet – it was musically tight and punchy without mistakes, though the song finishes without the restart. On the session tape, George Harrison comments "we missed that end"; this is the version heard on the Let It Be... Naked album. On 28 January the group attempted to recapture the previous day's performance and recorded several new takes each including the coda. Whilst these takes were good, they did not quite achieve the quality of the best take from the previous day. The lineup for the released versions of "Get Back" was Paul McCartney, lead vocal and bass; John Lennon, lead guitar and backing vocal; George Harrison, rhythm guitar; Ringo Starr, drums; and Billy Preston, electric piano. Harrison, the usual lead guitarist, had temporarily quit the group on 10 January, so Lennon worked out the lead guitar.

The Beatles had EMI produce a mono remix of the track on 4 April, completed by Jeff Jarrett. The Beatles were unhappy with the mix and on 7 April McCartney and Glyn Johns worked at Olympic Studios to produce new remixes for the single release. They made an edited version using the best take of the main part of the song (take eleven) from 27 January and the 'best coda' ending from 28 January. The edit is so precise that it appears to be a continuous take, achieving the desired ending the Beatles had wanted all along. This was a divergence from the concept of straight live performance without studio trickery, but a relatively minor one, and avoids the somewhat abrupt ending of the version that is used on the Let It Be... Naked album.

The Beatles performed "Get Back" (along with other songs from the album) as part of "the Beatles Rooftop Performance" which took place on the roof of Apple Studios in Savile Row, London on 30 January 1969. "Get Back" was performed in full three times. During the third, which marked the end of the rooftop performance, the Beatles were interrupted by the police who had received complaints from office workers nearby. After the police spoke to Mal Evans, he turned off Lennon and Harrison's amplifiers only for Harrison to switch them back on, insisting that they finish the song. It was during this period that McCartney ad-libbed, "You've been playing on the roofs again, and that's no good, and you know your Mummy doesn't like that...she gets angry...she's gonna have you arrested! Get back!" None of the rooftop versions appear on record in their entirety although in the Let It Be film an edited version of the rooftop performance was included, and is available on Anthology 3.

At the end of the last rooftop performance of "Get Back", the audience applauds and McCartney says "Thanks, Mo" in reply to Maureen Starkey's cheering. Lennon adds: "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we've passed the audition". Spector used some of the talk preceding the master take of 27 January and edited on these comments to make the album version sound different from the single.

The stereo single version was the first Beatles' recording to feature Starr's drum kit in true stereo, mixed across the left and right channels. This utilized the then-fairly new 8-track recording technology and was a result of the growing popularity of stereo over mono. The only other Beatles' track to employ this recording method was "The End" on Abbey Road.

Releases –

Single version

On 11 April 1969, Apple Records released "Get Back" as a single in the United Kingdom, paired with "Don't Let Me Down" on the B-Side. The single began its seventeen-week stay in the charts on 26 April at number one, a position it held for six weeks. It was the only Beatles single to enter the UK charts at the top. "Get Back/Don't Let Me Down" was released in the United States on 5 May. Five days later, "Get Back" began its first of twelve weeks on the chart. Two weeks after the song's chart debut it hit number one, where it stayed for five weeks.

In both the United Kingdom and the United States, the single was released by Apple, although EMI retained the rights to the song as part of their contract. It was the only Beatles' single to include an accompanying artist's name, crediting "Get Back/Don't Let Me Down" to "the Beatles with Billy Preston". Apple launched a print ad campaign for the song concurrent with its release showing a photo of the band with the slogan The Beatles as Nature Intended, indicating that the sound of "Get Back" harked to the group's earlier days.

The single version of the song contains a tape echo effect throughout and a coda after a false ending, with the lyrics "Get back Loretta / Your mommy's waiting for you / Wearing her high-heel shoes / And her low-neck sweater / Get back home, Loretta." This does not appear on the album version; the single version's first LP appearance would come three years later on the 1967–1970 compilation. This version also appeared in the albums 20 Greatest Hits, Past Masters and The Beatles 1. It was also included in the original line-up of the proposed Get Back album that was scheduled to be released during the fall of 1969.

In Britain and Europe "Get Back/Don't Let Me Down" was the Beatles' last single to be released in mono, but in the US the single was released in stereo. It was the Beatles' first single to be released in true stereo instead of mono as part of the "stereo only" movement gaining force in 1969. In both versions the lead guitar played by Lennon is in the left channel and the rhythm guitar played by Harrison is in the right channel. The single was also released in the experimental Pocket Disc format by Americom in conjunction with Apple and Capitol in the late 1960s.

Let It Be version

When Phil Spector came to remix "Get Back" he wanted to make it seem different from the version released as the single, though both versions were the same take. The previous unreleased Get Back albums included elements of studio chatter to add to the live feel of the recordings. In this spirit, Spector included part of the studio chatter recorded immediately before the master take (recorded on 27 January) and added McCartney and Lennon's remarks after the close of the rooftop performance. This created the impression that the single and album versions are different takes. The single's echo effect was also omitted from the remix.

Let It Be... Naked version

In 2003, "Get Back" was re-released on the Let It Be... Naked album, remixed by independent producers with the sanction of the surviving ex-Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, with John Lennon's and George Harrison's widows. The "naked" version of "Get Back" is ostensibly a cleaned up version of the single version albeit much shorter as there is a fade immediately before the final "whoo" and coda. Apple also prepared a specially-created music video of the Let It Be... Naked release of the song to promote that album in 2003. This video is edited together using stock footage of the band, along with Billy Preston, George Martin and others.

Love version

In 2006 a newly mixed version of "Get Back" produced by George Martin and his son Giles was included on the album Love. This version incorporates elements of "A Hard Day's Night" (the intro chord), "A Day in the Life" (the improvised orchestral crescendo), "The End" (Ringo Starr's drum solo, Paul McCartney's second guitar solo, and John Lennon's last guitar solo), and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" (Take 1's drum count-off intro). However, there are several edits in this piece, including an extended intro, and the second verse is removed completely.

Takes: 9

Personnel –

John Lennon – Harmony vocals, rhythm guitar (1965 Epiphone E230TD(V) Casino)
Paul McCartney – Lead vocals, bass guitar (1961 Hofner 500/1)
George Harrison – Lead guitar (1968 Fender Rosewood Telecaster)
Ringo Starr – Drums (1968 Ludwig Hollywood Maple)
Billy Preston – Electric piano (1968 Fender Rhodes)

Trivia –

During the song's evolution, Paul tried several different lyrical approaches to the song, some having to with the debate going on in England at the time over Pakistani immigration. The "Commonwealth version" features lyrics that reference Cabinet minister Enoch Powell's infamous anti-immigrant "River Of Blood" speech; the later "No Pakistani" version features the mocking line "don't dig no Pakistanis taking all the people's jobs," and the "Too Many Pakistanis" version features a third verse which mentions immigrants "living in a council flat," or government housing. Some have heard these versions as racist diatribes, but historians now agree they were tongue-in-cheek pokes at the right-wing Labour party and its stance on this issue.

John Lennon, for his part, was quite fond of this song, calling it a "better version of 'Lady Madonna.'" He does, however, mock the first line during the rooftop versions, a joke Phil Spector added to the beginning of the album version: "Sweet Loretta Fart (or Fat), she thought she was a (vacuum) cleaner / But she was a frying pan."

John later claimed that Paul, during rehearsals, would look at Lennon's new wife, Yoko Ono, every time he sang the words "Get back to where you once belonged," in order to intimidate her.

The last version of "Get Back" heard in the (widely bootlegged) "rooftop sessions" features Paul mocking the police shutdown of his band's jam, replacing the ad-libbed "Your mama's waiting for you" verse with the lines "You been out too long, Loretta! You've been playing on the roofs again! That's no good! You know your mommy doesn't like that! Oh, she's getting angry... she'll have you arrested! Get back!"

This song is the first Beatles release to feature keyboardist Billy Preston, a friend of George Harrison's brought in by him to keep the others at their most civil and professional. Although the group was already disintegrating, they seriously considered having him join the band, the only real "Fifth Beatle" ever so considered. In fact, the "Get Back" single is credited to "The Beatles and Billy Preston." No other Beatles release shares billing in this way.

Today in Beatles History (From The Internet Beatles Album) February 28 –

1962 – A letter is sent by a lawyer on behalf of Brian, to a man of Liverpool who had murmured about Brian's motivations on managing the Beatles, demanding an apologize and warranty not to repeat the comments.
– Performance at the Cavern, with Gerry and the Pacemakers, and the Searchers.

1963 – Paul and John compose 'From Me To You' on the train going from York to Shrewsbury, during the Helen Shapiro tour.

– Concert at the Granada, Shrewsbury (Helen Shapiro tour).
– Brian and Dick James officially found Northern Songs Ltd.

1964 – With The Beatles number 1, 13th week (UK Record Retailer chart).
– "I Want To Hold Your Hand" number 1, 5th week; 7th week in the Top 100 (Billboard).
– "She Loves You", 6th week in the Top 100 (Billboard).
– "Please Please Me", 5th week in the Top 100 (Billboard).
– "I Saw Her Standing There", 4th week in the Top 100 (Billboard).
– Transmision of ABC-TV's show "The Big Out" (recorded 23 February 1964).
– UK Polydor single release: "Why (Can't You Love Me Again)"/"Cry For A Shadow".
– UK single release: "A World Without Love", first by Peter and Gordon.
Number 1 Studio, Piccadilly Theater, London. 6.30-9.00pm. Recording for BBC's "From Us To You" (2nd edition): "From Us To You"; "You Can't Do That"; "Roll Over Beethoven"; 'Till There Was You'; 'I Wanna Be Your Man'; 'Please Mister Postman'; "All My Loving"; – "This Boy"; "Can't Buy Me Love"; "From Us To You".

1967 – Studio 2. 7.00pm-3.00am. Recording: "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" (rehearsal only). Producer: George Martin; Engineer: Geoff Emerick; 2nd Engineer: Richard Lush.

1968 – Abbey Road. Cilla Black records "Step Inside Love".– The Cavern closes.
– Yoko, with John on guitar, records "AOS", at the Royal Albert Hall.1969 

– Ringo starts shooting of The Magic Christian.

1970 – Abbey Road, Room 4. Time unknown. Stereo mixing: "For You Blue" (remixes 1-8). Producer: Malcolm Davies; Engineer: Peter Bown; 2nd Engineer: Richard Langham.– Live Peace In Toronto, 8th week in the ranking (Billboard).
– "Instant Karma! (We All Shine On), 2nd week in the ranking (Billboard)1992 

– Moyzes Hall of the Slovak Philharmonic, Bratislavia. Start of recording of "The Beatles Go Baroque", with Peter Breiner and his chamber orchestra. Producer: Leos Komarek; Engineer: Otto Nopp.

1972 – John's US non-immigrant visa expires. John's immigration lawyer asks for an extension of his 6-month non-immigrant visa.

1992 – Moyzes Hall of the Slovak Philharmonic, Bratislavia. Recording of "The Beatles Go Baroque", with Peter Breiner and his chamber orchestra. Producer: Leos Komarek; Engineer: Otto Nopp.