The first A-side composition by George Harrison as a Beatle, and one of their greatest ballads, was released in the UK today, October 31, 1969. That was when the undying ballad 'Something' was paired with 'Come Together' as the group's new release. On November 8, it hit the chart at a relatively restrained No. 15.
Nothing to report today
No recording sessions were held today.
Today, Ringo Starr began recording his first studio album, Sentimental Journey. He recorded Night And Day in two sessions, with George Martin producing. Night And Day was written by Cole Porter, and had been a 1937 hit for Tommy Dorsey. Starr's version had an arrangement by Chico O'Farrill and was conducted by Martin.
The first session took place from 2.30-5pm and the orchestra recorded the backing track. The 17-strong band featured saxophone, trumpet, trombone, bass guitar, piano and drums. Following a two-hour break for dinner, Starr added his lead vocals in the evening session from 7-9.30pm. With recording complete, Night And Day was mixed into stereo between 9.30 and 10.45pm.
No news to report today
Since the hoax about Paul being dead first surfaced in print back in September (in the Times-Delphic, the newspaper of the Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa), it quickly snowballed. It was featured on the Detroit radio station MKNR. Towards the middle of October it had broken across the Atlantic.
The Beatles were contacted by reporters trying to get an answer. Paul hady travelled to his Scottish farm on October 22nd, and Peter Brown called him to ask for a statement that could be given to the press. McCartney gave a line borrowed from Mark Twain: "Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
A reporter from New York's WMCA, Alex Bennett, arrived in London on the following day and interviewed Ringo Starr, Derek Taylor, Neil Aspinall, photographer Iain Macmillan, McCartney's tailor and barber, and members of Apple group White Trash. Starr told the Bennett: "If people are gonna believe it, they're gonna believe it. I can only say it's not true."
Then on October 24th, McCartney agreed to speak to the BBC's Chris Drake. The interview took place at McCartney's High Park Farm in Campbeltown, Scotland. McCartney suggested that the stories had begun as he had adopted a lower public profile recently. He said that he once did "an interview a week" to keep in the headlines, but since getting married and becoming a father he preferred to live a more private life.
He was firm in denying he had died, saying: "If the conclusion you reach is that I'm dead, then you're wrong, because I'm alive and living in Scotland." Linda McCartney said their holiday was being ruined by the press speculation, adding that "everybody knows he's alive". Talk then turned to the subject of McCartney's farm, which he admitted was scruffy. He said he had been dubbed "the new Laird" when he first met his Scottish neighbours, but didn't want to be considered the "squire of the district". He concluded the interview by saying that The Beatles had no plans to reconvene in the near future, having recently completed an album and film, and that he may not return to London until 1970.
Rumours that Paul McCartney is dead, which have pushed the Beatles back to the top of the charts in America, are only part of a new surge of Beatlemania which is sweeping across the United States.
I know because, unfortunately, my telephone has proved an all too accurate barometer of the Beatles' popularity in the United States.
Hundreds of people have rung my number day and night from America, where it has a magical significance, asking to speak to characters associated with Beatle songs. This built up to a crescendo in recent days.
"Hallo, can I speak to Sergeant J. Pepper," says a typical voice, courteous, charming - and with the charges reversed.
For months I bravely lost nervous energy in an attempt to discover the secret of why all America wanted to ring me. Late at night I would awake as if in the midst of a nightmare and reach shakingly for the telephone to hear: "I have a collect call for Mr Billy Shears from Chicago, Illinois. Will you accept?"
No calls were accepted, but as they grew more numerous and the American operators more intrigued (I am almost on Christian name terms with some of them), it turned out that I was being rung because of rumours that if you rang a magic number concealed on the sleeve of the "Magical Mystery Tour" album you would be able to hear the Beatles, be translated to mysterious romantic lands, and various other refinements.
The resurgence of Beatlemania in the States is now taking teenagers on a magical mystery tour courtesy of Bell Telephone, which ends iconoclastically at my telephone number.
A girl from California, who did not transfer the charges (she will have to learn the hard way), said she discovered me through gazing at the word Beatles, written in stars on the album sleeve, reversing the image to the mirror, and then reading it backwards.
If you screw your eyes up a bit, and let your imagination roam after a few scotches you can just about squeeze my number, 834 7132, out of it. And if you do not believe this, hundreds of teenagers and others have done just that.
Most of the callers ask for Billy (or Mr William) Shears, who appears on the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper LP, though why they ask for him especially I have never discovered. Others ask for Mr Kite, Mr Henderson ("The Hendersons will all be there"), Ivor Cutler, George Martin, Derek Taylor, and other less familiar names.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison are frequently asked for, but never Ringo… Now that's the stuff real rumours are made of.
Nightly dialogue
The nightly dialogue is conducted with callers in Chicago, New York, California, Florida, and a host of other States. Over the past few days, as rumours of Paul's death (denied categorically by Apple in London) have mounted, the telephone would have been ringing almost continuously if it were not off the hook.
Most people want to hear that Paul is alive (asking through the operator) and once I confirm that, they refuse to believe that they have come through to the wrong number. One caller asked if Paul was alive and then added: "Can you give me any information about the R and D mortuary."
Yesterday, before leaving for work, I put the telephone back on the hook and it rang almost immediately. A voice with a Southern drawl said: "Hallo, sir, this is John K. Roberts, Radio Corporation of Miami, Florida. Can you tell me and my listeners if Paul McCartney is alive?" And so on and so on.
My favourite was Jane from Milwaukee, whom I shall miss dearly. She had tried the combination 834 7132 on all American exchanges. She told me: "I was sitting by the fire puzzling the quiz out, when I suddenly realised that the number must be in England." She cooled noticeably towards me when I confessed I was not a Beatle, but for a moment or two I knew what idolatry was.
Mythology
In spite of months of questioning I have been unable to trace the origin of the mythology of my telephone number. Most people seem to think it was started by some local radio station and then spread like a forest fire. The only common link of the calls is the consistent use of Beatles song language ("Is it true Paul died Wednesday morning at five o'clock?")
Most callers sound perfectly self-confident, not to say a little "high," and quite unapologetic about ringing up on a transferred charges basis in the middle of the night. On the rare occasions I have been able to question them about how they came to look for a telephone number on the album, they merely say: "Oh I got it from a friend of mine."
Yesterday my magical mystery tour ended. With a feeling of relief, tinged only slightly with regret, I finally decided to get my number changed, severing in one blow a transatlantic link which has been with me on and off for many months.
I rang the operators' supervisor expecting some sympathy for my disturbed nights. Instead she appeared to be thrilled to the bone. "That's marvellous," she said. "You should be able to sell that story to the newspapers for a fortune."
Alas, the unknown penalties of being a newspaper reporter.
On October 22 1969 Paul McCartney tried to end a month of fevered press speculation started by a story published in a tiny Des Moines student magazine on September 17.
From his remote Scottish farm Paul quoted Mark Twain: 'Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.'
But not everyone was - or is - convinced.
No much news to report.
The Wedding Album was released by Apple today. the third long player of experimental recordings by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
The couple's first collaboration, Two Virgins, marked the beginning of their relationship and artistic partnership. The follow-up, Life With The Lions, mostly documented their 1968 stay in London's Queen Charlotte Hospital, where Ono suffered a miscarriage.
The Wedding Album commemorated their wedding in Gibraltar on March 20, 1969. Although it was the final installment in their trilogy of avant garde and experimental recordings, the couple continued to document their lives on tape until Lennon's death in 1980.
Not much happening today.
Since the Beatles decided to call it quits, there's not a lot going on.
The Beatles are ready to sell their Northern Songs Ltd. shares.
Lennon performed Give Peace A Chance with the Plastic Ono Band at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival on 13 September 1969. He introduced the song with the words "This is what we came for, really". Lennon confessed he couldn't remember the words, so largely ad-libbed during the verses. The version was released in December that year on the album Live Peace In Toronto 1969.
Give Peace A Chance quickly became a peace anthem. 50 years ago, October 15, 1969 it was sung by half a million demonstrators in Washington, DC at the Vietnam Moratorium Day, in a rendition led by folk singer Pete Seeger.
That's what it was for. I think I heard... I don't know, I just remember hearing them all singing. I don't know whether it was on the radio or TV, but that was a very big moment for me. That's what the song was about, because I'm shy and aggressive. So I have great hopes for what I do, my work. And I also have great despair that it's all pointless and shit – how can you top Beethoven or Shakespeare or whatever. And in me secret heart I wanted to write something that would take over We Shall Overcome. I don't know why, that's the one they always sang. I thought, 'Why isn't somebody writing one for the people now?' That's what my job is. Our job is to write for the people now. So the songs that they go and sing on their buses are not just love songs. I have the same kind of hope for Working Class Hero, but I know it's a different concept. I think it's a revolutionary song – it's really just revolutionary. I just think its concept is revolutionary. I hope it's for workers and not for tarts and fags. I hope it's about what Give Peace A Chance was about.
A concert version of Give Peace A Chance was included on Lennon's Live In New York City album, recorded at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1972 and released in 1986. Two concerts, matinée and evening, took place on 30 August 1972, billed as the One To One concerts with funds raised for mentally handicapped children. Give Peace A Chance was the final song performed at the second concert.
It was an uneventful day.
On this day disc jockey Russ Gibb of WKNR-FM in Detroit, MI takes a call from a listener who tells him that in “Revolution 9,” a voice says, “Turn me on, dead man.” And it’s a sign that Paul McCartney is dead. He plays the song as instructed and his listener phone line lights up with more callers offering clues that indicate that Macca “blew his mind out in a car” accident a few years earlier and was replaced by a lookalike to spare Beatles fans the grief of losing their hero.
The rumors had started with an article about three weeks earlier in the college paper at Drake University in Iowa that explored whether McCartney is dead and mentioned the backwards masked voice on “Strawberry Fields…” and other clues. Two days after Gibbs’ broadcast a University of Michigan student publishes a satirical review of Abbey Road that details the clues to McCartney’s demise on the album, a number of which he simply made up. Soon after, they are being picked up by wire services and printed in newspapers across America. On October 19th, WKNR devotes a two-hour show to the mystery.
Eventually hundreds of “clues” are “discovered” by fans. The armband Paul wears on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s supposedly reads “OPD” for “officially pronounced dead” (though it actually reads “OPP” for Ottawa Provincial Police and was given to McCartney while on tour in Canada) – just one of the many hints of Paul’s death people read into that cover. Similarly, the four Beatles striding across the street on Abbey Road represent an undertaker (Ringo in black), gravedigger (George in denim), minister (John in white) and corpse (Paul barefoot and out of step with the others). The license plate of the Volkswagen in the background reads “28 IF,” meaning McCartney would have been age 28 if he lived (though he was only 27 at the time).
If you have the time, you can spend hours on the Internet examining the plethora of clues. The fact that McCartney was in seclusion on his Scottish farm as the rumors swirled didn’t help matters. Eventually he allowed a Life magazine reporter and photographer to visit for a cover story to prove he was alive. The supreme irony is that while millions were wondering if Paul was dead, The Beatles were on their last legs as a band.
No news to report today.
Not much news happening today,
Even though today was John Lennon's 29th birthday, Yoko Ono, who was pregnant was rushed to King's College Hospital, London, for an emergency blood transfusion.
Fearing that she may lose her baby, and indeed she did suffer a miscarriage four days later. Lennon remained by her side throughout her stay in hospital.
George Harrison was interviewed at Apple Offices in London on October 8th 1969 by David Wigg. Their conversation would air later that month in two parts on the BBC Radio-One program ‘Scene and Heard.' At the time of this interview, the Abbey Road LP was number one on the album charts, having been released just 12 days earlier.
Wigg would later remember of his meeting with Harrison: "We met at the Apple offices in London... It was an important time for George as he was emerging as a strong songwriting influence. He explained how 'Here Comes The Sun' had come to him while sitting in Eric Clapton's garden, and that 'Something' was for Patti (George's then-wife). He also described what meditation and Hare Krishna meant to him, the Beatles financial problems, and how he came to terms with being a Beatle."
In addition to being a BBC radio personality, David Wigg was also famous for being a columnist for the Daily Express, as well as the London Evening News. In 1976, Wigg would release a double album featuring his interviews with each of the four Beatles, entitled 'The Beatles Tapes.'
- Jay Spangler,
Nothing happening today.
The Beatles single Something/Come Together was released in the U.S. This was the first time a George Harrison song received top billing on a Beatles single.
Today John Lennon added all the last touches on the stereo mixes of Cold Turkey (on September 29th). Alos, John created further mixes today. The whole session lasted a full 12 hours, from 10am to 10pm, and also saw the completion of the single's b-side Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow), which had been recorded two days previously.
Lennon then added a series of overdubs to the September 28th recording of Cold Turkey made at Trident Studios. He taped two new lead vocals and added more lead guitar, including the backwards flourish at the song's close.
The Beatles were not recording anything today.
October 3, 1969: Beatles ‘Abbey Road’ U.S. Release
Although it was not the last new album released by the Fab Four – that was Let It Be – it was their last recording together. It’s marked by a number of contradictions and compromises.
One is the critical reception given to Abbey Road, best described as mixed on its release. Yet over time it has come to be considered by many to be the best Beatles LP (a subject that can be debated ad infinitum). A number of its merits were a result of final genuine collaborations by a band that was already splintered if not for all intents and purposes broken up. Other high points were bones of contention, most notably the medley on side two.
After the uncomfortable Get Back sessions (which became Let It Be) failed to renew the esprit de corps The Beatles once had, Paul McCartney asked George Martin to produce them again, and he insisted the four Beatles get together to record as they used to – a quick tight series of sessions as a band. It didn’t exactly work out that way, though Harrison does recall that “we did actually perform like musicians again.” Recording started on February 2, 1969, with later sessions in April and May. Finally they reconvened on June 2 and worked on the album through August.
McCartney and Lennon had reconnected creatively when they worked together on “The Ballad of John and Yoko” in April of that year. But they were heading in very different directions (as their later solo work would amplify). John dismissed Paul’s writing as music “for the grannies to dig.” The presence of Yoko Ono at the sessions didn’t help matters, especially after John and Yoko were in a car accident. A doctor prescribed bed rest for her, so a bed was brought into the studio so she could still be present.
Lennon wanted it to be an album of discrete songs, and suggested that one side be his material and the other Paul’s. He felt the medley on side two was “junk… just bits of songs thrown together.” Yet Ringo Starr recalls it as “for me one of the finest pieces we put together.” It was Harrison who maybe shone strongest with “Something,” inspired by then-Apple Records artist James Taylor’s song “Something in the Way She Moves.”
It was a double-sided #1 single with “Come Together”
Across The Universe was be included on the World Wildlife Fund's album No One's Gonna Change My World. Today, the song was given two stereo mixes.
Since the song had been recorded back in February 1968, it had remained unreleased. At this stage, prior to Phil Spector's remixing in early 1970, it still featured backing vocals by two Apple Scruffs.
During this 9.30-11am session, George Martin and balance engineer Jeff Jarratt mixed the song. The wildlife effects had already been added, most likely back on February 8, 1968.
No One's Gonna Change My World was issued in the United Kingdom on December 12. 1969 as Regal Starline SRS 5013. Across The Universe was the first track on the album, which also featured The Bee Gees, Cilla Black, Bruce Forsyth, Rolf Harris, The Hollies, Lulu, Spike Milligan, Cliff Richard, Harry Secombe and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky Mick and Tich.
This mix of Across The Universe was also included on the Past Masters collection. Remember the movie back in 2007?
