January 1969 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

I thought George was quite hopeful at the beginning of there being something new to get them going but found it to be the same old and quickly got fed up (again) of Paul being overpowering and John having Yoko as his spokesman 24/7. 

George speaking (sourced from the ‘Anthology’ book) proves it to be the case.

I had spent the last few months of 1968 producing an album by Jackie Lomax and hanging out with Bob Dylan and The Band in Woodstock, having a great time. For me, to come back into the winter of discontent with The Beatles in Twickenham was very unhealthy and unhappy. But I can remember feeling quite optimistic about it. I thought, ‘OK, it’s the New Year and we have a new approach to recording.’ I think the first couple of days were OK, but it was soon quite apparent that it was just the same as it had been when we were last in the studio, and it was going to be painful again. There was a lot of trivia and games being played.
            As everybody knows, we never had much privacy – and now they were filming us rehearsing. One day there was a row going on between Paul and me. It’s actually in the film: you can see where he’s saying, ‘Well, don’t play this,’ and I’m saying, ‘I’ll play whatever you want me to play, or I won’t play at all if you don’t want me to play. Whatever it is that will please you, I’ll do it…’
            They were filming us having a row. It never came to blows, but I thought, ‘What’s the point of this? I’m quite capable of being relatively happy on my own and I’m notable to be happy in this situation. I’m getting out of here.’
            Everybody had gone through that. Ringo had left at one point. I know John wanted out. It was a very, very difficult, stressful time, and being filmed having a row as well was terrible. I got up and I thought, ‘I’m not doing this any more. I’m out of here.’ So I got my guitar and went home and that afternoon wrote ‘Wah Wah ‘.

Throw in John and Paul treating his songs as little more than cannon fodder when they were clearly as good as anything John and Paul were offering and it’s quite simple to understand why within a 4 or 5 days he was starting to want to be anywhere else but Twickenham. 

It was too early but the problems were there already and whilst it’s easy to imagine everything settling down a few months down the line you could easily argue johnandyoko would only have been more entrenched in themselves and Paul being even more eager to direct due to the band not having worked together. I think he realised after the ‘Get Back ‘ sessions he was being a pain in the arse to the others with his enthusiasm and had to cool it if he wanted the other four (the fourth being Yoko as no Yoko = no John) to record again. And as said above by Pablo Ramon Apple was a total mess, if anything it was a bigger mess in April.

The film studio was the wrong choice. Paul (and the others) should have realised that starting work early in the morning was not the right path as the Beatles had grown to recording at night. Also when filming ‘A Hard Day’s Night ‘ and ‘Help ‘ they hated the early mornings and often turned up straight from nightclubs having not slept and those were just a matter of turning up and having Richard Lester point them in the right direction to speak from a script. I have no idea if it would have been possible to find a solution for the ‘Get Back ‘ project however.

I don’t think the biggest problem was when they started filming, it was that they had stopped talking to each other and they needed to get all the crap into the open and sort out the issues. There were some very candid discussions between George quitting on the 10th and the resumption on the 21st that helped clear the air and get the project back on track, tho having to move to Apple. One on the 13th January 1969 was secretly recorded, the below extract is from ‘Drugs, Divorce and a Slipping Image’ by Doug Sulpy 

[Paul] then offers up another pep talk, and says that if they all just allow each other to play to the best of their abilities and stop trying to micro-manage the rehearsals, things will work out a lot better. John says that Paul can’t make George play competently, because he’s afraid he won’t follow directions, and that Paul treats him the same way. Paul agrees, and John continues with the same subject, only from his own vantage point for his own songs. He says that during the recording of “The Beatles” he felt it wasn’t any use telling Paul how to play, that he (John) was drunk much of the time, and really only concerned about his own singing performance. On top of this, he didn’t want to be seen as providing a finished arrangement for the others – though he claims that “Dear Prudence ” was arranged, as simple as it is. John makes it clear that he doesn’t like directing his numbers the way Paul does, and that he can’t work in that fashion, and never did – though this has sometimes resulted in a recording that he’s not entirely satisfied with (both Paul and John remark that “She Said, She Said” is an example of this).  On the other hand, John doesn’t want anyone else to arrange his numbers for him either, but would welcome suggestions that he could either accept or reject as he chooses. He says he’d rather just sing his songs, and let someone else worry about the production (using “Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite” as an example).  Paul says he feels much the same way about his own work, but John points out that at one time neither he or George felt comfortable even offering suggestions to Paul for his tunes, because they were sure they’d be rejected. Paul, in his own defense, points out that he’d given George plenty of latitude in the previous week’s rehearsals, but that George isn’t naturally the kind of guitarist who can just improvise a solo, preferring to work it out at home first.  Paul then seems to wonder aloud what method could be used with George to avoid the ego-issues raised by their telling him exactly what to play. As they discuss this, the available tape runs out. 

Ron Nasty said

@meanmistermustard said
I don’t think the biggest problem was when they started filming, it was that they had stopped talking to each other and they needed to get all the crap into the open and sort out the issues.

I agree in many ways. However, isn’t it sometimes easier to sort out issues if you know you’re not going to spend the next day in a room with someone? Easy as it is to guess the situation might have got worse had they left a bigger gap, it’s as valid to argue that the small gap didn’t allow John and, especially, George to recover from the tensions the White created.

We’ve seen this increasingly since, where bands take time off each other to do their own thing. The Beatles, like so many other things they pointed the way toward, were just a little early to take advantage of that being allowed.  

I think its either/or. Sometimes distance and time works. Sometimes its better to be around the person(s) so you’re forced to face up to the issues otherwise they can linger and grow and it gets harder to want to get together and sort them out.