Original subtitles

One, two, three, four!

I'd been up to The Cavern and I'd seen what they could do,

and I said, "Let's record every song you've got.

"Come down to the studios.”

And we just whistled through them in a day.

- Too fast. - No, we had a wrong word.

Yeah, but I mean it's too fast anyway.

Take seven.

He had a very great musical knowledge and background.

He taught us a lot and I'm sure we taught him a lot

by our sort of primitive musical ability.

I think George quite liked the way we had about us,

I don't think he was that convinced about our musical ability just then.

Here we go.

You all right?

Get this bloody little mic out the way.

- Don't be nervous, John. - I'm not.

Take eleven.

I personally loved George,

because he gave us a shot at putting it down on a piece of vinyl.

No one else really wanted to put us on a label,

and George Martin said yes.

- Ringo, can you give something more? - Yes, loud as you want.

I can hardly strum with all these microphones about here.

We'd always said, "What about this?"

Because basically this album was just what we did live in the clubs.

Do You Want To Know A Secret, track two, take eight.

Well, we're not doing the first verse, are we?

Shall we just do it on the second verse like we said?

- Second from last. - OK, so we're waiting...

It was, "Oh, God, this is a piece of plastic!"

A piece of plastic was like gold, you know, you'd sell your soul.

You'd sell your soul to get on a little record.

The first album was recorded in one long 12-hour session,

which the last song to be done

was a song called Twist And Shout, which nearly killed me.

John had to save Twist And Shout till the last,

and he was sucking Zubes all day, those little throat tablets.

And he finally had to do Twist And Shout,

knowing he had to do it last cos it would just rip his throat apart.

It was great, you can still hear that on the record.

Please Please Me was done in a day.

We started at 10:00 in the morning and finished at 11:00 at night.

And that was the record made.

That's it, it's a master! It was.

The first album was really a recital of their repertoire.

With The Beatles was the first song book, so to speak.

We could play different stuff live from what was recorded

and still have stuff left over for the next album.

I wrote my first song on this album.

When George Martin said, "What else have you got?"

We'd pull out, 77/ There Was You.

It's about the nearest they could get to knowing what we sounded like

before we became the clever Beatles.

We weren't thinking in terms of an album being an entity by itself.

It was a collection of their songs

and I think one or two other people's songs as well.

There was a bunch of cover versions on this, Mr Postman...

It was interesting when I joined The Beatles,

we didn't really know each other,

but if we looked at each other's record collection,

the four of us virtually had the same records.

We'd never heard of anything in rock 'n' roll

lasting more than a couple of years, so we thought we were about the same.

I remember thinking, "This is it, we've made it!"

But we didn't realise what was to come.

Tune in next week, folks, for '64, '65 and '66.

We knew that in rock 'n' roll you could get in a film.

So we wanted to be in a film if at all possible,

but we wanted to make a good one.

We often could rely on Ringo for titles

cos Ringo had this happy knack of getting things wrong,

making little malapropisms, and it was always better than the real one.

Someone said to him, "You look a bit tired today,”

and he said, "Yeah, I've had a hard day's night."

He meant it. And we all went, "Hard day's night, that's great!"

Hard Day's Night was the first big one I did.

I had the benefit of having a director who was a musician,

Dick Lester, who was quite a good pianist.

And of course, we recorded the special songs for the film

as we'd just do ordinary recordings,

and Dick used a lot of the songs I'd already recorded in the past albums,

Can't Buy Me Love already had been recorded for example.

Take two.

I'm giving up the business!

- Come on, George. - Come on, we're doing it. We're on.

- George is tuned up. - George is tuning up.

Two!

I had one mind that wrote books or funny stories

and another mind that churned out things about I love you and you love me.

Because that's how Paul and I did it.

Like, "Oh! Let's write another of them."

They didn't really get totally immersed in record production until later on

when they stopped touring, there wasn't time.

They would dash into the studio, put down their tracks

and they'd leave all the work really to us.

They were incredibly busy during those first years.

If you look at our itinerary,

some of those years where we did maybe a tour of England,

a tour of Europe, a tour of America,

two albums and about four EPs and three singles.

And made a movie all in the same year! You think, "Jesus! How did we do that?"

Even though we felt, yes, we're established

and we've conquered all these countries and sold a lot of records

and they all love us,

it was not a thought it's going to end tomorrow or it's going on forever.

I never had that thought, it was just happening now.

You know, it wasn't like making plans for the future.

We were just on this roll

and we were all in our early 20s and we were just going with it.

OK, ready?

Paul? They're running.

A one, two, three, four!

Take one, No Reply.

What was that about not singing?

- OK, I'll just sing it... - Cos my voice is killing me.

That's it, OK. One...

One, two, three.

That is a rather nice cover. That's Robert Freeman, nice photos.

We showed up in Hyde Park, near the Albert Memorial,

and he was quite impressed by George's hair there,

a marvellous little turnip top he managed to create.

In those days, we didn't release a single off an album,

or when we put an album together, we didn't include the singles in it.

I think if I have a favourite on the album,

it is Paul's song of I Follow The Sun.

Musically, we were learning a lot,

this is where we learned a lot of the music

and putting together some of the arrangements and things,

we were quite quick in the studio when you think about it.

Two songs in three hours.

It was only after the first year

that they started getting really interested in studio techniques.

They always wanted to get the thing right,

so it wasn't a one-take operation.

They'd listen to it and do two or three takes until they got it pretty right.

I thought it was OK, the one earlier. You're always saying, "One more."

Actually, I thought you were all still having lunch!

The things like Honey Don't

and Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby

we'd played live so much, we just had to get the sound on that and do it.

But things like Baby's ln Black,

that was like learn the songs and rehearse them,

and I think we were beginning to do a bit of over-dubbing in those days.

It's probably a four-track.

- Take seven. - We goofed, man.

It goes, "I think of her but she thinks only of him.

- "It's only a whim, she thinks of him." - Her name is Jim!

-OK - As soon as you hear Jim, you're in.

One, two, three, one, two, three.

I used to go out to John's house in Weybridge to write songs,

and, at that particular time, I had been busted for speeding,

80 I had to have a driver to take me out there.

And we were chatting on the way,

I remember saying to the guy, "Have you been busy?"

And he said, "Yeah, mate. I've been working eight days a week."

Then I went into John's house and said, "Right, I've got the title,

"Eight Days A Week," and we wrote it there and then.

The rehearsal would go on in the studio,

because, from very early on, a lot of the songs weren't finished.

The ideas were there for the songs or the first verse or a chorus,

but it could be changed by the writers as we were doing it.

No! We were far out there, Mr Starkey!

I had these two guys who used to write songs whenever we needed some.

I think we just called them up and said, "Look, we'll be doing a movie now, lads.

"Would you come up with a couple of catchy hits?"

Ticket to Ride, take one.

- That one. - OK

- "Now that's driving me mad..." - Come on.

Right, George.

I think it was largely John's, the actual "ticket to ride" bit.

We wrote it together.

With John and I, certain songs would nearly always be the idea of one of us.

One of us had actually said, "A ticket to ride would be good.”

The other one would say, "OK, that's what we'll write today."

It was good to make Help, and it's a nice film.

It's sort of funny, it's very a period film now.

We just took it all very lightly and had a laugh.

I mean, all the show scenes were cos the lads wanted a holiday.

We were fed up working.

Yesterday, take one.

- What key is it in? - It'll be in 'F for you.

I remember Paul playing to me Yesterday.

He called it Scrambled Egg.

It wasn't until he got the lyric together that he decided to record it.

So he went down and sat on a high stool with his acoustic guitar

and sang Yesterday.

We'd be well into the album,

and we all knew that I'd be doing a number somewhere,

so we'd either say, "Have you got a song?" or "We've got this for you,"

or "We haven't got anything, is there anything you want to do?"

We were always, kind of, you know,

a little nervous before each step we went up the ladder,

but we always had that confidence.

And that was the good thing about being four together,

we all shared the experience.

Rubber Soul really was a matter

of having all experienced the recording studio,

having grown musically as well,

but mainly having experienced the studio and knowing the possibilities.

We were getting more fine-tuned really.

More of the same but fine-tuning it.

I mean, we certainly knew we were making a good album there.

OK, let's take it from the top and run it.

- Don't take it from the top. - I mean...

- From the same place. -Yes, OK.

We always wanted every single record to have a different sound,

we never wanted to get trapped in this "The Mersey Beat".

Come in when I go in, and get out...

No, This Bird Has Flown, take three.

When we were working on Norwegian Wood,

it just needed something.

I just picked the sitar up and kind of found the notes

and I just kind of played it.

And it just seemed to hit the spot.

Our whole attitude was changing. We'd grown up a little.

I think grass was really influential in a lot of our changes.

Especially with the writers.

They were getting more and more interested in unusual sounds,

and they were trying out new instruments

and always coming to me, saying, "What ideas have you got for this?"

We'd be saying, "Well, can we go...and...?"

And he'd say, "Well, look, chaps, I thought of this, this afternoon,”

and we'd say, "Oh, great!"

Rubber Soul was an indication of the way things were going to go.

It's one of my favourite albums. I think it's a great album.

The title Rubber Soul was kind of, "Hey, man, it's got soul!

"It's a lot of soul, lot of soul, that music.”

It was a spoof on that, you know.

Seemed nice and amusing. Very us, you know, very wacky.

Plastic soul, man. Plastic soul.

I don't see too much difference myself in Rubber Soul and Revolver.

To me, they could both be like Volume I and Volume II.

They both were very pleasant and enjoyable records for me.

We were having more fun in the studio,

from Revolver, Rubber Soul, as it was building up.

It was getting more experimental.

The songs were getting better, more interesting.

So, that's where we were going.

- Where are you? Paul, are you there? - Yes?

Do you want them to use the chords without the vibrato at all?

Do you want to hear it?

Their ideas now were beginning to become much more potent in the studio.

They would start telling me what they wanted,

and they would start pressing me for more ideas.

He'd come up with things like, "Well, have you heard an oboe?"

"No, which one's that?" "It's this one."” "Hey, that would be nice."

So really, we grew together.

Quite brisk. Moderato, foxtrot.

OK, John. Whenever you like. The red light's on.

Is it? Oh, of course! I couldn't see.

One, two, three, four!

Oh, no, stop, stop!

One day, a tape op got a tape on backwards.

He went to play it and it went...

"Bloody hell! Sounds Indian!"

That's the first record with backwards music on it,

before Hendrix, before The Who, before any of them.

I think I was composing more.

And actually getting a couple on the albums, it was good, it felt nice.

One, two, three, four.

One, two.

They fit in and they seem like a part of the thing,

it doesn't just seem like, you know, it's giving me my slot.

It was on Revolver

that of course we have the track Tomorrow Never Knows,

which was a great innovation.

That's me and my Tibetan Book Of The Dead period.

I gave it a throw-away title because I was a bit self-conscious

about the lyrics of Tomorrow Never Knows,

80 I took one of Ringo's malapropisms, which was like Hard Day's Night,

to take the edge off the heavy, philosophical lyrics.

Musically, I felt we were progressing in leaps and bounds.

Some of the stuff on this and the Rubber Soul album was brilliant.

There was nothing like it.

We suddenly thought, "Hey! What does a record do"? It revolves, great!”

You know, so it was a Revolver.

We've taken the road to its limits, as far as we're concerned.

What else could we do out there?

I made a suggestion, I said, "We need to get away from ourselves.

"How about if we just become sort of an alter ego band?"

Pepper started because of their being fed up with touring,

and they wanted to spend more time in the recording studio.

In the morning, we'd drive in to Abbey Road

in John's blacked-out Rolls-Royce,

fall out of the back of the car into the studio.

There were starting to be other possibilities,

for instance, Indian music, which George was very keen on,

and he'd met Ravi Shankar and was very keen on the whole philosophy.

There was a couple of strange ones,

a couple of happy-go-lucky, Northern songs.

Sixty Four Paul wrote in The Cavern.

We just stuck a few more words on it,

like "Granny on your knee" and "Vera, Chuck and Dave",

this was just one that was quite a hit with us.

I think we used to do it when the amps broke down, just sing it on the piano.

John, sing, er...sing those quicker.

-OK - Anyway.

We were really spending a long time in the studio,

and we were still doing the basic tracks like we always did.

And then it would take weeks for the over-dubs.

I think it will probably be another day singing it.

Yeah, I just heard it, that was nice.

Yeah. And what you could do with the bits where you can't get it

cos you haven't got enough breath, you can just stop.

Just take over, yeah.

It wasn't recorded like a band, you know, where you learn the songs.

It was starting to become bitty.

Have the mic on the piano quite low, just keeping it like maracas, you know.

You know those old pianos.

Sgt Pepper, for me, it's a fine album.

It's a fine album, but I did learn to play chess on it.

Well, it's obviously a kind of icon of the age,

and I have a great deal of affection for it.

People just had this dream about Pepper,

and it was good for them, you know.

I like the idea of having all your favourite people on the album cover.

I maintain that The Beatles weren't the leaders of the generation

but the spokesmen.

Yeah, well, that was just fun.

And there were plenty of people who'd made documentaries

or students who'd made films and stuff,

and I think we just saw ourselves in that kind of light.

Hey, you know, let's just make a kind of artsy film.

And now we're going to play a track from Magical Mystery Tour

which is one of my favourite albums cos it was so weird.

I Am The Walrus, one of my favourite tracks,

cos I did it of course, but also cos it's one of those

that has enough little biddies going to keep you interested 100 years later.

Just because other people see depths of whatever in it, you know,

what does it really mean, "I am the egg man"?

You know, it could've been the pudding basin for all I cared,

just tongue in cheek, it's not that serious.

He was so into just putting the words in, you know.

His poetry was so great.

And if you listen, in one line,

you know, it takes most people a whole song to say that same, sharp "got you".

You'd have success with something that might've seemed like a far-out idea.

People would say, "Wow! This is great!"

So when we'd come back again, George would be quite keen to try,

"What other ideas have you got?"

The Beatles' songs had started to sound more individual

from Revolver onwards or even before then.

Very excited...

Can we just have a little less guitar in the earphones? That's all I ask.

- I'll move away. - Take three.

It was like we were in another phase of our career.

We'd done all the live stuff and that was marvellous.

Now were into being more artists. We got more freedom to be artists.

If you think it was good, keep it. If you don't, scrap it.

Think that's got it.

I think we've got something there, George.

Sgt Pepper did its thing,

it was the album of the decade, of the century maybe.

It was very innovative, great songs. I'm glad I was on it.

But the White Album, we ended up being more of a band again,

and that's what I always love, I loved being in a band.

I wasn't interested in following up Sgt Pepper,

and I don't know whether the others were or not,

but I know what I was going for was to forget about Sgt Pepper.

That was Sgt Pepper and that's all right, fine, it's over,

and just get back to basic music.

All the experience that had happened in India was embodied in that album.

Most of those songs were written in Rishikesh,

like Julia and Blackbird and Dear Prudence.

It was a lot more individual stuff.

For the first time, I think people were accepting that it was individual.

For the first time, I had to split myself three ways,

because we were recording at any one time in different studios.

So you might have John in one studio and Paul in another,

and George and Ringo sort of going between.

- Yeah. - Hold it, Harry.

It's OK, I sang, tried to do a Smokey, and I'm just not Smokey.

Was that better than the one before?

Not one bad bit on behalf of me, sir.

- Another one? - One bad bit in that one.

A bad bit. In one of the breaks I got a bit...

Take nineteen.

Helter Skelter was just a track we did in total madness

and hysterics in the studio.

You know, sometimes you just have to shake out the jam.

We just tried to get it louder,

"Guitars, can we have them sound louder? The drums louder!"

That was all I wanted to do,

make a very loud, raunchy rock 'n' roll record with The Beatles, which it is.

We did it for so long and so often,

that at the end of it, Ringo did have blisters,

and I think at the end some take

you can hear him, "I've got blisters on my hands!"

"I've got blisters on my fingers!"

Originally, George was the supreme producer,

but as things loosened up,

George gave us a bit of the control of the tools.

It wasn't so much the machinery change but we got knowledge of the studio.

It became apparent that there was more songs

than would make up a single album.

I think it's a fine little album and the fact that it's got so much on it

is one of the things that's cool about it.

The songs and most of it is just as good as anything we recorded.

And there was lots of group activity going down. I love the White Album.

Goodnight, everybody.

Everybody, everywhere.

Goodnight.

I love cartoons, I love the Disney stuff, so, you know,

the first thing when we heard people were going to do a cartoon,

I just thought, "Yeah, this could be the greatest Disney cartoon ever!"

I mean, with our music. But they were going more Pepper direction,

80 we said why don't you just take a lot of songs we've got already.

There was no Yellow Submarine album we made,

they just picked songs that they thought would be good to animate,

and, you know, it really works.

"All you need is love" is basically the message of the movie

which still holds true.

I'm ready to sing for the world, George, if you just give me the backing.

OK, Geoff? OK, here we go.

- Here comes the tape. - Watch it.

Copied from the original backing tape.

One, two, three.

It seems a very simple message and sometimes it can seem very bland,

but I still think the message is really true.

I want you to get out of your seats.

And swim.

It was a perfect song because it was so simple,

it was a great excuse

to go right in the middle of that whole culture that was happening

and give them a theme tune.

The animation was tailored to the music and the feelings they were about.

We had a bunch of songs that we were working on

that hadn't been heard before the film.

And then we did Only A Northern Song in Abbey Road.

One of the things I like about John's songwriting style is its quirkiness.

And I think Hey Bulldog is very surreal.

And obviously I like the moment when we're in there

and I'm harmonising with him and I start being a dog,

and then he sort of says, "You got anymore?"

The spirit of that session is brought back by the recording, you know.

All right, cut this tomfoolery out, we ain't got nothing in the cans here.

This is gonna knock you out, boy.

The whole Let It Be project

was really to see it work in progress, to see The Beatles working.

All right?

- Are you ready, Ringo? - Ready, George.

One, two, three, four.

I think the original idea was Paul's idea

to rehearse some new songs,

and then we were going to pick a location

and record the album of the songs in a concert.

I suppose kind of like they do these days on Unplugged,

except it wasn't to be unplugged, it was to do a live album.

I'll have to rely on you.

OK, let's change the format a little.

Let's run through I've Got A Feeling.

Twickenham Studio was very cold and not a very nice atmosphere,

80 we decided to abandon that

and go to Savile Row into the recording studio.

I think it shows on the record

that when we were excited, the track's exciting, you know.

It doesn't matter what we're going through as individuals,

you know, on the bulishit level, when it gets to the music,

you know, when you can see that it's really cool,

we've all put in a thousand percent.

One After 909 was our childhood coming back to us.

It was sort of raw energy from our youth,

and I think it reminded us of those teenage years.

And so it surfaced, as did Maggie May

and a few things like that during the Let / Be sessions.

We were just dredging up anything.

They were quite good sessions.

Once we got into Apple, I remember sitting around quite enjoying the music,

it was interesting music to play, then we ended up on the roof.

Thanks, Mo.

I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves

and I hope we passed the audition.

We'd made Let / Be,

we then mixed it once with Glyn Johns

who'd done a very straight-forward mix, very plain, but I loved it.

Allen Klein was around by this time and he said, "I don't think it's good enough.”

He pulled in Phil Spector to try and sort of help

and "reproduce” it as it said on the record.

- Do you wanna do it once more then? - Yes, yes. At least once more.

We'll never get a chance to do it again.

I think before the Abbey Road sessions,

it was, like, we should put down the boxing gloves

and try and just get it together and really make a very special album.

And I was quite surprised when Paul rang me up and said,

"We're going to make another record. Would you like to produce it'?"

My immediate answer was, "Only if you let me produce it the way we used to."

He said, "We do want to do that.” I said, "John included?"

And he said, "Yes, honestly."

- Five. - Yes.

One, two... A one, two, three, four.

You tended to think, if there's gonna be a single, it'll be John or me,

or John and me that would write it.

And then suddenly, George just came up with this song, Something.

Stop it, you disgusting, middle-aged squares!

The last section of Abbey Road, you know, I still think is,

for me, one of the finest pieces we put together.

We had lots and lots of bits of things.

John had a bit of a song called Polythene Pam.

- Oh, sorry, I fucked it! - I'm glad you did.

Cos I had earlier but I wasn't gonna tell.

A one, two, three, four.

And we hit upon the idea of meddling in them all,

which gave the second side of Abbey Road

a kind of, sort of operatic kind of structure.

Which was quite nice, because it got rid of all these songs in a good way.

We didn't know, or I didn't know at the time,

that it was the last Beatle record that we would make,

but it kind of felt a bit like we were reaching the end of the line.

I think it was, in a way, the feeling that it might be our last,

80 let's just show them what we can do.

Let's show each other what we can do and let's have a good time doing it.

It was a very, very happy album.

Everybody worked frightfully well and that's why I'm very fond of it.

Keep that one. Mark it "fab"!