Lennon on Yoko: ‘I’m not going to lie, I’d sacrifice you all for her’
It wasn’t all times of trouble that led to the Beatles’ demise, a six-hour documentary reveals, but it was ‘a grotesque atmosphere to try and make music’.
When Ethan Russell arrived at Twickenham Film Studios in January 1969 to photograph the Beatles as they wrote, rehearsed and recorded a new album, he could not have been more thrilled. But it was not a happy time for the most famous band in the world who were on the verge of breaking up.
“I was really happy, but you could feel the tension,” Russell, 75, tells Review from San Francisco. “It seemed to me that it was a pretty strange place. Why would the biggest group in the world be asked to show up at 9am in the morning on a freezing sound stage to try and make music?”
The Beatles – Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr – were at the West London studios to be filmed and photographed for a documentary and album of the same name: Let It Be (originally titled Get Back). By the time both were released in May 1970, The Beatles were no more.
“They couldn’t stand it,” Russell recalls. “It was a grotesque atmosphere to try and make music – it was all about the documentary and not about the music.” Weeks later, the Beatles moved to Apple Studios at 3 Savile Row in central London to finish the recording and performed an impromptu rooftop concert.
The original 80-minute documentary directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg showcased the simmering strains and boiling animosities between the Fab Four.
Director Peter Jackson has made a new six-hour documentary series, The Beatles: Get Back, using the original footage and audio recordings to be streamed on Disney+ in November.
While there were tensions, the Beatles still produced some of their best work in these sessions: Get Back, Don’t Let Me Down, Let It Be and The Long and Winding Road. They were still collaborative and innovative and, as always, having fun.
Russell borrowed money from his father to buy a camera and flew to London to explore the British music scene. His friend, Jonathan Cott, needed a photographer for an interview he was doing for Rolling Stone magazine. It was Mick Jagger. Not a bad first assignment for Russell. He was then asked to photograph Lennon and they became friends.
“The relationship with John was very accidental,” Russell explains. “I basically had one camera and kind of knew how to use it but had never taken a photography course. But we got on well and they (John and Yoko Ono) loved the pictures.
“I wasn’t working for anybody. I didn’t have an art director or an editor or anybody telling me what to do, so I just took pictures the way I saw them. John really took a liking to me and that’s what ultimately led me to shooting Get Back.”
A new book, The Beatles: Get Back, showcases photographs taken by Russell and Linda McCartney alongside the Beatles’ own words transcribed from Let It Be sessions. It is the first official book by the Beatles since The Beatles Anthology (2000) and is the companion book to Jackson’s documentary.
At Twickenham, January 2-16, Lennon and Ono were inseparable which created friction with McCartney, Harrison and Starr.
Russell remembers McCartney being clear about what he wanted the band to do. Starr was chilled and usually seated behind the drum set. Harrison was impatient and at one point, impetuously left the band:
Harrison: I think I’ll be … I’m leaving …
Lennon: What?
Harrison: … the band now.
Lennon: When?
Harrison: Now.
And later:
McCartney: It really doesn’t matter what’s going wrong as long as the four of us notice it.
Harrison: I’ve noticed it alright!
McCartney: No, but, and … you know … instead of just noticing it, determined to put it right … That’s what I’m onto.
Harrison: I think we should have a divorce.
McCartney: Well, I said that at the last meeting. But it’s getting near it, you know.
Lennon: Who’d have the children?
And then, with Harrison gone and amid ongoing friction with Ono, Lennon said to McCartney: “I’m not going to lie, you know, I would sacrifice you all for her.”
At Apple Studios, January 21-31, the Beatles were joined by Billy Preston who played electric piano and organ. Harrison returned. Russell said Preston, who earned a co-performer credit on the Get Back single, added a “musical energy” which lifted the mood and helped the band complete the album.
The Beatles were planning a live show as part of the film. On January 30, they decided to play on the roof of the Apple headquarters at lunchtime. They performed just five songs, several of them two or three times, for 42 minutes. It was the last time the Beatles performed in public. But here’s the thing: hardly anybody saw it; they only heard it. When it was over, Lennon said: “I hope we’ve passed the audition.”
“The rooftop came up at the last minute,” recalls Russell.
“It was the only thing they could agree to do, and they were still arguing about whether or not they were going to do it while they were waiting to go on the roof.
“I was so busy. I was one guy with two cameras trying to cover that whole thing. If I had backed up any further, I would fall four floors down and could have died.”
McCartney’s new book, The Lyrics, provides a fascinating perspective on this period. The lyrics “times of trouble” and deciding to just “let it be” references the disrupted band dynamics. The song Get Back was a “wistful” notion that The Beatles should just “get back to where we once belonged” and be “a damn good little band again,” McCartney writes.
The Beatles would go on to record the Abbey Road album which was released first, in September 1969, which made Let It Be their final studio album. That same month, Lennon said he was leaving the band during a meeting about future plans in the Apple boardroom. “Well, I’m not doing it,” he said. “I’m leaving. Bye.”
The end of the Beatles was confirmed by McCartney in April 1970.
Russell’s photos became the covers for Let It Be and the compilation album Hey Jude (1970). He later toured with the Rolling Stones, photographed Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, and shot album covers for the Stones, the Who, James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt.
By the late 1970s, he became disillusioned as music became “the entertainment business” and focused on filmmaking.
On August 22, 1969, Russell photographed the Beatles for the last time at Lennon’s home, Tittenhurst Park in Berkshire. The band was miserable all day. He shot the last photo of the Beatles together.
“They were not happy,” remembers Russell. “It was a fair call, reading the energy, that this was not going to last a lot longer. It was not my job to try and make something happen; that was not the type of photographer I was. So, what you got was real. I love the happy stuff as much as any other Beatles fan, but this is what it was. I think there is real value in seeing that.”
The Beatles: Get Backis published by Callaway Arts & Entertainment, distributed by Thames & Hudson. Paul McCartney’s The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, published by Penguin Random House.