January 31, 1987

It was 19 years ago today that MICK TAYLOR played a gig at "My Father's Place" in Roslyn, New York, where he did this 16-minute version of "Can't You Hear Me Knocking":

CAN'T YOU HEAR ME KNOCKING (MICK TAYLOR 1/31/87)

January 31, 1969

We finally reach the end of the APPLE sessions. On January 31, THE BEATLES wrapped filming on the "Get Back/Let It Be" project. Back in the basement, they set up for what would become known as "The Apple Studio Performance", recording three MCCARTNEY songs and seeming to have quite a bit of fun in-between takes.

Sourced from Purple Chick's "A/B Road - January 31, 1969", here are the first 18 tracks from Disc 1, the filming (and recording) of "Two Of Us". This is one of my all-time favorite boots.

01 roll announcement
02 Two Of Us
03 unknown
04 Hey Good Lookin'
05 Medley
06 Two Of Us
07 Two Of Us
08 Two Of Us
09 Two Of Us
10 Two Of Us
11 Step Inside Love
12 Friendship
13 Tales Of Frankie Rabbit
14 Two Of Us
15 'Deed I Do
16 Two Of Us
17 I Got Stung
18 Step Inside Love

January 30, 1969

THE COMPLETE ROOFTOP CONCERT


January 30, 1969 - the first live performance by THE BEATLES since their August 29, 1966 show at Candlestick Park in San Francisco would also be their last. This day's events have been well-documented in various places, so I'll just let the audio speak for itself. (With a few photos, of course!)

Featured here is the complete rooftop concert as sourced from Purple Chick's "A/B Road". Some of the tracks are very short, "roll announcements" and between-song snippets, but this is all of the available audio from that day's filming.

Tracks 1 through 26 gives us the "complete" performance, but tracks 27 through 33 are from a different feed towards the end, and while some of the performance audio from 20 through 26 is duplicated, there are also some unique bits, particularly some control-room dialogue and some extra post-"hope-we've-passed-the-audition" banter.




01 roll announcement
02 slate announcement
03 dialogue
04 roll announcement
05 slate announcement
06 Get Back
07 Get Back
08 dialogue
09 I Want You (she's so heavy)
10 dialogue












11 take announcement
12 Don't Let Me Down
13 Get Back
14 Don't Let Me Down
15 I've Got A Feeling
16 One After 909
17 One After 909
18 Dig A Pony

19 Dig A Pony
20 God Save The Queen
21 warmup
22 I've Got A Feeling
23 A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody
24 Get Back
25 Don't Let Me Down
26 Get Back






27 roll announcement
28 P God Save The Queen
29 P I've Got A Feeling
30 A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody
31 P Get Back
32 Don't Let Me Down
33 Get Back

January 29, 1969

Wednesday the 29th, the day before the legendary rooftop performance. THE BEATLES played quite a few different songs, including a bunch of oldies, and ran through the five songs that they would end up playing on the roof.

We start with a few minutes of discussion, then the rehearsal of what would be the rooftop songs:
DIALOGUE
DIG A PONY
I'VE GOT A FEELING
DON'T LET ME DOWN
GET BACK
ONE AFTER 909

Pussy Galore On Main St.

THE BY-PASS CONTROL has posted PUSSY GALORE's complete version of "Exile On Main St". Recorded in two days on 4-track cassette and released on cassette in 1986, its not for everyone, but you might want to give it a listen. Here's the page:

EXILE ON MAIN ST. (PUSSY GALORE)

Magazine of the Week #4

Our magazine this week is the March-April 1989 issue of SMART, which was a magazine of, as it says on the spine, "The Arts - Media - Politics - Fashion". This was the second issue of SMART.

Its got an article on KEITH by STANLEY BOOTH, author of "The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones". Its a decent enough article, with a couple of nice pictures. Also in this issue, "The Education of Steve Martin" and some fun "street art" photos from DAVID FINN.

January 28, 1969

Lots of stuff going on again on the 28th, including GEORGE pushing "Old Brown Shoe", "Something", and "All Things Must Pass". (GEORGE is stuck for a lyric in the first verse of "Something", and JOHN suggests "attracts me like a cauliflower".)

The track we have here is a slower blues jam, again with BILLY PRESTON's piano featured prominently, and with PAUL doing some more vocal improvisations and even throwing in a couple of verses of "Long And Winding Road":

THE RIVER RHINE (1/28/69)

The First Annual T.A.M.I. Show

"Brought to you thru the miracle of Electronovision"

BEDAZZLED has the trailer for "The First Annual T.A.M.I. Show", featuring, of course, THE ROLLING STONES, CHUCK BERRY, THE BEACH BOYS, and lots more.

Here's the page, you can stream it or download a mov:

BEDAZZLED: TAMI TRAILER

January 27, 1969

As the long cold lonely winter drags on, we see that the Moptops really are working hard to complete this project. A lot of time was spent recording "Get Back", and at one point MCCARTNEY sang a mock-German version. Later on BILLY PRESTON leads them into a bluesy jam with MCCARTNEY improvising some lyrics ("You Won't Get Me That Way"). This turned into JIMMY MCCRACKLIN's "The Walk". (The end of "The Walk" was mixed by GLYN JOHNS for the aborted "Get Back" LP, but here we have the full version).

GET BACK (GERMAN)

"YOU WON'T GET ME THAT WAY"/THE WALK

January 26, 1969

There's more than six hours of recordings available from this date. There's a lot of "Let It Be" and "Long and Winding Road". GEORGE runs through "Isn't It A Pity" and "Let It Down", and he works on "Octopus' Garden" with RINGO, as seen briefly in the film. Also seen in the film (though edited) is the rock'n roll oldies medley, and "Dig It". Only a short piece of "Dig It" is used on the LP, with a much longer edit used in the movie, but the long version as presented here is just under twelve minutes. And in case you're wondering, that's LINDA's daughter HEATHER helping with the vocals, not YOKO...........

DIG IT (1/26/69)

(Sorry about the file size, this one's almost 11 MB. I usually try to keep them smaller, but its a long track this time!)

B2B Technical Rider

"THE SMOKING GUN" has posted the STONES' "technical rider" from the "Bridges To Babylon" tour. Here's what Smoking Gun has to say about it:

"The Rolling Stones were once the world's greatest rock band--back when Keith was on smack and crawled around dressing room floors looking for his misplaced works. Now the band travels with its own comfy backstage furniture and requires the promoter to install a snooker table--no, not a pool table, a snooker table--backstage. But the most troubling requirement involves video games, including one that must be--egad!--"suitable for families and small children." Must be for one of Mick's 22 kids. (6 pages)"

And here's the whole thing:

B2B RIDER (SMOKING GUN)

January 25, 1969

Working through the weekend to try to finish up the "Get Back/Let It Be" project before RINGO is due to start shooting "Magic Christian", THE BEATLES show up at APPLE on Saturday, January 25th. This was the day that LENNON brought his little Hawaiian guitar thingy in to the studio and they recorded HARRISON's "For You Blue".

Earlier in the day, they seemed to be having a good time as Lennon led them through a version of one of MCCARTNEY's first (and unrecorded) songs, "I Lost My Little Girl":

I LOST MY LITTLE GIRL (1/25/69)

Note: My copy of DOUG SULPY's "Get Back" book places this recording on the 24th, but PURPLE CHICK's "A/B Road" set has it on the 25th. Sulpy's book was incomplete and the Chick set is much more recent, so I'm going with the 25th.

Photo find...

From BootlegZone.

The Stones vs The Beatles

Back in the early days, there were several songs that were being performed by both THE BEATLES and THE STONES. For instance, CHUCK BERRY'S "Memphis Tennessee". Here we'll compare The Beatles' version from their Decca audition, January 1, 1962 with The Stones from a "Saturday Club" broadcast on October 5, 1963. The arrangements are the same, and both tracks run 2 minutes 22 seconds.

I think the Stones win this one, if for no other reason than KEITH's great guitar playing. (Sorry George!) And CHARLIE sounds much livelier than PETE BEST. To be fair, The Beatles' version came much earlier, and The Stones had the benefit of the increased excitement and intensity that arrived with (British) Beatlemania, as well as what was probably a much better recording setup (for a signed act on a BBC broadcast) than the then-unknown Beatles would have had for an audition.













MEMPHIS TENNESSEE (BEATLES)

MEMPHIS TENNESSEE (ROLLING STONES)

January 24, 1969

Today's BEATLES session at APPLE was mostly work on "Get Back", "Two Of Us", and a little of "Teddy Boy", but at one point MCCARTNEY did a quick run-through of another of his new songs, possibly called "There You Are Eddie". We hear LENNON joke that Macca's got another song about a dog, and a couple more Beatle pet names get tossed in.

THERE YOU ARE EDDIE (1/24/69)

Wyman at the movies

"A young girl, with an amazing ability to communicate with insects, is transferred to an exclusive Swiss boarding school....."


You never know where BILL WYMAN is going to turn up next.

Back in the '80s, he and TERRY TAYLOR contributed a piece of music called "Valley" to legendary director DARIO ARGENTO's film "Phenomena" (also known as "Creepers"):

VALLEY (BILL WYMAN and TERRY TAYLOR)

January 23, 1969

Back again in the APPLE basement studio, THE BEATLES take a break from working on "Get Back" to clown their way through EDDIE COCHRAN's "Twenty Flight Rock". Later in the day, Lennon briefly butchers "Help" and then "Please Please Me".

TWENTY FLIGHT ROCK (1/23/69)

HELP (1/23/69)

PLEASE PLEASE ME (1/23/69)

January 22, 1969

37 years ago today.

THE BEATLES, with BILLY PRESTON, were back in the APPLE basement studio. While working on "I've Got A Feeling" they slipped into a bit of silliness based on one of the changes in the song. Further proof that the "Let It Be" sessions weren't quite as totally dismal as John and George would have had us believe.

Here are two pieces of that day's "Ive Got A Feeling" rehearsal:

IGAF (PART ONE)

IGAF (PART TWO)

Wilson Pickett and the Rolling Stones, part 2

I feel so silly; in Friday's WILSON PICKETT post I claimed not to have an outtake or live version of the STONES doing PICKETT's "If You Need Me". I had forgotten about the live BBC version.

I didn't know the date, so I checked BootlegZone - they list various versions from 1964, but the one from the Joe Loss Pop Show on July 17, 1964 matches the length of the track presented here. (By the way, their entry for the song shows the composers as "Domino/Bartholomew"....?)

And check out KEITH's great harmonies!

"And now, as Brian changes his guitar..."

IF YOU NEED ME (STONES BBC)

Stones X Take 1

It was 37 years ago today - January 21, 1969. THE BEATLES resumed filming and recording for their latest project, which would turn out to be the LET IT BE movie and LP, at their new recording studio in the Apple building, after GEORGE HARRISON's walk-out from the sessions at the Twickenham film studio the previous week.

Back in December 1968, also at Twickenham, the "Let It Be" director MICHAEL LINDSAY-HOGG had filmed the ROLLING STONES' "Rock'n Roll Circus", which also featured JOHN LENNON. Somehow Lindsay-Hogg had wrapped filming on "Circus" without having filmed an introduction for the Stones' set. So on January 21, he got Lennon to film a brief intro, which he used in "Circus", only without the audio. The audio eventually surfaced on the infamous Nagra rolls from the "Let It Be" sessions. And here it is:

STONES X TAKE 1