Get Back Rarities
Happy New Year!
January!
For some, the beginning of the year triggers the annual re-watch of Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary series, one day at a time! Added bonus this year. Part 4 of The Beatles Anthology has been out for several weeks now, so there’s more for us to watch and listen to, though not really anything to add to this particular post. So let’s talk about some of the lesser known songs from the Get Back recordings in January 1969.
In case you don’t know, it is important to understand that these sessions were not initially intended to be recordings for a new album (which is ultimately what happened with the release of Let It Be), but were instead intended to be rehearsals that would lead to a live TV performance. The fact that the whole thing was filmed was intended to help create a documentary to go along with the performance, hence the eventual release of the Let It Be film and down the line, Peter Jackson’s three-part Get Back series.
“Tomorrow Never Comes”
Friday, the 3rd of January 1969 was the second day of the Get Back sessions. As happened frequently during these sessions, the boys spent a lot of time just jamming and messing around. They played several old covers that they used to do in the early days, some covers of recent songs, and most importantly, they revisited old songs of their own that they had written between the late 1950s and early 1960s. One of these was a song that Paul said their friend Pete Shotton had recently reminded him of. The lyrics talk about sitting alone and waiting for tomorrow to come.
As for the tune, as George said, it was very country. The performance is less than a minute long, and unlike some other songs recorded during the Get Back sessions, it was never released on any official album, including The Beatles Anthology. If you want to hear it, you’ll need to watch Get Back or find a bootleg.
A Couple of “Secret” Songs
“Too Bad About Sorrows”
“Too Bad About Sorrows” holds the distinction, according to Paul himself, of being the first song he and John ever wrote together. It likely would have been lost forever if not for the Get Back sessions, since no other recordings were ever made. A few songs seem to have been lost in just that manner. There are some titles known of songs that apparently existed at some point, but since there are no recordings, Paul may be the only person who could shed any light on them, and he hasn’t thus far. Those titles include “Calypso Rock,” “That’s My Woman,” “Looking Glass,” “Winston’s Walk,” “Keep Looking That Way,” “Years Roll Along,” and “Pinwheel Twist,” which was apparently sung by Pete Best! I would imagine there are likely others. As for the recording of “Too Bad About Sorrows,” John and Paul sing together, Paul on the higher harmony. As Mark Lewisohn describes it, you can hear the influence of both The Crickets and the Everly Brothers.1 The first two lines are:
Too bad about sorrows. Too bad about love. There will be no tomorrow for all of your life.
The Beatles played “Too Bad About Sorrows” twice during the Get Back sessions. And both times it’s just a fragment of what may have been a complete song, we may never know. If it were ever complete, it was never recorded as such, and it has never been on any official release in any form. As for the historical significance of the song, I’ll just quote from the amazing Early Beatles Songs website about the 1969 recording: “Messy this might be, but it’s priceless nonetheless – Lennon and McCartney running through their first ever composition!”2
“Just Fun”
The story is similar for “Just Fun.” It was either the second or something close to second song that John and Paul wrote together. In this case, experts such as Mark Lewisohn believe that this one was undoubtedly left unfinished. The story is that they didn’t like the lyrics so they moved on.3 Feel free to judge for yourself. It began:
They said our love was just fun. The day that our friendship begun. There’s no blue moon in history, there’s never been in history…
“Just Fun” was played just once during the Get Back sessions, but Paul clearly hasn’t forgotten about it. On the 2nd of June 2004, Macca played a show in Zurich, Switzerland at the Letzigrund Stadion. Though he didn’t play “Just Fun” during the concert, he actually did play it during soundcheck. This performance was recorded, possibly by someone in the audience. Word is from those who have heard the tape that there are two verses and an ending. The tape quality, however, is so poor that the words can’t really be made out. It is only barely possible to tell that the song being played is “Just Fun.”
Some Not Quite So Secret Songs
There were several songs that made their way onto The Beatles Anthology in 1995 that had never previously been released. All of them appear in some form on the Get Back recordings. These three made their way out into the open, but you still may not have heard them unless you really collect just about everything related to The Beatles.
The Beatles Anthology “Extra”
“Thinking of Linking”
As you may remember, The Beatles Anthology began as a television series in 1995. In 1996 the whole series was released on VHS tape. Remember those? Then, in 2003, it was released on DVD, and that’s where it becomes interesting for this essay. The DVD collection included an 81-minute extra disc that contained a segment of the “Threetles” playing five songs from early in their career. Four were covers, but the fifth was a little fragment originally written by Paul in late 1957 called “Thinking of Linking.” The song is, predictably, fairly Buddy Holly-esque. It contains just one verse and is therefore incomplete. Paul said about it, “Thinking of Linking was terrible! I thought it up in the pictures…pretty corny stuff.”4 George added that he and Paul were at the cinema together and that an ad for Link Furniture was shown, which asked “are you thinking of linking?”5 In any case, the release of the DVD extra gave us a previously unheard Beatles song, fragment though it is.
Let It Be – Naked (Fly on the Wall bonus disc)
In 2003, when Let It Be – Naked was released, it contained a 22-minute bonus disc called Fly on the Wall. Anybody remember that? If you haven’t listened to it, Fly on the Wall contains snippets of several songs along with dialogue from the Get Back sessions. There are pieces of at least six songs that were previously unreleased on any official Beatles album. But for this essay, I want to concentrate on two that were written early on, around 1958.
“Because I Know You Love Me So”
The only time this song is known to have been recorded was on the 3rd of January 1969. Apparently the boys had been trying to come up with a fast number for the scheduled live performance at the end of January, and their old song from 1958, “One After 909,” was in heavy consideration. Well, playing that one reminded John and Paul of other old songs that they hadn’t played in ten years, and one of those was “Because I Know You Love Me So.” John began playing it between two takes of “One After 909,” and the others joined in almost immediately. The song basically has just one verse/chorus combination, and they repeat it several times. It’s unclear if they just didn’t remember any other words or if the song was never actually completed in the first place. Adding some confusion to the mix is that the lyrics as they sing them are pretty contradictory. It starts off with the narrator saying, “I don’t feel blue because I know I’ve got you.” But then it suddenly changes to “I get the funny feeling you don’t treat me right.” Oh, well. In any case, the recording lasts two and a half minutes, about one and a half of which was included on the Fly on the Wall bonus disc.
“Fancy My Chances With You”
Okay, so to be sure, “Fancy My Chances With You” is a joke song. It’s about 30 seconds long and is basically dedicated to the idea of trying to pick up girls. In an odd way, it kind of reminds me of “Her Majesty.” It was recorded during the Get Back sessions, on the 24th of January 1969, and that recording found its way onto the Fly on the Wall bonus disc. Interestingly, it does seem that it was recorded once before that, in November of 1958. John’s art school friend Derek Hodkin had agreed to manage the trio (John, Paul, and George) that was calling itself Japage 3. And he owned a tape recorder. As Hodkin would remember in an interview with Mark Lewisohn, the recording session was “an hour of repartee, jokes, laughs, practice, songs, and quite a few ribald remarks about my girlfriend.”6 And the recording reportedly included “Fancy My Chances With You.” But don’t get too excited. The following Spring, Hodkin recorded some BBC Home Service music programs…over the Japage 3 recording…
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Next: “Summertime.” Looking forward to that!
- Adamson
Photo: Let It Be – Naked (Fly on the Wall Bonus Disc) liner notes
Quotes:
1) All These Years: Tune In (Special Extended Edition), by Mark Lewisohn (Little, Brown; London; 2013), p. 6
2) https://earlybeatlessongs.weebly.com/1957.html
3) Lewisohn, p. 6.
4) The Beatles’ Recording Session, Mark Lewisohn (Crown, London, 1988), p. 12
5) The Beatles Anthology, The Beatles (Chronicle, San Francisco, 2000), p. 97
6) All These Years, Lewisohn, p. 489
Thank you for putting this together!