Competence and the Beatles Last ConcertRecently by James Altucher: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre People
On January 30, 1969 the Beatles hated each other, and they were sick of working on their album, “Let It Be” inside of their cramped studios. On a whim, they took all their equipment and moved it five floors up to the roof, in the middle of winter. Then they performed for about a half hour. They had last performed lived over two years earlier. It was their last “concert” together ever. They broke up shortly afterwards and never performed together again. I say it was a “concert” because people in the blocks around them quickly began to realize what was happening. People couldn’t believe it. You see office workers climbing out of windows and down ladders to get a better view. Women running up and down the street to try and see better. An older man with a pipe climbing up a fire escape to stand on a rooftop and just watch. After about ten minutes the streets were crowded with people on the street staring up on the roof of the building where the music was coming from. People on the ground couldn’t see the band but they knew it was them. The effect of the Beatles singing live shut down London for a half hour.
About halfway through, so-called “reality” started to hit some of the passersby. One guy said, “it’s’ a bit of an imposition to absolutely disrupt all of the business in this area.” We’ll never know the name of that guy. We’ll never know what he was working on in January of 1969 that was so important. Or what any of the “business” in that area was that winter afternoon. But 43 years later we still watch the video. We still listen to the songs. A couple of things I find interesting about this video:
A) They hated each other. At this point the Beatles were basically over. The album was originally called “Get Back” after one of the songs in it. But they couldn’t “get back” together and ultimately it was called “Let It Be”. It was their last released album. You can blame it on anything: Yoko, Linda, creative conflicts, Phil Spector, Brian Epstein’s death, and on and on. But they hated each other despite the mega-success they created together. B) You can see on their faces as they get to the roof: They were never going to perform again. Ringo looks sad. George Harrison looks particularly upset. In fact, a few weeks earlier he and John Lennon had gotten into a fist fight and Harrison had run out and said he was “quitting”. “See you in the clubs,” he said as he left. The band debated replacing him with Eric Clapton but Harrison came back. The Beatles wouldn’t be the Beatles without the four of them, McCartney had the wherewithal to say. C) Harrison hated the fact that Lennon was getting more and more detached from the band and doing his own thing. Lennon hated Harrison’s and McCartney’s music writing. (Lennon, after the album came out, said of “The Long and Winding Road” and producer Phil Spector’s treatment of it: “He was given the shittiest load of badly-recorded shit with a lousy feeling to it ever, and he made something of it.”) In other words, they hated each other. And they didn’t hold back. They just simply did not want to work with each other anymore despite the years of creative and financial success. George Harrison joined The Beatles when he was 14 years old. They all had grown up together. September 21, 2012 Copyright © 2012 The Altucher Confidential
|
