The Beatles 68 Up To 70

The Beatles 68 Up To 70

Apple, the Rooftop and Abbey Road. And in the end, these last years were a time of plentiful confusion a time to break down and a time to build up. The Beatles started their own company, Apple Corps with five creative divisions – records, films etc – and then went public with an offer that anyone with an artistic need could come to them and get help. Is there, even now, a machine to count such numbers?

The promise was that all sincere supplicants would be given encouragement, succour, a contract and maybe an envelope full of money. At the same time, The Beatles flew to foothills of the Himalayas to learn meditation. There, between sessions with the Maharishi, they wrote songs for what would become The ‘White’ Album. When recording started, the songs had come in such profusion that, famously, The White Album had thirty of them – enough for two high-class musicals. They sped from one track to another, content that the unity of the album would transcend the disparity in the style and content of the tracks.

It was always their strength that they wrote bewitching singles. New songs were written to suit themselves; sometimes written alone. This new work could virtually be recorded solo, spontaneously, simply. Following the White Album(and the magnificent Hey Jude) they made Let It Be and with the final regal glory of Abbey Road they left their grieving fans a legacy that will never be matched. In the inevitable breaking down of old liaisons, there was room for growth.

John met and married Yoko; Paul met and married Linda. George matured far beyond his years, settled into his spiritual space and expressed himself writing classic songs; Ringo was now writing his own numbers and was widely acknowledged as a supreme drummer and a very good actor. To everything there is a season. That the rift between The Beatles, evolved with much public angst was a pity but this is not a perfect world is it? Relationships anyway, were repaired long ago. And in the end, the equation between the love they took and the love they made was intact into infinity. They still represent the twentieth century’s greatest romance.