پیام‌های مخفی

Secret messages

Two songs from the album later became famous for the wrong reasons. In the mind of Californian Charles Manson, the songs ‘Piggies’ and ‘Helter Skelter’ were secret messages telling him to kill.

George Martin thought that there were too many different songs on the double album. He wanted it to be an excellent single album. But Paul has said, ‘It’s a fine little album.’ John also liked the simpler way of recording.

An Unhappy Film and Two Weddings

At the start of 1969, the band needed new plans. Paul was full of ideas for the band’s future. They decided to write an album and then play it on stage - all in front of cameras. This was the start of Let It Be.

It was a bad time. The band weren’t happy together, and all the cameras made everything worse. George even left the band for a short time after angry words with Paul. Things only got better when a guest musician, American Billy Preston, joined them.

The cameras filmed everything. The cameramen didn’t know it at the time, but in fact they were recording the end of the group. The film Let It Be is difficult to watch at times.

The idea of a big concert soon died. Looking for a way to end the film, the band decided to play a few songs on the Apple building’s roof. People in London looked up in surprise as the Beatles played ‘Get Back’ above them. For a short time, the old days were back! In Ringo’s words, when the music was good, they forgot all the problems. Finally, the police asked the band to stop. They never played live together again.

Producer George Martin didn’t want to touch the long Let It Be recordings. So American Phil Spector took the job. Finally, the Let It Be album came out after the end of the Beatles. Paul didn’t like Spector’s work on it. Both he and George Martin hated the strings on ‘The Long and Winding Road’.

In 1969, Paul married for the first time and John married for the second time. Even the two marriages showed the differences between the two men.

Paul married American photographer Linda Eastman on 12 March. They wanted a quiet wedding, but nothing could be Quiet for a Beatle. Hundreds of fans cried as Paul and his new wife drove away.

Weeks later, John and Yoko were married in Gibraltar. The story is told in the song ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’. Later, they invited reporters to a ‘bed-in’ at their hotel. They stayed in bed for seven days. They wanted people to think about the meaning of love. (At a later ‘bed-in’, they recorded the song ‘Give Peace a Chance’.) John and Yoko gave their opinions on a lot of subjects, like the Vietnam War. John sent his MBE back to the British government. He had more and more interests in his life, and the band wasn’t one of them. But the Beatles stayed together for one more record.

The Last Album

After the troubles on Let It Be, George Martin was surprised to receive a telephone call from Paul. The band wanted to make another album. Paul and Martin agreed to do one the ‘old’ way - in the studio. The album was named after the Abbey Road studio in London, and the Beatles worked on it there during July and August 1969.

John and Paul disagreed about some of their ideas for the album. Paul wanted to join all the songs together. John just liked to do different ‘three-minute records’. To keep both men happy, only the songs on the second half of the record are joined together.

Abbey Road was a happy record to work on for most of the time. But not always. When Paul took three days to record ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, George told him, ‘It’s only a song.’ STORY BEHIND THE SONG ■■

Abbey Road’s ‘Something’ was the band’s first single written by George Harrison. Many people think that it is his best song. Later, Frank Sinatra often sang it on stage. He described it as his favourite Lennon and McCartney song. Telling this story, Paul once joked, ‘Thanks, Frank.’ Nobody knew it at the time, but Abbey Road was the last album. But the band ended it well. The last song was called ‘The End’. John, Paul and George all played guitar on it. All four Beatles were playing together as a real band again. You can hear the fun in the music. Paul sang the last lines of the last album. They were about love.

Raul is dead!

After Abbey Road arrived in the shops in October 1969, a radio station in the US started a strange story about Paul. He was dead! The; signs’ were on the album’s cover. Paul wasn’t wearing shoes. In some countries, dead people are dressed in clothes but not shoes.

The story grew. The hand over Paul’s head on the cover of Sergeant Pepper was, fans decided, a sign of death. A line in ‘A Day in the Life’ was also about Paul’s death. More and more signs were found.

But if Paul was dead, who was the new person on the front of Abbey Road? The story became sillier. It was a man called William Campbell. Or it was Billy Shears (a singer’s name from the title song on Sergeant Pepper). This new person looked exactly like Paul, of course.

Finally, Life magazine found Paul on his farm in Scotland. The magazine proved it. Paul wasn’t dead. Paul described himself as ‘the last to know’ about his death.

Differences of Opinion

Even before Abbey Road, the Beatles’ company Apple was losing a lot of money. Something had to change. They needed someone to manage the business.

John wanted Allan Klein, the manager of the Rolling Stones, to be the group’s manager. George and Ringo agreed, but Paul didn’t. He wanted Lee Eastman - his wife’s father - to manage Apple’s business.

Paul was still full of ideas for the band and the company, but it was too late. In one meeting, John spoke about the end of the Beatles: ‘It feels good.’

In fact, Paul ended the band in 1970. A few weeks after his first album McCartney was in the shops, he told the world. He was leaving the Beatles ‘because of personal, business and musical differences’.

The band was finished, but the fights about business and money continued in court for years. It was a sad end for the greatest band in the world.