Episode 32 – Beatles ’69 pt5

With the arduous Get Back sessions behind them, and with no interest in ever revisiting the recordings, The Beatles faced an uncertain future. Against the protests of Paul McCartney, John, George and Ringo appoint businessman Allan Klein to manage the affairs of the fledgling Apple Corps, driving a further wedge into the group’s dynamic. Producer George Martin was convinced that the band was over, while friends and business partners wondered where to go from here. The answer came in the same form it had after the similarly difficult double album sessions months before: each Beatle branched out in seperate directions. George, bursting with songs and ideas, lent his talents to a band which had also found itself saying “Goodbye”, the “late, great” Cream, before being busted for drug possession by the same cop that had arrested John and Yoko the year prior. Ringo began filming a new feature alongside superstar Peter Sellers called The Magic Christian, the latest in a string of successful solo movie roles for the Beatle. Paul McCartney, who had recently overseen the massively successful Mary Hopkin LP release “Postcard”, married New York photographer Linda Eastman and became the last of his bandmates to tie the knot. John and Yoko were also married that spring and began a series of avant garde “happenings” to promote world peace, a notion which many close to the Beatle may have rolled their collective eyes at considering his recent behavior. And then, against all odds, The Beatles re-enter the studio to work on a new album...