The Twickenham and Apple Studio Recording Sessions
By the end of 1968, the Beatles' status as a group entity was in limbo. McCartney, who had unofficially assumed the mantle of leadership since Epstein's death, suggested a group project involving rehearsing, recording and performing the songs in a live concert. Though the recording sessions for the double album initially involved ensemble playing, the band was ill-prepared to settle comfortably back into this mode. Only eight days after rehearsals commenced, Harrison's frustration and resentment peaked and he informed his band mates that he was leaving. The combined patronising by McCartney and estrangement from Lennon had taken its toll. Thus, the band was on the verge of potential collapse and at an impasse. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine cited a recording that exists from the Twickenham sessions the day after Harrison's departure in which Lennon suggested having Eric Clapton take over lead guitar duties.
Ultimately, complicated negotiations brought Harrison back into the group's activities. The plan for a concert was abandoned and the recording sessions were resumed at Apple Studios in Savile Row. The band gave its last public performance on the rooftop of Apple's headquarters on 30 January 1969 as a substitute for an audience-based concert.
Read more about this topic: The Beatles' Break-up
Famous quotes containing the words apple, studio and/or recording:
“She was so overcome by the splendor of his achievement that she took him into the closet and selected a choice apple and delivered it to him, along with an improving lecture upon the added value and flavor a treat took to itself when it came without sin through virtuous effort. And while she closed with a Scriptural flourish, he “hooked” a doughnut.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Surely it is one of the requisites of a tasteful garb that the expression of effort to please shall be wanting in it; that the mysteries of the toilet shall not be suggested by it; that the steps to its completion shall be knocked away like the sculptor’s ladder from the statue, and the mental force expended upon it be swept away out of sight like the chips on the studio floor.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“Write while the heat is in you.... The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)