Come Together: How the Beatles reunited to make new music in the ‘90s Part 1
© 1995 PAUL MCCARTNEY. PHOTOGRAPHER: LINDA MCCARTNEY
Thirty years after the Beatles Anthology, it seems pre-ordained that Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr would reunite to create new music together. However, up until the very moment the trio entered the studio in 1994, it was not clear if they would make music at all or if their efforts would even see the light of day.
Here, we look back at how the Beatles two ‘90s ‘reunion’ songs, ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love,’ came to be, as McCartney, Harrison, and Starr said it at the time. In Part 1 of this three-part essay, we look at how the decision came about to make new music.
The quest for a Beatles reunion
Seemingly from the moment that Paul McCartney officially announced that the Beatles had disbanded in 1970, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr had been relentlessly asked when the group would get back together. Even after Lennon’s murder in 1980, the questions continued. It seemed that they always would.
“People will keep thinking about a Beatles reunion until we’re dead,” McCartney said in 1989. “And then they’ll probably hope for a reunion. They’ll offer us $2 million to reunite with Elvis.”[1]
While the members all downplayed the possibility of working together again, as I wrote previously, the Beatles Anthology documentary was 25 years in the making. For a significant portion of that time, there was discussion of creating new music to go along with the documentary.
“It was always one of Paul's things that if they were going to do [the documentary], it would be nice if they could somehow do new music, even if it was incidental music to go behind a piece of footage,” said Apple CEO Neil Aspinall.[2]
Even as far back as 1980, John Lennon discussed the possibility of music, or perhaps a performance, to conclude the documentary. On November 28th 1980, just ten days before his murder, Lennon spoke about the documentary in a deposition for the Beatles lawsuit against Beatlemania, an unauthorized Broadway musical based on the Beatles’ music.
"We all know how to end it," Lennon said of the documentary. "Beatles performing and singing to round off a film of the Beatles singing throughout their career, similar to the way 'Let It Be' ended.”[3]
A McCartney-Harrison songwriting partnership?
Lennon’s death ended the chances of Lennon and McCartney continuing their songwriting partnership. The next obvious possibility, if McCartney, Harrison, and Starr were to create new music, was for McCartney and Harrison to work together. The idea was discussed.
“George and I have talked once or twice about maybe just plonking a couple of acoustics together,” McCartney said in 1986.[4] He mentioned the idea on multiple other occasions over the years.
At least publicly, Harrison was ice cold to the idea. "It wouldn't be my priority to get together with Paul," Harrison said. "He's had 30 years of my life to write a tune with me. He's left it a bit late now."[5] Harrison was even more blunt about the possibility of a Beatles reunion.
“As far as I am concerned, there won't be a Beatles reunion as long as John Lennon remains dead,” Harrison said in 1989 after McCartney publicly stated that there might be a possibility of new music.[6]
Trying to get back homeward
Still, it would appear that the idea of McCartney and Harrison writing together was seriously considered. How close the group came to doing just that is unknown.
“We never did get around to that,” McCartney said of writing with Harrison. “It just never felt like a good idea.”[7]
Harrison confirmed the discussion – and his lack of interest. “There was talk about us doing stuff on our own, but I have no desire really to do a threesome,” Harrison said.[8]
As I wrote previously, the Beatles legal troubles stood in the way of both finishing the Anthology documentary and reuniting to make new music. But so did apprehension about recording without Lennon.
“Some days, we'd thought oh, shit, the three of us, let's go in,” Starr said. “And then, aw, I don't think so. Oh, why not? Oh, I don't think so.”[9]
Roy Orbison’s passing plays a role
The idea for using John Lennon’s home demos to make new Beatles music came from an unlikely inspiration: the death of Roy Orbison in 1988. After Harrison’s Traveling Wilburys compatriot passed, the group thought about a replacement. Among those they seriously considered was none other than the late Elvis Presley.
“[We] talked to his estate,” Harrison said. “They loved the idea of Elvis being in the Wilburys, so they gave us the rights to a song. The idea was to put Elvis onto a multitrack machine and take away the backing. We’d all sing this song and when it came to the chorus, we’d bring up the voice of ‘Aaron Wilbury.’”[10]
In the end, the surviving Wilburys decided against the idea. “At that point, I thought it seemed a bit too gimmicky,” Harrison said.[10]
However, the thought of using Elvis Presley’s voice on a Wilburys’ song spurred an even bigger idea.
“I was talking to Yoko, however, and telling her this idea, and she said, ‘I think I’ve got a tape of John,’” Harrison said. “And I said, ‘We’ll do that with John and make a new song.’ So later she dug around and brought this tape, and, really, that’s how it got done."[10]
Other inspirations
The idea of using Lennon’s voice on a new Beatles song surely had other inspirations as well. In 1989, Hank Williams Jr. sung ‘There’s a Tear in My Beer’ with his late father. In 1991, Natalie Cole performed a duet with her late father, Nat King Cole, using his original 1951 vocal. McCartney, Harrison, and Starr would have surely been aware of both – and of the controversy generated.
There is another fascinating touch point. Jeff Lynne, who would ultimately produce the Beatles’ ‘90s reunion songs, had already used vocals to create a posthumous song. In 1992, at the request of Orbison’s widow, Lynne finished a song called ‘I Drove All Night’ using vocals Orbison recorded prior to his death. This experience would prove important for Lynne’s work with the Threetles, as the press dubbed McCartney, Harrison, and Starr.
“I had a lot of experience in making that kind of thing work, when the singer is not there to sing it again,” Lynne said. “I suppose that was a big learning experience, and it really helped me along for doing [‘Free As A Bird’]”[11]
Hitting the wall
The biggest driver for creating new Beatles music remained the documentary and the discussions that came out of it. New music would also surely juice interest in the documentary.
“It needed something new, instead of it just being like the documentary,” Starr said. “And so we all decided to be involved ourselves, so we are interviewed also to give our side of the story. And so the follow on for that was we were all interviewed separately, and then, of course, we decided we'd be interviewed together, and the follow on to that was, well, why don't we make some music for it?”[12]
However, once the three got there mentally, the group always hit a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. There was no John Lennon.
“Well, yes, it's real easy that Paul, George, and Ringo can go in the studio and make this music, but that's not the Beatles,” Starr said. “So we needed something that, you know, it would still be the Beatles.”[12]
This led to discussion of creating ‘incidental’ music for the documentary. It was a term McCartney and others frequently used.
“We took the easy route, which was to do some incidental music, because what else can we do?” Starr asked. “There were four Beatles and there are only three of us left.”[13]
Despite this, it’s clear the group still considered creating new music together as a threesome. The same obstacle always reemerged, though.
“We thought, well, let's do some songs. Let's go in and do some songs, and we always hit the wall,” Starr said.[9]
A “group decision”
Though McCartney, Harrison, and Starr were consistently squeamish about recording as a threesome, it would appear, at least as they tell it, that they originally intended to do exactly that.
Starr said in mid-October of 1993 that the trio had made plans to get together in the new year.[14] Harrison confirmed the same in a November ’93 interview. He also said that they would be making newly penned music.
“The three of us are doing some new songs to go at the end of the anthology,” Harrison said. “It's an experiment, we are going to try to write some new material together and do them. It might not work, we might not be able to write together any more – we'll just have to wait and see.”[15]
McCartney was always seen as the one who wanted to reactivate the band. However, he said that the decision to make new music was a mutual one. Additionally, it would appear that the original intent was that McCartney and Harrison would write together.
“It was a group decision,” McCartney said of creating new music. “We sort of said we should do something. George and I said we should write together. We’ve never written together, ever.”[16]
Looking for an “unpressured situation”
It appears that this was intended to be the instrumental music the group had previously discussed. However, McCartney, became concerned about the idea as the get- together became imminent.
“The three of us were thinking of doing a little instrumental for the film, just to get together,” McCartney said. “But as the thought of the three of us actually sitting down in a studio started to get nearer and nearer, I got cold feet about it. I thought, ‘Does the world need a three-quarter Beatle record?’”[17]
Just weeks before heading into the studio – well after the news about the group reuniting was out – McCartney was still talking as if he and Harrison would write together.
“I've never even tried writing with George before,” McCartney said in the February 10th issue of Rolling Stone. “I've written with Ringo, and obviously I've written with John, but never George, so that's exciting.”[18]
Press interest was, of course, intense. McCartney, however, tried to keep expectations low.
"We're looking for a completely unpressured situation to get together, because nobody wants to revive the Beatles," McCartney says. "The great thing about the Beatles is that it's a body of work now. That came, and it's gone. So we're all thinking of very quietly going into a studio somewhere. If we hate it the first day, then we'll just can it – nothing lost. But if we quite enjoy it, then we'll say, 'See you tomorrow.' It could be a laugh.”[16]
It's equally clear that the group discussed over a period of time various ways of including Lennon. The ideas went beyond using Lennon’s demos.
“There was a lot of talk about how we would bring John in at the beginning,” Starr said. “Maybe we could take a solo from something else, or at piano riff or a word…So we went through all that.”[9]
New Year brings resolution
The discussion seemed to shift when McCartney called Yoko Ono, Lennon’s widow, on New Year’s Day, 1994. The call was unexpected.
“I'd been to a New Year's party in Liverpool with my family and the feeling was so good and friendly that I decided to ring Yoko and Sean and wish them Happy New Year, and this idea came up,” McCartney said. “…What if John was on, the three of us and John, like a real new record?”[17]
McCartney offered a similar telling of the story elsewhere. “It was two years ago, New Year [1994], when we said, ‘We’ll go in and we’ll do something.’…As we were getting closer and closer to the date, I just started to think, wow, three Beatles. Am I interested in a piece of music with just three of The Beatles? Is it as good as four Beatles? It was like, no, it isn’t.”[16]
McCartney continued, “I knew Yoko had some bits and pieces of tapes, because she’d been doing things with them on her own. So I happened to ring her up at New Year…We started to chat for a couple of weeks. We rang each other a lot, talked a lot, got quite friendly, feeling good. It suddenly just occurred that it would be really terrific to have John on this record.”[16]
“The Beatles’ idea”
Regardless of the actual details, the idea of using Lennon’s music or including Lennon in some fashion had clearly been brewing for some time. While not quoted directly, McCartney appears to have told an interviewer that he first approached Ono about the idea in 1989. Her response: “Maybe.”[7]
Harrison had also talked with Ono about the idea after Orbison’s death, as previously mentioned. Ono confirmed that it was Harrison who first approached her, saying that Neil Aspinall did as well.[19]
McCartney had a diplomatic answer as to whose idea it was to use Lennon’s demos. “I think it was…our idea. The Beatles’ idea,” McCartney said.[16]
The logic of using Lennon’s home demos was unimpeachable. This would suddenly transform a McCartney, Harrison, and Starr effort into a Beatles one.
"That solved all of the problems,” McCartney said.[20]
“It saved us”
McCartney approached the others. “I rang the other guys and said, 'Look, if we could get hold of a cassette of something of John's, would we be up for that?'” McCartney asked. “And it seemed we were."[20]
Harrison also noted how using Lennon’s vocals broke through the wall that they had been up against.
“We always had a, you know, a thing between the three of us, or the four of us at that time, that if any one of us wasn't in it, we weren't going to get Roger Waters and go out as the Beatles. Or Dave Gilmore,” Harrison said. “So therefore, the only other person who could be in it was John.”[21]
For Starr, it was an evolution. It had started with the Anthology documentary and continued to discussing creating incidental music and then to something more.
“Then came this idea of Yoko finding tapes of John,” Starr said. “It was just a natural thing which gradually evolved. It actually took about three years for all this to happen."[13]
Starr was also blunt about the importance of using Lennon’s demos.
“It saved us,” Starr said. “Because now it's the Beatles Anthology, and it's the four of us.”[9]
Ono’s uncertainty
Whenever the initial discussion took place and whoever it was with, Ono initially wasn’t sure about the idea of handing over some of Lennon’s home demos. She noted that it was a “a very, very big decision.”[19] Additionally, while Lennon was alive, he was apparently disinterested in a Beatles reunion.
“I remember how John always said there could be no reunion of the Beatles because, if they got together again, the world would be so disappointed to see four rusty old men, as he put it,” Ono said.[19]
Moreover, the songs the Threetles would use were home demos. They were, by definition, intended to be private. Now they would be in someone else’s hands.
“It was like a kind of physical hurt to me to think of someone taking them and messing with them,” Ono said.[19]
Still, Ono understood the significance. “I just felt that the reunion itself would give some hope," she said. “I was in a very strange position where I could help bring that about.”[22]
It was also clear at this point that McCartney, Harrison, and Starr were interested. For Ono, that would have been difficult to object to.
“I felt that for me to stand in the way of that reunion would be wrong,” Ono said.[19]
Of course, Ono had long been errantly accused of breaking up the band. Now, there was tremendous irony in her playing a critical role in reactivating the group.
“I did not break up the Beatles,” Ono said. “But I was there at the time, you know? Now I'm in a position where I could bring them back together, and I would not want to hinder that. It was kind of a situation given to me by fate.”[23]
REFERENCES
[1] Henke, James. Can Paul McCartney Get Back? Rolling Stone. June 15, 1989. Issue #554.p.42.
[2] Beatles ’95: A diary of recent news and events. The Beatles Book. No. 235, November 1995. p37.
[3] $10 Million To Beatles. Washington Post, June 4, 1986.
[4] Paul McCartney: The Rolling Stone Interview. Rolling Stone. September 11, 1986.
[5] Graff, Gary. The Wilbury’s: Almost Kin. Detroit Free Press. October 28, 1990. p.7P.
[6] Morning report. Los Angeles Times. November 29, 1989. p.F4.
[7] The Beatles, Their Only Interview! Q. Issue 111, December 1995.
[8] George Harrison interview by Frank Pangallo. Today Tonight Australian TV, November 15, 1995.
[9] Q&A with Ringo with Ringo. Beatlefan. Vol. 16, No. 5. July-August, 1995.
[10] Marsh, Dave. On the Record - George recalls the inspiration for the Beatles ‘reunion.’ TV Guide, November 18-24, 1995.
[11] Rense, Rip. Recording with the Fab Three! Producer Jeff Lynne Talks About Sessions for 'Free As a Bird.' Beatlefan, November-Dececember 1995.
[12] Ringo Starr interview. Fresh Air by Terri Gross. NPR. June 14, 1995.
[13] Sharp, Ken. Ringo Talks! The Beatles Book. No. 231 July 1995. p.33.
[14] Beatlenews Roundup. Beatlefan. Issue #86. Vol. 15, No. 2. 1994. p4.
[15] George just loves it here. Sunday Mail (Adelaide). November 7, 1993. p.E.
[16] Kozinn, Allan. McCartney on the 'Anthology' - The Inside Story on the Film, Album and Reunion. Beatlefan. Issue #97. Vol. 17, No. 1. November-December, 1995.
[17] Snow, Mat. Paul McCartney. Mojo. November 1995.
[18] Forward Into the Past. Rolling Stone. February 10, 1994.
[19] Norman, Philip. Why John was wrong to block a Beatles reunion. Daily Mail. November 13, 1995.
[20] Bradshaw, Nick. How a sad song made it better. Sunday Express. October 29, 1995. p122-123.
[21] Anthology Electronic Press Kit. November 7, 1995.
[22] Yoko Ono stays in background but gives blessing to Beatles reunion. The Atlanta Journal. November 19, 1995. pL9.
[23] Giles, Jeff. Come Together. Newsweek. October 22, 1995.