Act One Scene One: Roll 4-A

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Tape Roll	CD Track	Time	Title	Description
4A	16	00:51	I've Got A Feeling (002) Rehearsals	A bit of discussion as they twiddle about on their instruments. John is speaking about his “Everybody Had A Hard Year” part of the song at the end. Then Paul turns his attention back to the guitar break that he wants George to play. George rehearses the descending line several times at high volume. While he plays Paul and John converse on matters musical.
4A	17	01:34	I've Got A Feeling (003) Rehearsals	Already Paul is beginning to micro manage George’s playing by now obsessively focusing on the guitar break that follows the chorus. This sets up a familiar pattern that plagues Let It Be: the harder Paul pushes on George, the more George slyly exhibits passive resistance by never quite playing what Paul wants for this break until: • January 28th when he finally eases into playing it as envisioned by Paul (especially after Paul leaves the room to attend a meeting, which is very funny) • Again on the Rooftop performance of January 30th where George makes up for his having held back by delivering two blisteringly perfect performances. Resisting Paul’s irresistible force (ego) is a dirty job but somebody has to do it and George appears to be the perfect immovable object. Although he is the youngest Beatle, George had a reputation from the beginning as a rebel. By 1969, the group psychology of the Beatles was such that Paul represented the “the established order” that George was only too willing to rebel against. In the Anthology book George comments that from Sgt. Pepper on, Paul started to dictate all the guitar parts for his own songs. In contrast, John who was much more open to letting everyone freely experiment in his songs, and see what they come up with. As a musician, George found John's approach to his own composiitons songs was much more satisfying than Paul's approach. George further states that his understanding of Let It Be was that the Beatles would return to an earlier live mode of recording. He took this new approach to mean that they would also return to jointly playing as a band to feel out the new numbers together. However, he soon found that Paul still wanted to micro dictate every facet of his own songs, leaving George to feel like little more than a hired session man. This of course is just George’s perspective. It must be noted that John actively participates in shaping what is essentially a Paul composition, so perhaps it is more of a case Paul treating John differently than he treats George.
4A	18	03:01	I've Got a Feeling (004) Discussion and Rehearsal	John: “So now I think the next move is for George to get on lead”. George (a bit defensive sounding): “Get on what?” John: “Get on lead” Paul: “Yeah” The above illustrates that it may have appeared to George to be a tag team gang up on him at moments such as this. A discussion follows where Paul tells John that he has been doing those breaks, especially the one where he wants George to play something very specific. John agrees saying that he has only been playing the break just to get the timing. Paul then switches over to an acoustic guitar and demonstrates what he wants by playing the middle section and the break singing along in a falsetto. The band immediately plays the break. Then they try the middle section and break several times in succession. George is playing the break as a series of recognizable descending steps that we will learn is not what Paul wants. Then they continue forward until George questions a specific three chord bit and they rehears that bit several times. Paul suggests it should be played like Peter Townsend of The Who after George has played it in a drop dead spot on impersonation of Peter’s style.
4A	19	01:11	Instrumental based on a theme from I've Got a Feeling (001)	A continuation of the previous track. The band plays a beautiful little improvizational instrumental variation of the song. It quickly peters out into dribs and drabs playing and ends.
4A	20	02:58	I've Got a Feeling (005) Discussion and Rehearsal	A proper count in by Paul starts this take. George is now “getting on lead” as John suggested he do playing around in the song in a delicious manner. However he is still playing the break as a series of recognizable descending steps. He sounds like he freezes up on that break. Paul's cry of “Take it Johnny yeah boy” introduces us to a full recitation of John’s Everybody Had A Hard Year song that has obviously already been tagged onto Paul’s composition. All and all a great version of the song considering this is the first new song of the new project to be properly worked on by the entire band. The song concludes with a super cheesy Paul cliché ending.
4A	21	00:22	Discussion (002): Can you play back on that little tape?	As the band prepares to take a break, Paul asks Glyn “Can you play back on that little tape?” After Paul receives verification that Glyn has been taping their ongoing rehearsal he asks if he can listen to some of it. The tape’s he is of course referring to are the very same A cam (and later B cam) Nagra mono tapes that make up Get Back to Let It Be…Dissected. One of the problems the Beatles had with this new approach is that at this point they did not have the ability to play back these tapes and sometimes they did not recognize when a musical idea was working, or not working. This becomes painfully evident on day three when they work on Don’t Let Me Down.
4A	22	01:46	Discussion (003): Sound, Acoustics, Recording, The Show	Beatles producer George Martin arrives on the set. As the Beatles minus Paul rehearse an unidentified number, George Martin, Paul, Glyn and Michael discuss the challenges related to the Twickenham soundstage and acoustics, recording, and the show venue. Paul fatalistically sums things up by saying “we’ll move out of here when we are ready. Or maybe we won’t”.