1970: The Beatles go live, off rooftop

“Don’t get this wrong: The Beatles were the first manufactured group. Not The Monkees. It was The Beatles.” (Davy Jones of the Monkees, 2006)

I am running this video because it makes me very suspicious. I see it and a few others on YouTube shorts, which I watch most evenings before bed to clear my mind of anything that might keep me awake.

The Beatles were a worldwide phenomenon during the late 1960s-early 1970s. They quit performing in public in August of 1966. After that, we are told, they retired to do studio work, and churned out some memorable albums including Sgt. Pepper, Rubber Soul, Revolver, and others. It has long amazed me how they suddenly got very good, in fact, highly skilled and professional in their songwriting and instrumentalism. I never doubted their vocal abilities

During their concert tours they pretty much played the same songs over and over, many of them covers. Rubber Soul was released in 1965, Revolver right at the time of their retirement, yet none of the songs on those albums were ever performed in public. Mike Williams, the Sage of Quay, is troubling to me in many ways, but in this video he pretty much destroys the idea that the Beatles wrote, laid down the instrument and vocal tracks for Rubber Soul in the short period of time they had after coming off the road in 1965. Keep in mind, he says, that they admitted they had written no new songs while on tour.

I think the promoters behind the Beatles today are new ones on the job, the old ones dead and gone now. I think they are doubling down in response to Williams. The video above, a short clip of the recording of For You Blue, a catchy George Harrison composition we are told. It is very suspicious.

• The album which contained the song, Let It Be, was released in April of 1970. That means that the song was written and recorded before then, over 56 years ago.
• There are as many as three cameras recording high-quality video. Pay close attention and you will see one dedicated to Harrison, one to Lennon/McCartney, and one catching McCartney from a different angle.
• In 1969-70, that could only have been 35mm color film, high quality. Video recordings were not available. Even black and white news stock was done on film.
• The cameras used were bulky. I would imagine they were large, as the video quality above is so good that we can see the fine stitches in the shoulder patches of Harrison’s shirt. A home movie of that era would have given us grainy texture along with bleeding and pale colors.
• We do not see both the supposed musician AND the instruments being played at once except for John Lennon playing a slide guitar. There we do see his face and hair.
• McCartney (Mike) is shown at the keyboard, but as with all Beatles videos, his face and hands are not visible at once. The piano is conveniently hidden by Lennon’s shoulders during scenes where the two are shown together.
• The Beatles never used a slide guitar in any of their songs, that I am aware of anyway. This would be a one-time deal, and yet Lennon demonstrates remarkable skill at it.
• While Lennon’s head and face are shown in good quality, the arms and fingers are blurry and of almost childlike smoothness.
• Same with Harrison … we can see the individual hairs of his head and mustache, but his neck is of childlike complexion, as if blurred.
• Groups, the Beatles especially, did not record all of the elements of a song in one recording. Yet the sound behind this video is of album-cut quality. It is obviously an overdub, but one of remarkably high quality.

My overriding question is this: The film is over fifty years old. Why did it sit on the shelf all that time? Surely it would have been released along with all of the unending promotions of the Beatles were it available. It is a valuable piece of history.

Please correct me if I am wrong, as I could be over my depth, by my take on this video currently showing on YouTube is that it is an AI construction. Further, I think it was contrived to counteract the work of Williams, Sage of Quay, to show that the Beatles really were talented instrumentalists in addition to vocalists.

I once ran a post here that contained a video of the Beatles supposedly recording Get Back. It was pulled after I posted it, no connection but bad timing for me. In it we see John and George constantly tuning their guitars, and McCartney doing an amazing bass riff with his back to us. Nowhere in the video do we hear any actual tracks of the song, but in an end-of-day scene we see the boys leaving the studio with the final polished version playing over loudspeaker. Fake, fake, fake.

Good lord, the resources that are available, to this day, to carry on the grand illusions of the Beatles.