The Beatles: Day 9 Get Back/Let It Be sessions

Tuesday 14 January 1969
The ninth day of the Get Back/Let It Be sessions was the second full one without George Harrison, who had walked out of Twickenham Film Studios on 10 January 1969.
It was clear by this stage that The Beatles were unable to function in any meaningful way as a trio, and motivation and inspiration hit a low mark on this day. As with other Twickenham rehearsals, it began with Paul McCartney working alone at a piano, although there is little of the energetic enthusiasm which he brought to the earlier days.
The 2021 documentary Get Back shows McCartney demonstrating piano chords and music theory to clapperboard and loading operator Paul Bond.
“A lot of old tunes had just set chord patterns. ’Cause that’s the great thing: once you start trying to find out chord patterns, you really suss what people are doing, what musicians are doing. Like, old tunes, you know, they had just a certain way of going. And they hardly ever varied from it. I don’t really know it, you know? My dad knows that better.
The great thing about a piano is that, there it all is. There’s all the music ever. That’s it, you know? All this that’s ever been written is all there… Unless you stop yourself, there’s no stopping yourself.”
Paul McCartney
Upon Ringo Starr’s arrival, he and McCartney played an improvised piano boogie duet. It was included in the Let It Be film, and was copyrighted ‘Jazz Piano Song’ by Apple, but when shown in 2021’s Get Back it was retitled ‘I Bought A Piano The Other Day’. Although John Lennon was not present, the piece was credited to Lennon-McCartney-Starkey.
One of the songs played by McCartney at the piano was ‘Woman’, the McCartney song given in 1966 to Peter & Gordon. Another was ‘The Back Seat Of My Car’, later to be one of the highlights of McCartney’s 1971 album Ram.
Upon Lennon’s arrival, the three Beatles performed a mix of improvised songs, golden oldies and original compositions, as had become customary in these sessions.
Of the other tracks, ‘Madman’ and ‘Watching Rainbows’ were Lennon compositions which was taken no further, although ‘Madman’ was performed again at Apple Studios on 21 January. Lennon also played a brief version of ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’, the still-unreleased song which The Beatles began recording in May 1967.