

In an interview in Playboy magazine in 1980, Lennon described "Get Back" as ". a better version of ' Lady Madonna'. (He had said that at the end of their 30 January 1969 rooftop concert on the roof of Apple Studios, but Phil Spector edited it into the studio version of "Get Back" that was released on the Let It Be album.) when we finished it, we recorded it at Apple Studios and made it into a song to roller-coast by." Īt the beginning of the Let It Be version of the song, Lennon can be heard jokingly saying "Sweet Loretta Fart (often misheard as "fat", due to Lennon's pronunciation), she thought she was a cleaner, but she was a frying pan." The album version of the song also ends with Lennon famously quipping "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition". we started to write words there and then .

For the press release to promote the "Get Back" single, McCartney wrote, "We were sitting in the studio and we made it up out of thin air . On 9 January, McCartney brought a more developed version of "Get Back" to the group, with the "Sweet Loretta" verse close to its finished version. McCartney had played bass on Jackie Lomax's recording of "Sour Milk Sea" a few months earlier. After working out the rhythm and harmony of the primary riff on his Höfner bass, McCartney introduced some of the lyrics, reworking "Get back to the place you should be" from fellow Beatle George Harrison's " Sour Milk Sea" into "Get back to where you once belonged". The song's melody grew out of some unstructured jamming on 7 January 1969, during rehearsal sessions on the sound stage at Twickenham Studios. This is covered in bootleg recordings, books, the 1970 documentary Let It Be, and the 2021 Peter Jackson-directed documentary The Beatles: Get Back. "Get Back" is unusual in the Beatles' canon in that almost every moment of the song's evolution has been documented, from its beginning as an offhand riff to its final mixing in several versions. It was also the first single to debut on the singles charts at number one.Ĭomposition Musical development In the UK, the Beatles' singles remained monaural until the following release, " The Ballad of John and Yoko".

"Get Back" was the Beatles' first single release in true stereo in the US. It was the Beatles' only single that credited another artist at their request. The single reached number one in the United Kingdom, the United States, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Australia, France, West Germany, Mexico, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, and Belgium. The single version was later issued on the compilation albums 1967–1970, 20 Greatest Hits, Past Masters, and 1. This version became the closing track of Let It Be (1970), which was released just after the group split up. The album version of this song contains a different mix that features a studio chat between Paul McCartney and John Lennon at the beginning which lasts for 20 seconds before the song begins, also omitting the coda featured in the single version. " Get Back" is a song recorded by the British rock band the Beatles and written by Paul McCartney (though credited to Lennon–McCartney), originally released as a single on 11 April 1969 and credited to "The Beatles with Billy Preston".
