While you're waiting for that Beatles 'Let It Be' DVD

January 8, 10:32 AMBeatles ExaminerSteve Marinucci

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 The Beatles' turbulent "Get Back"/"Let It Be"  recordings sessions
  took place 40 years ago this month. (Photo: Apple Corps.)

With this month being the 40th anniversary of the "Get Back"/"Let It Be" sessions, here are some good sources of information about them that we recommend until "Let It Be" finally comes out on DVD. (Don't hold your breath, though you can sign up at Amazon.com and they'll notifiy you when it's being released. Patience is a virtue.)

David Fricke's lengthy essay on Rolling Stone.com called "Buried Treasure: The Story of the Beatles' Lost Tapes", that dates from 2002 or 2003, discusses the 1969 session tapes recovered in a police raid in Holland in 2002 and gives an overview of the sessions in general.  Much of the music on the recovered tapes, as Fricke points out, was already out among collectors. Note the rumor that some of the session might end up on legitimate DVD. That didn't happen, though some did show up on the "Let It Be... Naked" CD.

Even better, Rolling Stone also has posted some original historical articles that date from the '60s. "Beatles First Live Concert in 2 Years" tells of very early plans for the "Let It Be" film to be taped in front of a studio audience for TV, which, of course, changed. "Beatles "Get Back" Due in July " is a preview, while  "Beatles Get Back, Track by Track" is a detailed rundown on the George Martin-produced version of what became the "Let It Be" album that wasn't released and should have been.

The most detailed discussion of the sessions is Doug Sulpy and and Ray Schweighardt's "Drugs, Divorce and a Slipping Image - The Complete, Unauthorized Story of The Beatles' 'Get Back' Sessions," which covers it all in a fly-on-the wall perspective, day-by-day, session-by-session and track-by-track, with details of what went good and bad. The current edition is a complete rewriting of the older versions, with new information added.

But there are others. Mark Lewisohn's "The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years 1962-1970" and "The Complete Beatles Chronicle" aren't as minute as Sulpy, but they both have day-to-day listings of the songs recorded each day and a short summary of the activities. The difference between the two books is "Chronicle" came later and condenses some of the "Sessions" information, but also includes concert information from his previous "The Beatles Live" book.

Bruce Spizer's "The Beatles on Apple Records" has pictures of  "Get Back" bootlegs and some period coverage of the rooftop concert. Richie Unterberger's "The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film", as the title says, lists unreleased songs from the sessions.

John C. Winn's "That Magic Feeling: The Beatles' Recorded Legacy, Volume Two, 1966-1970," which will be issued in a revised version in June, breaks the sessions down to day-by-day, but stays with technical details of music recorded, but also adds filming details and bootleg releases for each track.