Artistic re-rendering of the Let It Be Album Cover made of simple polygons.

209: Maggie Mae

Part of the Get Back/Let It Be project and included on the original Let It Be album, Maggie Mae is best thought of as a short studio out take and not a finished Beatles song IMO…

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A 38-second ad-lib recorded between takes of ‘Two Of Us’, ‘Maggie Mae’ was taped during the Let It Be album sessions.

Let It Be album artworkContinue reading on Beatles Bible →

Because of the Get Back documentary (and its predecessor Let It Be) we now know quite a bit about the circumstances under which it was recorded, and not just in terms of facts – we can see the unvarnished emotional atmosphere and the way the Beatles were working together, albeit through a particular editorial lens.

The footage (shot just a few months after completion of the White Album), substantiates the themes that likely drove the fragmentary, bare bones approach apparent in the earlier double album:

  • the Beatles are trying to Get Back to a simpler less elaborate type of recording, and to recapture the more spontaneous way they worked in their early days.
  • there are a lot of tensions between members of the band
  • they put themselves under pressure with a tight deadline (even though they may not have needed to)
  • they struggled to come up with songs of the quality they were looking for (although John & Paul keep overlooking the possibility that George has quite a few good songs)
  • to defuse tension, to procrastinate and to set up a creative atmosphere they often break into rock and roll covers, oldies from their own catalogue and snippets of TV themes etc. for a few bars.
  • Maggie Mae was one of these along with a few other bits included on the Let It Be album, which was eventually produced without full supervision and quality control, after the Beatles had more or less split up.

For all that, it is quite a nice song, a tuneful rendition of an old folk song which has apparently been part of the repertoire of the Quarrymen (the school band that Lennon started). It’s nice to hear them singing in scouse accents and about Lime Street and Liverpool. In the biopic Nowhere Boy, Lennon’s mum Julia plays it to him, and I don’t know if that’s a true story but it’s a nice image.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_May_(folk_song)

During Let It Be it was George Harrison who walked out (following Ringo, George Martin and Geoff Emerick in the previous project). He was very serious and had to be sweet talked back into the band.


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