THE BEATLES - FREE AS A BIRD (UNRELEASED TAKE 1 OF OVERDUB SESSION ACOUSTIC)

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• published: 16 Nov 2009
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Album: Meet The Threetles Bootleg "Free as a Bird" is a song performed by The Beatles. The single was released on 4 December 1995, as part of the promotion for the release of The Beatles Anthology video documentary and the band's Anthology 1 compilation album. The song had been written and recorded as a demo by John Lennon in 1977. Paul McCartney asked Lennon's widow Yoko Ono for any unreleased material by Lennon, and "Free as a Bird" was chosen as being the song all three remaining Beatles could be involved in, as they could finish the arrangement and write extra lyrics. Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra was asked to co-produce the record as he had worked with George Harrison as part of The Traveling Wilburys. McCartney, Harrison and Ringo Starr originally intended to record some incidental background music (as a trio) for the Anthology project, but wanted to record new songs. The Beatles had always agreed that if one of them did not agree with something the idea would be vetoed, so the only way they could reunite musically as The Beatles was if Lennon could be on the recording. McCartney then asked Ono if she had any unreleased recordings by Lennon, so she sent him cassette tapes of four songs "Free as a Bird" was recorded by Lennon in 1977, in his and Ono's Dakota building apartment in New York City, but was not complete. Lennon introduced the song on the cassette by imitating a New York accent and saying, "Free - as a boid" (bird). The other songs were Grow Old With Me, Real Love, and Now and Then.Ono said: "It was all settled before then, I just used that occasion to hand over the tapes personally to Paul. I did not break up The Beatles, but I was there at the time, you know? Now I'm in a position where I could bring them back together and I would not want to hinder that. It was kind of a situation given to me by fate." In an interview, McCartney remarked: "Yoko said 'I've got a couple of tracks I'll play you, you might be interested'. I'd never heard them before but she explained that they're quite well known to Lennon fans as bootlegs. I said to Yoko, 'Don't impose too many conditions on us, it's really difficult to do this, spiritually. We don't know, we may hate each other after two hours in the studio and just walk out. So don't put any conditions, it's tough enough. If it doesn't work out, you can veto it.' When I told George and Ringo I'd agreed to that they were going, 'What? What if we love it?' It didn't come to that, luckily."[ McCartney was later surprised to learn that Lennon's demo song of "Free as a Bird" had already been released on the Internet by fans, and was widely available. Starr admitted that when he first listened to the recording he found it very emotional. Recording The original tape of Lennon singing the song was on a cassette, with vocals and piano on the same track. They were impossible to separate, so Lynne had to produce the track with voice and piano together, but commented that it was good for the integrity of the project, as Lennon was not only singing occasional lines, but also playing on the song.Starr said that as Lennon was not in the studio, the three remaining Beatles agreed they would pretend that Lennon had "gone for lunch", or had gone for a "cup of tea".The remaining Beatles recorded a track around Lennon's basic song idea, but which had gaps they had to fill in musically. Some chords were changed, and the arrangement was expanded to include breaks for McCartney and Harrison to sing extra lines. Harrison played slide guitar in the solo. This is the only recording that Lennon, McCartney & Harrison sing separate lead vocal on the same song. The Beatles' overdubs and production were recorded between February and March 1994 in Sussex, England, at McCartney's home studio. It ends with a slight coda (The coda was an incomplete recording of This Boy), including a strummed ukulele by Harrison (an instrument that McCartney and Harrison were known to have often played) and the voice of John Lennon played backwards. The message, when played in reverse, is "Turned out nice again", which was the catch-phrase of George Formby, Jr.[8] The final result sounds like "made by John Lennon", which, according to McCartney, was unintentional and was only discovered after the surviving Beatles reviewed the final mix. When Starr heard McCartney and Harrison singing the harmonies, and later the finished song, he said that it sounded just like them [The Beatles]. He explained his comment by saying that he looked at the project as "an outsider". Lynne fully expected the finished track to sound like The Beatles, as that was his premise for the project, but Harrison added: "It's gonna sound like them [The Beatles] if it is them... It sounds like them now" [in the present].