A handful of No. 1 records, including the most successful single of their career. A soundtrack. A couple controversial solo releases. A monumental double album. Business on three continents. The founding of an artist-controlled record label and media company. A much-publicized arrest. An international spiritual sojourn. A ground-breaking animated feature. Appearances on some of the biggest TV shows on both sides of the Atlantic. The beginnings of legendary romance. The covers of Life, Look and Rolling Stone. Four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year.
For any other band, it would have been a spectacular career. For the Beatles, it was just 365 often hard days and nights. In a career that had long since transformed them from mere pop stars into cultural icons whose international celebrity was rivaled only by Elvis and Ali, 1968 was arguably the Liverpool quartet’s busiest, most productive year. Indeed, freed from the grueling tour schedules of early Beatlemania, the band’s creativity blossomed with the turbulent times ― as did the personal tensions between them.
Here’s part one of a look back at 12 of the most hectic, creative months for any rock band ever, featuring rare photos, audio, and video clips from around the world.
January
George Harrison travels to India to hold recording sessions for his soundtrack to Wonderwall, the feature debut of director Joe Massot, who will later work on Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same. Harrison’s first solo recordings are a primer for his beloved Indian music. While in Bombay, George also records backing tracks for “The Inner Light,” his B-side to the band’s upcoming “Lady Madonna” single.
On the charts, the “Hello Goodbye” single spends its last weeks at No. 1 in both Britain and America. Photographer Richard Avedon’s iconic portraits of the band are featured on the cover of Look and an extensive inside layout. The band’s Apple Corps company opens its first office on Wigmore St. in London.
The Beatles film their brief live appearance in Yellow Submarine.
John, Paul, and George harmonize in the studio, February, 1968
February
In a hectic week at Abbey Road studios, the band finishes “Inner Light” and also records “Lady Madonna,” “Across the Universe” and “Hey Bulldog,” the song that will be the band’s last original musical contribution to the animated Yellow Submarine feature, a project the band has minimal participation in.
George Harrison recording “Hey Bulldog” with his ’64 SG Standard
The recording session for “Bulldog” is also filmed, but the footage is originally edited into a promo clip for “Lady Madonna.” Three decades later, it’s reassembled into a clip for the song it originally chronicled ― and a fine showcase for Harrison’s cherry-finish ’64 SG and John Lennon’s familiar Epiphone Casino, its factory finish not yet stripped to bare wood.
In America, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is awarded four Grammy Awards, including Best Engineered Recording, Best Album Cover, Best Contemporary Album and Album of the Year.
The band members and their wives travel to Rishikesh, India, where they spend time variously studying TM with the Maharishi, mixing with fellow sojourners Mike Love, Donovan and Mia Farrow, and writing songs. Ringo stays 10 days, Paul five weeks, but John and George remain until late April.
L-R: George, Paul, John, Donovan and Patti Harrison in Rishikesh
An Italian TV program chronicles their Indian sojourn:
March-April
“Lady Madonna” is released in Britain and quickly goes to No. 1. London papers report the Beatles failed to pass the obligatory tests at the Maharishi’s Academy of Trascendental Meditation, and thus have been denied diplomas.
John and Paul announce the formation of Apple in NYC
May
John and Paul travel to New York City to promote the debut of their Apple Corps company, which holds its first business meeting in a Chinese junk sailing around the Statue of Liberty. As part of their promotional schedule, Lennon and McCartney appear as guests on NBC’s Tonight Show. But since Johnny Carson is vacationing, the world’s two biggest musical icons are instead interviewed by an unlikely guest host: baseball catcher-turned-announcer Joe Garagiola, with campy, faded Hollywood star Tallulah Bankhead at his side. Full transcript here.
NBC subsequently erased and recycled almost all of the original NYC-era Tonight Show videotapes, including the Lennon-McCartney appearance, so the only surviving footage is from a fan who filmed parts of the original broadcast with an 8mm home movie camera, synched to an audio cassette recorded by another Beatlemaniac:
During their brief stay in Manhattan, Lennon and McCartney announce they’ve severed ties with the Maharishi. Paul also meets with Linda Eastman, whom he’ll marry the following year.
A week later, John and Yoko Ono make their first public appearance together in London. George, Ringo and their wives attend the premiere of Wonderwall in Cannes.
Kinfauns, George’s home and birthplace of the White Album
Towards the end of the month, the Beatles convene at Kinfauns, George Harrison’s bungalow in Esher, to record demos for nearly all the songs ― many written on their India trip ― for their upcoming double album. Using George’s four track quarter-inch Ampex tape deck and basic overdubs, John, George and Paul record over two dozen tracks whose arrangements lay the template for their later Abbey Road incarnations.
Amongst the songs demoed, but not later recorded for the album are McCartney’s “Junk,” Lennon’s Rishikesh-written “Child of Nature” (which will eventually be given new lyrics and recorded as Imagine’s “Jealous Guy”) and Harrison’s “Circles” (which will eventually surface on George’s 1982 Gone Troppo) and “Sour Milk Sea,” a song that’s soon given to fledgling Apple artist Jackie Lomax.
Sessions for what will eventually become informally known as the White Album commence at Abbey Road studio two on May 30 and 31, with the Beatles laying down basic tracks for what will become the eclectic double-album’s “Revolution 1” and the sound collage “Revolution 9”.
June
The White Album sessions gather momentum, with the band continuing to hone “Revolution 1” and beginning work on Ringo’s “Don’t Pass Me By” (working title: “This Is Some Friendly”) on the 5th. Paul McCartney records 32 takes of “Blackbird” on the 11th, with a film crew capturing his rehearsals for the session.
Recording of the White Album continues with sessions for “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except For Me and My Monkey” and “Good Night.” George produces and plays guitar on Jackie Lomax’s cover of Harrison’s “Sour Milk Sea,” destined to become one of the Apple label’s quartet of debut singles.
Yellow Submarine premieres, though the soundtrack won’t be released until the following January.
Coming in Part II: The Beatles release “Hey Jude,” “Revolution” and the White Album, as well as George Harrison’s Wonderwall and a pair of controversial solo efforts by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Backed by Eric Clapton, Keith Richard and Mitch Mitchell, Lennon sings “Yer Blues” on The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus.