The Beatles were not content to “sit around rehearsing” one song as John Lennon says they “couldn’t get into” it.
While the Fab Four were consummate professionals, they did also bunk off from time to time. Lennon and Paul McCartney would rush out a song so they could catch a film, and at one point, The Beatles agreed that they weren’t in the mood to rehearse. Lennon attributed this to the band being “lazy fuckers”, but had every right to feel that way as they had been performing for years at this point. An interview with Lennon that was used in the Anthology documentary series pointed out the four were not wanting to rehearse their songs, especially not with a camera crew in the studio. Lennon would “want them to go away” so the band could work privately, but the documentary crew were heading nowhere, and it seems it was getting to The Beatles.
He said: “We’re lazy fuckers, and we’ve been playing for 20 years, for fuck’s sake. We’re grown men, we’re not going to sit around rehearsing. And we couldn’t get into it, and we put down a few tracks, and nobody was in it at all. It was just a dreadful, dreadful feeling and, being filmed all the time, I just wanted them to go away.
“We’d be there at 8 in the morning, and you couldn’t make music at 8 in the morning, or 10, or whatever it was, in a strange place with people filming you, and coloured lights.”
Though Lennon was open with his disinterest in The Beatles, it was an impromptu live performance that rekindled his love for music. Lennon rarely perform live shows, though he did provide fans with a few fantastic showcases of his on-stage abilities. Speaking about his return to the stage in an interview used for Anthology, Lennon would say the thrill of being back, performing to a live audience, was like nothing else.
He said: “We got this call on a Friday that there was a rock ‘n’ roll revival show in Toronto with a 100,000 audience, or whatever it was. They were inviting us as king and queen to preside over it, not play. But I didn’t hear that bit. I said, ‘Just give me time to get a band together,’ and we went the next morning.”
The Imagine hitmaker continued, saying a particular highlight of the show was when he and the collection of musicians performed Cold Turkey. He added: “The buzz was incredible. I never felt so good in my life. Everybody was with us and leaping up and down doing the peace sign because they knew most of the numbers anyway, and we did a number called Cold Turkey we’d never done before and they dug it like mad.”
Clapton would go on to perform with Lennon at the show, and says the experience was quite a rush. He confirmed Lennon called him and offered him a spot on the show, but he had just an hour to get ready. Clapton said he received “a phone call on the day we were to leave and he said that someone had asked him to do that concert and it was that night! So I had to make the airport in an hour.”
