51°30′37.5″N 0°08′23.0″W / 51.510417°N 0.139722°W
Concert by the Beatles | |
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Venue | Apple Corps headquarters rooftop, London |
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Date(s) | 30 January 1969 |
Duration | 42:00[1] |
The Beatles concert chronology |
On 30 January 1969, the Beatles performed a concert from the rooftop of their Apple Corps headquarters at 3 Savile Row, in central London's office and fashion district. Joined by guest keyboardist Billy Preston, the band played a 42-minute set before the Metropolitan Police arrived and ordered them to reduce the volume. It was the final public performance of their career. They performed nine takes of five new songs as crowds of onlookers, many on lunch breaks, congregated in the streets and on the rooftops of nearby buildings to listen. The concert ended with "Get Back", and John Lennon joking, "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we've passed the audition."[2]
The entire performance was filmed and recorded, and footage was used in the 1970 documentary film Let It Be and the 2021 documentary series The Beatles: Get Back. The first performance of "I've Got a Feeling" and single takes of "One After 909" and "Dig a Pony" were also featured on the accompanying album. On 28 January 2022, the audio of the full rooftop performance was released to streaming services under the title Get Back – The Rooftop Performance.[3] In February 2022, Disney released the entire concert sequence as presented in The Beatles: Get Back in IMAX as The Beatles: Get Back – The Rooftop Concert.
The performance itself began at around 12pm on a bitterly cold Thursday lunchtime and lasted for 42 minutes. Approximately half of the gig is shown at the end of Let It Be.