The Beatles rocked the roof 50 years ago

On a gray, windy, gray afternoon half a century ago, George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr climbed the five floors of their office building at 3 Savile Row in downtown Toronto. London. They then went to the rooftop, where they played an unexpected 42-minute series for friends, employees and clerks coming out of the windows and heading for the adjacent roofs. A crowd regularly gathered in the street downstairs.

At the time, there was no way to find out, but on Thursday, January 30, 1969, it turned out to be the last time the Beatles performed together in public.

Keyboardist Billy Preston, who had been invited by Harrison to accompany them at rehearsals a week earlier, accompanied them throughout the impromptu show.

Preston's energetic play brought many of the songs they performed that day on the roof. His participation in the concert also shows how the Beatles have repeatedly opened themselves to various creative sources that have taken them in new directions and fueled their extraordinary musical and artistic growth.

The weeks leading up to the "rooftop concert," as we know it now, had been for the group full of corrosive hostility and increasing lethargy, in the middle of which Harrison had completely retreated, only to return a few days later.

Yet once they took to the roof and began to play, the strength and warmth of their music quickly turned them into a remarkably close and immensely charismatic unity, even as the rain, clouds and the winds – somewhat symbolic – shook and cooled them. .

They open with two different takes of "Get Back" and end with the same song, between which they play twice "Do not Let Me Down" and "Have a Feel", and "Dig has Pony "and" One After 909 "once.

There are shaky moments, even laughable, when Lennon stammers the words on "Do not let me down" or Ringo shouts "Hold it!", Just as the other three get into the opening riff of " Dig a Pony. the misunderstandings only increase the sense of uniqueness and unpredictability of the occasion, offering a slight relief before the superb quality of their songs, their musical sense and their voices are reaffirmed.

Preston solo piano

Yet, as captivating as seeing them and hearing them play together for the last time in public, it's also interesting to watch and listen to Preston, 22, wearing a black leather jacket and tidying up behind McCartney in left.

Preston was an old Beatles friend. He met them for the first time in Hamburg in 1962, while he was Back Little Richard's teenager. They were all playing together at the Star Club. "From the beginning, I fell in love with the Beatles," he said later. "I was probably their first fan and American friend."

On the rooftop, Preston made his biggest contribution to "Get Back," where his electric piano solo showcases the song. Released as a single few months later, "Get Back" is credited with "The Beatles with Billy Preston" and becomes number one in Britain, Australia, Norway and North America.

Today, in addition to his work with the Beatles and, later, with the Rolling Stones, Preston will probably be best remembered as co-author of the ballad "You Are So Beautiful", published in 1974, the same year as Joe Cocker version slower and much better known.

Goodbye to the world

Preston's relationship with The Beatles also reveals something fundamental about the band itself. The Beatles have always loved the new and the inexperienced, and throughout their careers they have reused very disparate influences with astonishing energy and inventiveness. Rooted in the north of England, they were trained in Germany and deeply indebted to American black music.

Once struck, the schema deepens as they transcend, ignore and dismantle cultural and social boundaries in the light of the attention of the international community.

It was a Western group fascinated by the East. They were the most popular popular music group in the world, even though they embraced the counter-cultural, experimental and avant-garde. This open and avid pursuit of innovation and reinvention allowed the Beatles to transform popular culture and modern music, and to bring them unprecedented vitality and variety.

Inviting Preston to join them on the roof was typical of the group and mutually beneficial. He is clearly comfortable with them as they are with him, and he plays a supporting role on stage while presenting his brilliant game.

That Preston is black, American and gay would not have made any difference to them. The Beatles loved older American musicians such as Chuck Berry and Little Richard. And they knew and accepted that their recently deceased director, Brian Epstein, was gay. "Brian was a wonderful guy," Lennon later remarked.

The Beatles broke up just 15 months after the concert on the roof, but our fascination for them and their music continues unabated. Among their greatest legacies are the way in which they have had, from the beginning and at the base, an international ethic that has grown even more when they have gained fame and have always fueled their remarkable productivity and creativity.

The rooftop concert is magical: Lennon, McCartney and Harrison sing a three-part harmony on the chorus of "Do not Let Me Down". It is also clear that Preston is an intimate part of the magic. On this cold and dull January day, Billy Preston played a pivotal role in helping them ignite even as they said goodbye to the world.