The Beatles' rooftop performance at Apple's headquarters, January 30, 1969

About the artist

The Beatles were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, four musicians from Liverpool, England, who first made their name playing clubs around Europe^[1]. Their first single, "Love Me Do," came out in the UK on October 5, 1962, and reached No. 17 on the British chart^[2].

In the United States, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" had already gone to No. 1 when, on February 9, 1964, the band made their debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. They played five songs, opening with "All My Loving" and closing with "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and 73 million people watched, more than 60 percent of American TV viewers that night; Smithsonian magazine calls it the most-watched TV event of its time^[1].

Why this counts as the last

The Beatles quit touring in the summer of 1966. Their last tour ended on August 29 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, where they closed with Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally"^[3][4]. Nothing was announced, and no one in the crowd knew it was the end, but, as Rob Sheffield writes in Rolling Stone, all four Beatles did. They were tired of racing from town to town for 25-minute sets in which they could not hear themselves play, in stadiums that left no room for their increasingly complex new sounds. The break, he argues, paved the way for 1967 and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band^[4].

In January 1969 they regrouped with the idea of playing for an audience again: the plan was to write and rehearse 14 new songs for their first live concert in more than two years^[5]. Venues from London's Roundhouse to the pyramids at Giza and the ocean liner QE2 were discussed. In the end, John Lennon's suggestion (some accounts credit Ringo Starr) to simply play on their own roof looked like the easiest option^[6].

After the rooftop show, the band went on to make Abbey Road, the last album they recorded, released on September 26, 1969^[7]. That September, Lennon told the others he wanted a "divorce." The split stayed private until April 10, 1970, when Paul McCartney made clear, in a press release for his first solo album, that he had no plans to work with the Beatles again^[8][9]. The January recordings came out as the album Let It Be on May 8, 1970^[10], and the film Let It Be followed that same month^[11].

The rooftop set was never billed as a farewell. It became the band's last public performance only in hindsight^[12], which is why this archive files it as a special case rather than as a planned final show.

What is known about the day

Around lunchtime on Thursday, January 30, the Beatles climbed onto the cold, windy roof of Apple Corps' headquarters at 3 Savile Row^[13][14]. The building, a terraced townhouse from around 1733, is listed at Grade II* on England's national heritage list^[15]. There was no advance notice^[16]. With the band was the keyboard player Billy Preston, whom George Harrison had brought in^[13][17]; when "Get Back" came out as a single on April 11, it was credited to "The Beatles with Billy Preston," the only Beatles single to credit another artist at the band's request^[18].

Ken Mansfield, who ran Apple's operation in the United States, told CBS News that there had been a lot of tension, and that he had heard the band almost did not go through the door to the roof. "But when they started playing it was the old Beatles," he said^[19]. Alan Parsons was sent out to buy pantyhose to protect the microphones^[6].

The band played five songs in nine takes^[19][20]: "Get Back" three times, "Don't Let Me Down" and "I've Got A Feeling" twice each, and "One After 909" and "Dig A Pony" once, with a short jam on "God Save The Queen" while the tapes were changed^[21]. The performance is usually said to have lasted 42 minutes^[19][6]; the official audio release runs about 40^[21].

People in the street below could not see who was playing, but they could hear it, and the traffic jammed^[19]. Office windows filled with onlookers, and the police station was only a short walk away^[6]. Ray Dagg, then a 19-year-old constable, has said the police received about 30 complaints within minutes of the band starting. Under pressure from the officers, the band's longtime associate Mal Evans switched off Lennon's and Harrison's amplifiers, but McCartney, Starr and Preston kept playing^[20]. The last song was the day's third "Get Back"^[22][21]. Lennon then thanked everyone on behalf of the group and joked, "I hope we passed the audition"^[17][12].

What the show left behind

Three of the rooftop recordings, "I've Got A Feeling," "One After 909" and "Dig A Pony," went onto the Let It Be album, and the final "Get Back" later appeared on Anthology 3^[13]. Only 21 minutes of the performance made it into the Let It Be film^[6], which won the Academy Award for Original Song Score in 1971^[23].

Other musicians have borrowed the idea since. On March 27, 1987, U2 shot the video for "Where the Streets Have No Name" on the roof of a liquor store in downtown Los Angeles. The director, Meiert Avis, meant it as a homage to the Beatles' final public performance, and once again the police ended it, this time by pulling the fuse from the generator^[24][25]. On July 15, 2009, McCartney played on top of the marquee of New York's Ed Sullivan Theater for Late Show with David Letterman, including "Get Back"; Rolling Stone wrote that it recalled the Savile Row rooftop gig^[26].

On the 50th anniversary, January 30, 2019, a new film by Peter Jackson, drawn from the unused footage, was announced^[27]. The Beatles: Get Back premiered on Disney+ over November 25–27, 2021, and showed the rooftop performance in its entirety for the first time^[28]. A new mix of the complete performance was released for streaming in January 2022, and a film of the concert itself, The Beatles: Get Back – The Rooftop Concert, played in IMAX theaters on the 53rd anniversary^[21][29].

The audio work also reached the stage. When McCartney opened his Got Back tour in Spokane, Washington, on April 28, 2022, he sang "I've Got A Feeling" with Lennon's voice, which Jackson had isolated from the rooftop footage^[30][31]. He repeated the duet at Glastonbury that June^[32]. Jackson's team also separated Lennon's voice from a demo recording for "Now and Then," billed as the last Beatles song, released in November 2023^[33]. In May 2024 the original Let It Be film, restored by Jackson's company Park Road Post, returned on Disney+; Jackson noted that it had been unavailable for decades^[11].

An unannounced lunchtime set on an office roof can now be seen and heard in full, and more than 50 years later it found its way back onto McCartney's stage.