US radio WKBW broadcasts the “Get Back” LP

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On this day, an early mix of the unreleased “Get Back” LP was broadcast on US radio WKBW. This mix had been created by Glyn Johns from March to May 1969 and completed on May 9.

This broadcast was at the origin of one of the earliest Beatles bootlegs, called “O.P.D.“

From O.P.D. | beatlegs:

This LP is particularly interesting because it represents the only full-length issue of an undocumented version of the unreleased GET BACK LP, containing a few more seconds after the song Get Back and various small edits here and there and compiled in early May ’69. It includes a longer version of Dig It compared with other releases of the time and the complete, unedited version of For You Blue.

​The unreleased GET BACK LP was known since the mid seventies (after the Wizardo and Kornyphone records); it was mixed at EMI on May 28th, 1969. The differences of the mix which originated O.P.D. are the following:

TRACK 7, Get Back.

The O.P.D. mix has the original unedited version with a longer coda unavailable elsewhere.

The May 28th mix has the officially released version (45 mix), which is the same O.P.D. version, with the coda from another take edited onto the ending.

TRACK 12, Dig It

The O.P.D. mix is over 5 minutes long, on the promo GET BACK it clocks at 4’20″. Compared with the longest available version, this edit of Dig It starts at 1’56’’ and lacks the following segments, probably edited at EMI during the mixing: from 2’18’’ to 2’57’’, from 5’56’’ to 6’26’’ and from 7’05’’ to 7’33’’.

TRACK 13, Let it be (take 27).

The May 28th mix is the same as the O.P.D. mix, plus the “Are we supposed to giggle in the solo” spoken intro (from take 23) edited onto the beginning.

This undocumented early mix of the GET BACK album was first aired on September 20, 1969 by WKBW in Buffalo (from a tape they apparently had obtained from a Toronto radio station).

Thanks to the research of contributors to Belmo’s Beatleg News fanzine, we know that by mid-october tape copies had reached Cincinnati, where, according to a high school paper, a fourth generation copy of the tape was in the possession of a local FM radio station; and Detroit, a staff-writer of the Free Press reporting to have heard the yet unreleased GET BACK album on an «unmixed tape» and commenting the line-up track by track.

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Last updated on July 26, 2023