Remembering When The Beatles Went Back to Their Early Days for a Song on Their Last Album in 1970

The Beatles’ recording career really only lasted about eight years. That works out to even less when you consider the actual dates when they laid down the tracks. But considering all that happened to them in that stretch, it must have seemed like an eternity.

On the album Let It Be, recorded mostly in early 1969 but released in 1970, the band went back to a song considered for one of their earliest albums. And the writing of the song dated back even further than that.

Who Wrote It?

It’s not uncommon for remembrances of who wrote what on a Beatles song to go down divergent paths. Those discrepancies often come down to John Lennon and Paul McCartney recalling the provenance of a particular song differently.

Case in point: “One After 909”. In the book Many Years From Now, McCartney recalled it being a co-write:

“It has great memories for me of John and I trying to write a bluesy freight-train song. There were a lot of those songs at the time, like ‘Midnight Special’, ‘Freight Train’, ‘Rock Island Line’, so this was the ‘One After 909’; she didn’t get the 909, she got the one after it!”

But in two separate interviews, John Lennon intimated that he wrote it solo when he was 17. Maybe McCartney came in to help finish the track at some point. That could easily account for the confusion. What we do know is that the band tried to record the song twice at two vastly different points in their career.

Early Version

In March 1963, The Beatles were compiling songs for possible inclusion on their second UK album (which would be titled With The Beatles when released later that year). They were also searching for possible singles or B-sides to satisfy the intense demand for their music from their rabid fans.

As such, they tried out “One After 909” for a session that also included the recording of the single “From Me To You” and its B-side “Thank You Girl”. But despite several attempts to record the song, they simply couldn’t nail it that day.

You can hear the fruits of their efforts that day on the Anthology 1 collection. When that try failed, “One After 909” easily could have stayed on the cutting-room floor. But the band dusted it off again six years later for a project that was supposed to be all about going back to basics.

“One” for the Books

The idea behind Let It Be was to rehearse a series of originals (while being filmed) and then record the songs live for an album. Those plans ultimately fell through thanks to animosity within the group. But they did end up with an album out of it, an album that included, surprise, surprise, “One After 909”.

The band perhaps liked the nostalgic feeling of the past that the song brought, considering how fraught their present was. They gave “One After 909” a spirited reading during their fabled rooftop performance, from which much of Let It Be was eventually taken. Lennon and McCartney deliver excellent vocal harmonies. George Harrison rips through a guitar solo. And special guest Billy Preston’s keyboard work is stellar.

More than anything, you can hear the enthusiasm The Beatles had in revisiting the song. Maybe Let It Be would have gone more smoothly if they had concentrated only on tracks like “One After 909” that almost got lost along the way.

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