Don't Let Me Down

(Lennon/McCartney)

Quick Facts

Composer	John
Lead Vocal	John
Recorded	Jan 1969
Length	3:34
Key	E
Noted Takes	—
Producer	George Martin
Engineer	Glyn Johns

Originally released on

Get Back / Don't Let Me Down

Apple [Parlophone] — R 5777

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"Don't Let Me Down" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, recorded in 1969 during the Let It Be/Get Back sessions. It was written by John and credited to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership. The band recorded the song with keyboardist Billy Preston; the single release with "Get Back" was credited to "the Beatles with Billy Preston".

Don't Let Me Down is a song by The Beatles, written by John and led on vocal by John. B-side of 'Get Back'; performed on the rooftop. John's plea to Yoko. Within the catalogue, its rooftop thread connects it to Dig a Pony, I've Got a Feeling, One After 909. John's emotional plea emerged from turbulent personal circumstances, written as direct address to Yoko Ono amidst his ongoing separation and divorce proceedings. Lewisohn captures John exhorting Ringo to provide cymbal crash for dramatic effect and emotional courage, documenting his vulnerable vocal delivery. The composition exemplified John's willingness to expose personal emotion within commercial recording contexts, establishing precedent for later introspective songwriting. A more sophisticated look at John's emotional territory, distinct from his typically abstract or satirical compositions. (Kozinn 1995, p.195)

The session work falls within the band's Get Back / Rooftop (Jan 1969) period, recorded 28 Jan 1969 at Apple Studios rooftop, 3 Savile Row, London. George Martin produced; Glyn Johns, Alan Parsons (2nd) engineered. For session-by-session detail, see Mark Lewisohn's account on p.168 of The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (excerpt below). Recorded on 28 January 1969, the song received substantial studio attention and multiple takes. Billy Preston's organ support provided harmonic sophistication and rhythmic drive. The rooftop performance on 30 January captured the song with four distinct takes, establishing definitive recording. Glyn Johns's engineering emphasized John's vocal delivery and the ensemble's responsive interplay, creating emotional immediacy and directness (Lewisohn 1988, p.168-169).

Give me courage to come screaming in.- John Lennon, Lewisohn 1988, p.165

John's emotional performance showcased sophisticated vocal technique, recorded during the band's most collaborative studio period. (Emerick 2006, p.523) MacDonald emphasizes John's sophisticated approach, with intricate melismatic vocal lines and harmonic structure unusual for his work. (MacDonald 1994, p.238)

More sophisticated emotional territory distinct from Lennon's typical approach.- Allan Kozinn, Kozinn 1995, p.195

What’s distinctive

The B-side of Get Back was taped in the Apple basement on 28 January 1969, on George’s own eight-track machine wired through two borrowed EMI desks, with Billy Preston sitting in on keyboards and the band playing and singing live. The single was mixed at Olympic, not EMI, and the mono and stereo went to different countries: Britain heard the mono, America the stereo. The Get Back album that never came out used a different performance, from 22 January.^1,2,3

Recording

A studio that was not there. The Beatles moved from Twickenham to their own basement at 3 Savile Row expecting a studio built by “Magic Alex” Mardas, and the promise had been generous: “Abbey Road had eight-track facilities. Apple would have 72.” When the gear was tried, it failed outright. Dave Harries remembered it: “The mixing console was made of bits of wood and an old oscilloscope… when they played back the tape it was all hum and hiss. Terrible. The Beatles walked out, that was the end of it.” In its place, “these sessions would make use of George Harrison’s own 3M eight-track recorder and a pair of retired EMI four-track mixing desks. Additional outboard gear was supplied by EMI, and the group finally got back to work on January 22.”^1,2
The first day, and the first version. Don’t Let Me Down was there on that first Apple day, Wednesday 22 January, taped twice among the day’s songs. The session produced several items for the ill-fated Get Back LP, this song among them, with John, its composer and lead singer, exhorting Ringo to give him a good crash on the cymbals to “give me the courage to come screaming in”. It was also Billy Preston’s first day, and the tapes from it carry him “making his debut on electric piano”. That 22 January performance is the one the unreleased Get Back albums would use.^1,3
The single, cut on 28 January. Six days later, on Tuesday 28 January, “both sides of the Beatles’ next single — ‘Get Back’ and ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ — were recorded”, with the Beatles and Billy Preston “suddenly becoming a cohesive unit”. The verdict on the day’s work is short: “Both were excellent recordings, worthy of the single release.” Glyn Johns engineered, with Alan Parsons assisting. No numbered take for the released performance is on record, which is why this page gives none.^1,3
Played live, recorded as it happened. Glyn Johns, who carried on as the group’s engineer, described the method in two sentences: “All the vocals were live,” and “I recorded most of what went on.” Don’t Let Me Down was made the way the project was meant to work: the band and Billy Preston in one room, voices and instruments going to the eight-track together. The only addition to it that anyone has suggested is a second voice heard faintly in verse 3 and more clearly at the very end, which, if it is an overdub, may have been put on at the mix (see Studio Notes).^2,3

Equipment

Studio	Apple Studios basement, 3 Savile Row, London (recording, 22 and 28 January 1969; rooftop concert taped there, 30 January; rooftop mixes, 5 February); Olympic Sound Studios, Barnes (single mixes, 7 April 1969)¹
Tape machine	George’s own 3M eight-track, in the Apple basement²
Console	A pair of retired EMI four-track mixing desks, with outboard gear supplied by EMI²
Microphones	Rooftop: the same microphones as the basement sessions, wind-shielded; stockings over the Neumann U67s^1,2
Keyboard	Electric piano (Billy Preston); one rooftop track list reads “Organ” (see Studio Notes)^1,2

Recording Timeline

22 January 1969 (Wednesday) — recording, Apple Studios basement. P: George Martin? E: Glyn Johns. 2E: n/a. The first day at Apple, on the borrowed equipment. Don’t Let Me Down appears twice in the day’s list: once on its own and once at the end of a run through Rocker and Save The Last Dance For Me. The question mark after the producer’s name is on the sheet, and it recurs through the project. This day’s performance, with John’s spoken plea to Ringo for a cymbal crash, became the album version that was compiled twice and shelved twice.^1,3
28 January 1969 (Tuesday) — recording, Apple Studios basement. P: George Martin. E: Glyn Johns. 2E: Alan Parsons. Both sides of the next single were taped in this session, and Don’t Let Me Down appears twice in its list, among Dig A Pony, Get Back, Love Me Do, I’ve Got A Feeling, The One After 909, two pieces listed as Billy’s Song, and Teddy Boy. This is the basic recording behind every issue of the single; the mono and stereo of 7 April both come from it.^1,3
30 January 1969 (Thursday) — the rooftop concert, recorded in the basement. P: George Martin. E: Glyn Johns. 2E: Alan Parsons. Around lunchtime the Beatles and Billy Preston took to the roof of 3 Savile Row. Get Back was played three times, and Don’t Let Me Down and I’ve Got A Feeling twice each. The first Don’t Let Me Down came early in the set and went straight into I’ve Got A Feeling; this is the one seen in the Let It Be film. The second came near the end, after the second I’ve Got A Feeling, and the film did not use it. The whole 42 minutes was “preserved in its entirety on two eight-track audio tapes”, “engineered down below in the basement by Glyn Johns”.^1,2
5 February 1969 (Wednesday) — stereo mixing, Apple Studios basement. P: George Martin? E: Glyn Johns. 2E: Alan Parsons. “Stereo mixes, ending with a tape compilation, of the 30 January rooftop recordings”, Don’t Let Me Down among them, alongside I’ve Got A Feeling, Get Back and The One After 909. These mixes are of the rooftop tapes, not of the 28 January basement recording, and none of them became the single.¹
7 April 1969 (Monday) — mono and stereo mixing, Olympic Sound Studios, Barnes. P: George Martin? E: Glyn Johns. 2E: Jerry Boys. Mono mixing: Get Back (remix 5) and Don’t Let Me Down (remix 1). Stereo mixing: Get Back and Don’t Let Me Down (remix 1). These are the released mixes, both from the 28 January recording, and the stereo pair was made “for issue, initially, in the USA”. Jerry Boys remembered that “only Paul came along”, and that the new Get Back mix was judged against an earlier one on a record player he happened to have in his car (quoted below).^1,3
11 April 1969 (Friday) — release, and the shelved albums. The single, Apple [Parlophone] R 5777, was released with Get Back on the A-side, though copies did not reach the shops until several days after that optimistic date because of the late mixing. The United States followed on 5 May. The album went the other way: when Glyn Johns compiled the Get Back LP at Olympic on Wednesday 28 May 1969, and again on Monday 5 January 1970, its Don’t Let Me Down was the 22 January performance, and neither compilation was issued.^1,3

“Purely by chance, I happened to have a cheap record player in the back of my car, which I’d brought along to Olympic to have someone repair… we were able to decide which of the two mixes was better. So the very first playing of the ‘Get Back’ single, which sold millions, was on my little player!” — Jerry Boys¹

Studio Notes

Two weeks on borrowed equipment. Everything Don’t Let Me Down went through in January was improvised. The eight-track machine was George’s own 3M, brought in when the Apple console failed, and the desks were “a pair of retired EMI four-track mixing desks”, so an eight-track tape was being fed through equipment built for half that number of tracks, with EMI supplying the outboard gear around it. Nothing on the record was made in an EMI room. Even the final mixes went to Olympic in Barnes rather than to Abbey Road, so Glyn Johns engineered the song at every stage, from the basement in January to the mixing desk in April.^1,2
Eight tracks on the roof. The rooftop tapes give the clearest picture of how the band was spread across the machine: “Paul and John’s vocals were recorded to Tracks 1 and 2, Billy’s electric piano to Track 3, Paul’s bass on Track 4, the film crew’s sync tone on Track 5, Ringo’s drums on Track 6, and John and George’s guitars on Tracks 7 and 8.” Each player had a track of his own, and one of the eight was given up to the cameras: the sync tone let the film’s pictures be lined up with the sound afterwards.²
Organ or electric piano? The two track lists for the rooftop tapes agree on almost everything and differ on one instrument. Lewisohn’s reads “1) Paul vocal; 2) John (and George) vocal; 3) Organ (Billy Preston); 4) Bass (Paul); 5) sync track for film crew; 6) Drums (Ringo); 7) Guitar (John); 8) Guitar (George)”. Kehew and Ryan put Billy’s electric piano on track 3. Both are given here. Lewisohn’s own account of 22 January has Preston “making his debut on electric piano”, which points the same way as Kehew and Ryan for the instrument he brought to the sessions, but it does not settle what the track 3 box says.^1,2
Engineer below, assistant above. On 30 January the controls stayed in the basement. “Glyn did it himself!” Alan Parsons said of the recording. “It was felt that I was more needed upstairs. He could talk to us through a speaker up to the roof, but we only communicated down to the Control Room through the band mics.” Getting the microphones to the machine meant a cable for each one, run from the roof down several flights of stairs, because “EMI had no such thing as snakes”. The microphones used on the roof “were identical to those used during the basement sessions”.²
Stockings against the wind. It was cold on the roof, and the wind was the problem: the microphones were covered with wind-shields for protection. “In the case of the Neumann U67 microphones, women’s stockings were used.” Parsons was the one sent to buy them: “early in the morning Glyn sent me out to buy ladies stockings to put over the mikes, to prevent the wind from getting into them.” Asked “What size sir?” in the shop, he answered “Oh, it doesn’t matter.” He later reckoned he was taken for “either a bank robber or a cross-dresser!”^1,2
A second voice at the end. On the single there appears to be a second John vocal: a trace of another voice in verse 3, and more clearly at the very end, overlapping on “Can you dig it”, “Don’t let me” and “Yeah”. It may be Paul. If it is an overdub, it was perhaps added at the mix session, either live or dropped in from another tape. No overdub session for the song appears in the session listings, so the question stays open; it is worth listening for on any version made from the 28 January recording.³
No producer on the label, Billy Preston on it. The single broke two habits at once. “Neither the A- nor B-side carried a producer’s credit, hardly surprising considering the confused roles of George Martin and Glyn Johns”, the same confusion the sheets record with a question mark after George Martin’s name. And both sides were “officially accredited to ‘The Beatles with Billy Preston’”. “A great honour,” said Preston.¹

Releases

Every issue of the single comes from the 28 January basement recording, mixed at Olympic on 7 April 1969 in mono and in stereo. Britain got the mono and America the stereo. The rooftop and 22 January performances reached record much later.

1969 UK single — B-side of Get Back (11 April 1969, Apple [Parlophone] R 5777) — the mono mix: band, Billy Preston’s keyboard and the live vocals in one centred image.
1969 US single — B-side of Get Back (5 May 1969, Apple 2490) — the stereo mix, made the same day as the mono for the American issue.
1970 US LP — Hey Jude (Apple SW-385) — the 1969 stereo on the American collection of non-album tracks.
1973 LP — The Beatles 1967–1970 (UK Apple PCSP 718; US Apple SKBO-3404) — the 1969 stereo again.
1988 CD — Past Masters Volume Two (EMI CDP 7 90044 2) — the 1969 stereo, the song’s first CD album appearance; a 1989 CD single carried the mono.
2003 CD — Let It Be… Naked (Apple 95438 2) — a different recording: an edit of the two rooftop performances, made to remove the mistakes John makes with the words.
2021 — Let It Be Special Edition, Super Deluxe (15 October 2021, Apple) — a new mix of the original single version by Giles Martin and Sam Okell; the set also issues the first rooftop performance and the 1969 Glyn Johns Get Back LP mix, which carries the 22 January performance.
2023 — The Beatles 1967–1970 (2023 Edition, Apple) — the 2021 mix of the single version.

Sources

Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (New York: Harmony Books, 1988), 164–165, 168–170, 172, 176, 196, 200.
Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums (Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006), 505–506.
Joseph Brennan, Usenet Guide to Beatles Recording Variations (rev. edn.), “Don’t Let Me Down” entries.

Frequently asked

Who wrote Don't Let Me Down?

John. It is credited to Lennon/McCartney.¹

Who sings lead on Don't Let Me Down?

John, singing live with the band and Billy Preston; a second voice may be heard faintly in verse 3 and at the end.^1,3

When was Don't Let Me Down recorded?

The single’s recording was made on 28 January 1969 in the Apple Studios basement at 3 Savile Row, and mixed at Olympic Sound Studios on 7 April 1969. An earlier version from 22 January was used for the unreleased Get Back album.^1,3

Is the single the rooftop performance?

No. The song was played twice on the roof on 30 January 1969, but the single comes from the 28 January basement recording. The first rooftop version is the one in the Let It Be film; rooftop performances reached record only in 2003 and 2021.^1,3

How many takes did Don't Let Me Down require?

No numbered take is on record for the released performance. The song was taped twice on 22 January and twice on 28 January, and the single comes from the 28 January session.¹

Why does the single credit Billy Preston?

He sat in on keyboards with the band, and both sides of the single were credited to “The Beatles with Billy Preston”.^1,2

On this page

Story Section status: Outdated

What’s distinctive

Recording

Equipment

Recording Timeline

Studio Notes

Releases

Sources

Frequently asked