Fifty-five years later, still shutting down the music in London

Fifty-five years ago, midday on a chilly and grey winter’s day in London, the Beatles went up to the rooftop of the building they were recording and played their last live performance. The “concert” lasted for 42 minutes, and ended with police shutting down the spectacle. As it was supposed to be incorporated into the movie project that they were working on (at that point, still named Get Back, though the film was salvaged and released as Let It Be). 

Some of the concert is just magical:

I haven’t seen the Peter Jackson documentary, but I remember seeing scenes in The Compleat Beatles of people going about their normal day hearing this and looking up. (It’s so rare sometimes, isn’t it?) None of them could see the Beatles, none of them had heard this music before, but a lot of people stopped to listen, as it was certainly out of the ordinary. 

Pretty soon, though, there were complaints about the noise and all the people around; the police were called, and they made their way to the building to put a stop to this nonsense. Apparently, Paul McCartney had already reckoned that the police might make an appearance, and I suppose not unlike many YouTubers today, the idea that they could possibly be arrested was enticing. 

What took me a long time to pick up on, and only became a clear thought with the Brendan Kavanagh piano issue is that I think British people have a somewhat different attitude concerning police. Hear me out: In the US, people traditionally have thought of the police as representing the people, that they come from the people and their job is to enforce the law on behalf of the people they come from. Therefore, it makes sense that people would show deference to law enforcement, but it would also put a certain responsibility on the officer to act more in the spirit of the law than merely following it to the letter.

Although this seems to basically be the principle of the beginnings of a police force in the United Kingdom (if Wikipedia is to be trusted), I get the feeling that for a good long while, many Britons regard the police force as an extension of the Crown, that while they may be a “necessary evil”, those who choose to be police officers are, in some way, traitors to their people or their class. (This reminds me of Zacchaeus in the Bible as well.) It seems, too, that there seemed to be somewhat of a rebellious streak in the British psyche, the idea that not only should officers not be given the same level of respect as in the US, but there’s a duty to give them a little bit of a hard time, just as a reminder not to get too high and mighty. The assumption here, though, is that an officer will do as he is told, no matter how absurd, and the objective is not to figure out who is right and who is wrong, but to “keep the peace”. In that respect, the untrue statements that this officer tells Kavanagh make complete sense (same video as before but starting at the point of the police officer’s goofiness):

She obviously doesn’t see her job as “upholding the law” but rather “keeping the peace” and she’s going to try to do that by going after the party whom she thinks is most pliable to make that happen, regardless of who is right. When Kavanagh stands up for himself, the disgust on her face is plain as day. How dare he! 

I’m not saying here that the Beatles should be above the law and not expect that if they were breaking the law, there shouldn’t have been some sort of response (though the police saying they had to go to the roof or there’d be arrests may have been a bit much. I think for the most part, the Beatles were happy that law enforcement was around – the photos of the British cops holding back throngs of screaming girls are famous, and for the cops involved, that couldn’t have been easy! On the other hand, the Beatles do poke fun at law enforcement a good number of times in their films and in their music. Probably the most blatant example is in the lyrics of “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window”, where there’s a lyric that goes as follows:

And so I quit the police department
And got myself a steady job
But though she tried her best to help me
She could steal, but she could not rob

Obviously, there’s absurdity in the entire song, but the lyric definitely insinuates that crime is a more steady gig than being a cop. 

Anyway, maybe I’m completely wrong on all of this, and maybe I’m just chattering on about nothing. It wouldn’t be the first time. If there’s a lesson, though, I suppose it is that when authority moves away from enforcing the law to benefit the people it supposedly serves, it’s probably not a bad thing to be a little bit of a burr on its pant leg, whether it be an “unauthorized” concert from a rooftop or refusing to back down in the face of communist goons, even if that would make the job of the cops easier. Let the music play on!