Dig It And Its Incredible Recording Process Revealed

On January 24th, 1969, the 13th day of the “Get Back / Let It Be” project, The Beatles entered Apple Studios on Savile Row in London for more rehearsals and recording. The primary focus turned out the songs “Get Back” and “Two Of Us,” but they did concentrate on other compositions as well to blow off some steam. It was in this environment that “Dig It” appeared for the first time.

After extensive work on the two songs mentioned above, the group started running through a long list of selections by other artists, such as “Maggie Mae,” “Diggin' My Potatoes” and other Lonnie Donegan songs. This moved into songs by Guy Mitchell, such as “Singing The Blues,” John playing a Hofner Hawaiian Standard lap-steel guitar with a slide as he played on George's “For You Blue.” While still sitting in front of this instrument, John progressed into an ad-lib jam performing as he had just done on “Singing The Blues.” Lyrically, possibly inspired by “Diggin' My Potatoes” and the “Can you dig it?” catchphrase of the time, Lennon repeatedly sang variations of the phrase. Paul joined in on vocals and exchanged lines such as, “I can dig it,” “everybody dig it,” and so on.

After two brief experiments of this sort, John developed his idea a little further in a 12-bar blues progression with slide guitar that resulted in a four-minute jam with all four Beatles playing the “can you dig it” lyrical theme. After Lennon claims that you can “dig it every morning” and “dig it every evening,” he demands, “I want some insurance, I need a guarantee.” Paul continues to interject his “dig it” lines but then comically imitates a remote location DJ, announcing “Coming to you from the heart of Chicago's blues land, Blind Lame Lennon!”, reprising a similar interjection from their as-yet-unreleased 1967 recording “You Know My Name (Look Up The Number).” With John's slide guitar getting a little wild towards the end of the song, Paul sings, “I think you're out of tune, boy.” Clearly, The Beatles were enjoying themselves during this session.

After Billy Preston arrived a little later that day, they decided to run through Lennon’s “Dig It” experiment one more time with the keyboardist,  lasting nearly five minutes. At its conclusion, John stated in a high voice, “That was 'Can You Dig It' by Georgie Wood. And now we'd like to do 'Hark, The Angels Come.” this fondly remembered statement was edited into both the film and the soundtrack album.

On January 26th, 1969, the 15th day of the “Get Back / Let It Be” project, The Beatles primarily worked on perfecting Paul's song “Let It Be.” While Paul played piano, John played bass on a six-string Fender Bass VI, George played his newly acquired Fender Rosewood Telecaster, Ringo his Ludwig Hollywood drums, and Billy Preston played a Hammond organ. Although a Sunday session was an unusual event, the band deemed it necessary due to the time crunch to finalize the project by the end of the month. Paul's girlfriend Linda Eastman was present on this day, along with her daughter Heather.

After much work on the song “Let It Be,” John began strumming his bass like a guitar, playing what he called a “bossa nova” style riff that the others joined in as well. After singing the chorus of Bob Dylan's hit “Like A Rolling Stone,” he claimed that it sounded a bit like an Aretha Franklin song. Paul suggested that he was referring to her recent version of “Say A Little Prayer,” to which John said, “no, no, it's her new one,” George interjecting “that's the one Delaney wrote,” referring to the artist he was to tour with later that year. John then began singing the lyrics to “Twist And Shout” on top of this progression, Linda's six-year-old daughter Heather simultaneously finding a microphone to “sing” into for the next eight minutes. John even encourages the child, repeatedly singing, “Come on, Heather!”

However, just after the three-minute mark of this jam, John begins singing, “Well, can you dig it,” which recalls their fun exercise from two days prior. With all six musicians wailing (George Martin joined in on the fun with a percussive shaker), as well as Heather on her microphone, this progresses into what has been considered the final version of “Dig It.” Paul joins in with a vocal interchange with John as before, McCartney improvising his own “pick it up” lyrics at around the ten-minute mark, encouraging John to shout “For Christ sake, come on!” among various other things.

At the 11:35 mark, John reprises the inspiration to this whole rendition by singing “like a rolling stone” three times. Lennon then recalls a blues jam The Beatles performed on January 9th at Twickenham Studios (subsequently titled “Get Off!”), where they recited a laundry list of names that popped into their heads, such as “James Brown,” “Richard Nixon” and “Winston Churchill.” On this occasion, John names the FBI, the CIA, the BBC, “B.B. King,” “Doris Day,” and “Matt Musby” before giving this up and going back to his “dig it” refrain. The jam goes on for nearly another two minutes with vocal interchanges between John and Paul as Ringo switches to a standard swing beat to finish off the last minute of the performance. A 49-second edit from this 15-minute performance graced the released “Let It Be” soundtrack album.

The Beatles did return to “Dig It” two more times during the January 1969 Apple Studio rehearsals/recordings for the “Get Back / Let It Be” project, the brief rendition that occurred on January 28th done without Paul in-between extensive rehearsals of “The Long And Winding Road” and “Get Back.” The rehearsal of “Dig It” recorded on January 29th, however, shows how refined this “jamming” exercise had become. By the 18th day of rehearsals, their primary focus was to run through all of the songs they had perfected during the month in preparation for their inclusion on the final product, in whatever form that would be. In-between these refining rehearsals, “Dig It” resurfaced as well with Ringo's impressive snare-rolling drum beat propelling the rhythm.

This version, which nearly stretched to seven minutes in length, has John playing his Epiphone Casino this time around, reprising his recollections from three days earlier of naming the FBI, BBC, “Doris Day” and “Matt Busby.” Among Paul's scat vocals in the background, John continues his pattern of naming names, this time listing all of the song titles that they had been working on during January: “You can dig it in the morning, dig it for dinner, any day...Don't Let Me Down, Get Back, I've Got A Feeling, Two Of Us, All I Want Is You, Teddy Boy, One After 909, All Things Must Pass, Dig It, Let It Be, The Long And Winding Road, For You Blue, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, and Through The Bathroom Window...” The song slows its pace during the last minute and, after John utters a few German phrases, comes to a close as an instrumental jam. Thus was the last Beatles performance of what became known as “Dig It.”

After producer Glyn Johns accepted the task of putting together an album comprising the best of these January 1969 sessions, he chose the January 26th recording of “Dig It” to include therein. "One night I took a couple of reels of the eight-tracks away with me to Olympic Studios," Glyn Johns recalls, "and mixed two days of rehearsals with a lot of chat and humor and so on. I thought it would make the most incredible Beatles album ever because it was so real." He edited this version of "Dig It" to create a 4:29 track comprising a good portion of the later minutes of the take that included the “like a rolling stone...Doris Day” vocalizations. He decided to edit in John's comment from January 24th, “...and now we'd like to do 'Hark The Angel's Come'” as a segue into “Let It Be,” which was the next track on the proposed album. This editing work, as well as a stereo mix of the track, was accomplished on March 13th, 1969 at Olympic Sound Studios by Glyn Johns, George Martin possibly present as well. The Master tape banding and compilation for this album took place on May 28th, 1969, by George Martin, Glyn Johns, and engineer Steve Vaughan, although it didn't meet with The Beatles' approval and forfeited release in this form.

Interestingly, on August 11th, 1969, with the entire “Get Back / Let It Be” project put on hold, a mono tape copy of the March 13th stereo mix of “Dig It” was made by engineer Phil McDonald. This tape copy, along with a tape copy of the recently recorded “Maxwell's Silver Hammer,” was given to Mal Evans for him to give to Malcolm Davies at Apple Studios to cut acetate discs. Many assume that, since Paul had expressed a desire to release “Maxwell's Silver Hammer” as the next Beatles single, these two tracks entered consideration as the A- and B-side. While having a four-and-a-half-minute version of “Dig It” as a B-side of a Beatles single is interesting, I'm thinking most of us would agree that this overall suggestion would have been a mistake, one that the other Beatles undoubtedly vetoed.

On January 5th, 1970, the “Get Back / Let It Be” project churned nearer to release demand in some form with the movie finalized at this point. Glyn Johns once again got commissioned to put together a soundtrack album and entered a control room at Olympic Sound Studios to compile and band together the master tape for the LP. He used the same stereo mix of “Dig It” for this release but, since the song “Let It Be” was placed elsewhere in the running order, the “now we'd like to do 'Hark, The Angels Come'” introduction led into “The Long And Winding Road.” At any rate, the band also rejected this effort.

Once Phil Spector was chosen to prepare the soundtrack album, now called “Let It Be,” he met with engineers Mike Sheady and Roger Ferris in Room 4 of EMI Studios to create a new stereo mix of “Dig It.” He selected the same January 26th rendition of the song as Glyn Johns had chosen but edited it down to the “like a rolling stone...Matt Busby” section for inclusion on the album. Although vocalizations from Paul were heard during this segment of the performance, especially during the "like a rolling stone" lyrics, Phil Spector decided to pan this out of the mix entirely. Since McCartney was not involved in the final mixing work on the album and Phil Spector took charge at Lennon's request, one can assume that Paul's omitted vocal contributions came at John's request. Phil Spector also chose the “...' Hark, The Angels Come'” announcement from January 24th to use as a segue to the song “Let It Be,” as Glyn Johns originally proposed.

Song Structure and Style

Unlike almost all of the entire Beatles catalog (the most notable exception being “Revolution 9”), “Dig It” does not have a discernable structure at all, resulted from an improvisation. Lennon’s tune simply repeats a four-chord progression (F – Bb – C – Bb) in 6/8 time. The section of this “jamming” exercise, which fades in and then out as Phil Spector desired, roughly construes 20 measures in length.

Lennon's “That was 'Can You Dig It' by Georgie Wood...” statement from January 24th was strategically edited on top of the track on the downbeat of the 19th measure, this signaling the January 26th performance to be quickly faded out entirely. A brief snippet of a guitar playing a descending pattern is heard in the background while John unloads the final words “'Hark, The Angels Come” appearing after the “Dig It” performance had disappeared entirely, as if a DJ was humorously announcing “Let It Be” as the next selection on his radio playlist.

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