McCartney Times

We’re dipping int the Far Out Magazine vault to look back at a cherishable moment. A moment which saw three figures of the past reunite to acclaim and lament the missing member. This is the moment the surviving members of The Beatles— Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr—got together to perform a short medley of the band’s earliest songs.

The group were gathered at George Harrison’s palatial home, Friar Park, to record some extra footage for their upcoming new project The Beatles Anthology. The project saw the group take part in a hugely successful documentary TV series that focused on the meandering journey of The Beatles from Cavern excitement to worldwide domination.

Paul, George, and Ringo were asked to perform a few songs for the series finale and despite it being a touch cheesy, the reunion is a joy to watch. Producers had originally suggested that the trio perform ‘Let It Be’ but the gravity of their missing member suddenly hit them. They took a turn around Harrison’s garden to discuss the prospect of performing without John Lennon.

Instead, the group decided to perform a medley of some of The Beatles’ earliest songs by way of paying tribute to but not forgetting their friend.

The video below you can watch as Paul, George and Ringo came together to perform for one of the first times in years. “It was just two acoustic guitars and me on brushes,” Ringo confirmed. The band performed bits of ‘Raunchy’, ‘Thinking of Linking’ and ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’. For those in the know, ‘Raunchy’ is a very special track for the Beatles.

It was the song that a 14-year-old George Harrison performed on the back of a bus as he auditioned for Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Despite George’s comparatively young age, Lennon was so impressed by Harrison’s note-perfect performance he invited him to be a part of The Quarrymen, who would later become The Beatles.

‘Thinking Linking’ is another song with a special place in the annals of Beatles iconography, McCartney writing the song at the tender age of 16. “‘Thinking of Linking’ was terrible,” he said in 1988. “I thought it up in the pictures; someone in a film mentioned it—’we’re thinking of linking’—and I came out of there thinking, ‘That should be a song. Thinking of linking, people are gonna get married, gotta write that!’”

Around halfway through the clip below, ‘The Threetles’ as they soon became known to the press took things into the garden and begun to cover some other rock and roll standards. On two of Harrison’s ukeleles (the guitarist is a huge fan of the instrument), Paul and George strum through ‘Baby What You Want Me To Do’ and ‘Ain’t She Sweet’, all while Ringo slaps his thighs in perfectly absurd rhythm.

As one of the only times that The Beatles reunited, the footage remains not only a testament to the career they shared, their lives that intertwined, and the sadness that it was only three of them.

Watch below as Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr reunite The Beatles back in 1994.

Source: McCartney, Harrison, and Starr reunite The Beatles in 1994