The Beatles on the roof: "Don't Let Me Down" at their final show on 30 January 1969
London, 30 January 1969: on the roof of Apple Corps at 3 Savile Row, the Beatles gave their last public performance – with "Don't Let Me Down" and Billy Preston on electric piano.
Photo: Neil Theasby / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Single video: YouTube · TheBeatlesVEVO · youtube.com
Lunchtime in London, 30 January 1969: on the roof of Apple Corps headquarters at 3 Savile Row, the Beatles play a concert above the city's rooftops. The official video shows "Don't Let Me Down" from that performance, which was filmed for a movie. It was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
Alongside John Lennon (rhythm guitar, vocals), Paul McCartney (bass, vocals), George Harrison (lead guitar) and Ringo Starr (drums), Billy Preston plays electric piano – the only non-Beatle in the performance. According to Harrison, Preston's playing instantly lifted the mood in the studio. In 42 minutes the band recorded nine takes of five new songs, with "Don't Let Me Down" played twice. After complaints about noise and traffic, the police arrived and the concert came to an end.
It remained the Beatles' last public performance. The footage went into the documentary "Let It Be", released in cinemas in May 1970. More than 50 years later, Peter Jackson's three-part docuseries "The Beatles: Get Back", released on Disney+ in November 2021, showed the rooftop concert in full. The audio followed on 28 January 2022 as "Get Back – The Rooftop Performance".