The weather was cold, 4 degrees Celsius. Wind whipped across the tar-paper roof of 3 Savile Row, the London headquarters of Apple Corps. At 12:30 PM, the Beatles and keyboardist Billy Preston walked out. They had not performed live together in over two years. There were no announcements, no tickets. The equipment was rudimentary, their amplifiers propped up on bricks against the wind.
The first chords of "Get Back" rang out, raw and immediate. Sound spilled into the concrete canyon of the Mayfair street below. Office workers leaned out windows. Secretaries on lunch breaks gathered on fire escapes. Construction workers on a nearby site put down their tools. A crowd coagulated on the pavement, necks craned upward. Paul McCartney’s voice, slightly distorted by the portable PA, bounced off the Georgian brickwork.
They played for forty-two minutes. Five songs were completed, with multiple takes and false starts. The set was loose, almost a rehearsal. John Lennon, in a fur coat, remarked to the unseen audience between songs. The police arrived after complaints about noise. They first went to the building’s reception, then made their way to the roof. The band saw them coming. The final song was "Don’t Let Me Down," followed by a fragment of "I’ve Got a Feeling." As two officers approached, George Harrison saw them and leaned into his microphone. “You’ve been playing on the roofs again,” he said, a flat, humorous observation. “And you know your momma doesn’t like it.” McCartney improvised a final lyric: “You’ve been taking too long, now you’re gonna get a thick ear!” The music stopped. Lennon, famously, said, “I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition.” It was not a grand farewell. It was an interruption.