The next song on the "Let It Be" Apple LP/CD is credited as an original composition written by all four Beatles Lennon/McCartney/Starkey/Harrison and it is basically an improvisation on four chords repeated over and over with both John and Paul adding vocals made up as the song goes along. The name of the song is "Dig It".
Two versions of the song were recorded: the first version of the song was probably more suited to the title "Can You Dig It" as this was supposedly the lyric repeated over and over on January 24 1969 at Apple Studios. Although the music from this first version is currently unreleased, the quote from John Lennon at the end of the song made it onto both the "Get Back" LP and the "Let It Be" LP : "That was 'Can You Dig It' by George Wood, now we'd like to do 'Hark The Angels Come'". This saying was crossfaded just before the beginning of the title song for "Let It Be".
The second version of the song was recorded two days later on January 26 1969 also at Apple Studios: This consisted of John on bass, Paul on grand piano, George on guitar, Ringo on drums, Heather Eastman on occasional vocal (not on the commercial version) and George Martin on shaker for percussion. Over 12 minutes of the improvisation was recorded on tape and the longest version is available (over 8 minutes) on the vinyl LP bootleg "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and "Dig It" (original bootleg titles for sure...LOL !!). Unfortunately, this long version is only available in mono.
Glyn Jones would later edit this recording and present 4 minutes of the song on his future "Get Back" LP line ups. This recording would once again be edited down under one minute for inclusion by Phil Spector on the Apple LP/CD "Let It Be" and tagged with the above quote.
On January 28 1969 at Apple Studios, a third jam on the "Dig it" theme continued but this version was not to be released.
A rough stereo mix ( from version two) was conducted at Olympic Studios by Glyn Jones on the evening of January 30 1969 for acetate purposes. These were unreleased and probably cut for the Beatles to listen to.
A proper stereo mix (once again version two) was conducted at Olympic Studios by Glyn Jones for inclusion on the "Get Back" LP which was eventually scrapped and remains unreleased to date.
The master banding and the compiling of the songs for the "Get Back" LP including version two of "Dig It" was completed on Wednesday May 28 1969 at Olympic Studios by both George Martin and Glyn Jones. This LP remains unreleased.
On Monday August 11 1969, a mono tape copy of "Dig It" was made of the March 13 1969 stereo mix for acetate purposes. This took place in the control room of EMI studio three and was taken away by Mal Evans for Apple.
A second version of the "Get Back" LP was once again banded and compiled by Glyn Jones at Olympic Studios and containing the "Dig It" track. This was completed on January 05 1970 and contained additional material not available on the first version.
Finally, on March 27 1969, "Dig It" was edited down to less than one minute and mixed for stereo by Phil Spector at EMI studios, room 4 in one attempt. Quite a long history for one little improvised song.
"Dig It" is available on the Apple LP/CD "Let It Be" and was not released on it's subsequent future companion Apple/EMI LP/CD "Let It Be...Naked".
A performance of "Dig It" can be seen in the movie "Let It Be".
A proper stereo mix
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