Basically since 1964, The Beatles have perpetually remained the most lauded and famous rock group in the world. Now more than fifty-two years after it was shot, footage has been presented that largely changes several of the most widely held notions concerning their eventual breakup. The resulting The Beatles: Get Back is therefor a monumentally important document in the history of pop music in general.
While this may be an accurate assessment of the film, it is also a broad one. For Beatles fans both casual and obsessive, Get Back is essential. This is partly due to its extensive running time of nearly eight hours which represents the only footage of the band writing, rehearsing, and ultimately performing and recording their material, virtually from conception to finish. This is the most penetrating, firsthand look into both their work ethic and personalities that has ever existed. Such a deep dive is insightful by nature and since it is from a group with no rivals in cultural importance and influence, only those with little to no interest in music at all would fail to find merit in what is presented here.
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| John Lennon's face for the (wrong) people who do not like The Beatles. |
Similar to everything in The Beatles history, the Get Back project has a fascinating backdrop. The footage here was of course initially shot for what became director Michael Lindsay-Hogg's 1970 documentary Let It Be. Said movie came to pass only after an initial television special conceived of by Paul McCartney fell through, partly because the writing sessions for the album were not ideally productive. The Beatles shacked up in Twickenham Studios just after the new year in 1969 with a deadline looming for the end of the month to get roughly fourteen new songs in the can before Ringo Starr began shooting The Magic Christian in the same film studio. The location proved uncomfortably cold and foreign, with previous tensions intensifying that had began to largely surface during the making of The Beatles, (The White Album), several months earlier. These came to the forefront with George Harrison temporarily leaving the group mid-session. A few days then went by with a failed band meeting between the four taking place, as well as further discussions as to how to proceed with the project, which even included a, (perhaps?), jestful idea by John Lennon to bring Eric Clapton in as a replacement. Things eventually came back together once it was agreed to abandon the television special idea and relocate to their newly set-up studio in the basement of their Apple headquarters at Savile Row. Here, a more positive vibe took over, Billy Preston joined the band as a session keyboard player, and they eventually settled on a rooftop concert to end what was now being planned as their third theatrically released movie.
This is all common knowledge of course and much of it was divulged in the Let It Be film. Said movie did not see that theatrical release until after their break-up though, at which point both the band members and the public were various levels bitter and frustrated with certain aspects of their demise. There is a reason then that it is the only Beatles movie to still be out of print, surviving solely on the bootleg front since the 1980s. With such a massive amount of footage condensed then to a mere eighty-minute running time and emerging when it did, critics and fans alike largely saw it as a quasi-depressing document showcasing the breakup of the biggest band to ever exist. The members both surviving and passed-on never thought too highly of the Let It Be movie considering the bad vibes that it unfortunately represented. This all makes Peter Jackson's reworking of the material all the more uplifting in comparison.
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| The infamous "I'll play whatever you want me to play" argument was left in to fill the aforementioned "bad vibes" quota. |
Jackson plus his creative/editing team behind the 2018 World Word War I documentary They Shall Not Grow Old gained access to the sixty hours of video and one-hundred and fifty hours of audio materiel initially produced by Lindsay-Hogg, which had been sitting in the Beatles Apple Corps vaults ever since. Painstakingly restoring, reconstructing, and editing the project took the better part of four years. The end game of such an endeavor was initially planned to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the sessions, which was green-lit by McCartney, Starr, Olivia Harrison, and Yoko Ono. "Thankfully" this little thing called the COVID-19 pandemic happened though and Jackson and co took the opportunity to elaborate on the final two-hour theatrical cut, ultimately resulting in the three part mini-series that Disney picked up for distribution.
There are more details surrounding the massive undertaking of the project if one wants to investigate further, but the main takeaway is how The Beatles: Get Back rewrites the long-believed narrative of such an era. Most prominent is the overall amount of merriment on display. While the group was certainly faced with a number of conundrums to work through at the time and they seem burnt out at regular intervals, they conduct themselves with the utmost level of professionalism and joy. Whether this is a coping mechanism in some respects is a mute point since at the end of the day, each member's willingness to get the job done and make the best of their chemistry together ultimately shines through and is also ultimately what matters most.
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| Pictured: professionalism. |
Many of the group's problems at the time are the result of their manager and ringleader Brian Epstein having died at the end of 1967's summer. This footnote left the band largely aimless, which allowed them to indulge in costly creative and business ventures. Meanwhile, McCartney's naturally enthusiastic, well-meaning though ego-driven demeanor put him in the de facto-leader position as Lennon let his power slip due to his elevated drug use that led to what he described as the "death" of his ego. At the same time, Harrison's increasing creative confidence, newfound spirituality, and practical financial sense began to jive poorly with the comparative dominance and flippant tenancies shared by Lennon and McCartney. Ringo of course stayed the consummate professional, showing up on time and before anyone, remaining largely quiet, and patiently sitting behind his drum kit ready to do his job at each and every instance that such a thing was required.
Though these are well-known details within The Beatles' dynamics, they are also still important in understanding the group's inevitable split. The individual eccentricities and personalities of the band members undoubtedly contributed to their exceptional material. Yet for many, many decades now it has been falsely surmised that such clashing of opinions and characteristics made for mostly miserable working conditions during the making of Get Back. Wonderfully, this has proven to be false. It is simply an exhilarating experience seeing John and Paul run through versions of "Two of Us" while either singing in foreign accents or jokingly clenching their teeth, watching George lovingly show enthusiasm and give assistance to Ringo's brand new song in progress "Octopus's Garden", seeing John take out a joint and then put it back in his pocket while making a silly face after remembering that the cameras are on him, and watching Ring notify Paul that he farted halfway through a serious business conversation and thought that it would be better to tell him than to say nothing.
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| A (gassy) class act that Ringo. |
The Beatles are consistently in a goofy mood yes, but since we also know that this was one of their more uncomfortable periods as a group, the fact that they spend such large chunks of time blowing off steam in a silly manor showcases their overall positive character that much more. There are many times where they seem politely annoyed that they cannot agree on certain things or come up with any universally acceptable solutions to their problems. Yet they believe in the music, believe in their ability to deliver when their backs are up against the wall, and generally seem to enjoy being together. All elements of tension surrounding a cacophony of wives and girlfriends, technicians, friends, associates, engineers, filmmakers, and crew members being present while everyone is asking them where they are going to play live or what they want for lunch are bypassed by such jovial attitudes that win out each and every time.
At one point early on, Paul jokes that in fifty years everyone is going to say that The Beatles broke up because Yoko sat on an amp. While this results in unanimous laughter from both those around him and probably anyone viewing the film, it is also cryptically telling of how self aware he and the group was even then about their own impending legend. A paramount goal of Jackson's approach here was to unearth any revelatory information that he could find and numerous conversations are heard that exemplify this. Paul and John have a chat with hidden microphones in a flower pot where they both honestly admit their own perceptions of each other's egos and how it has effected their current situation as well as George's unhappiness. Yoko and Linda McCartney are seen having cordial conversations with each other and Linda's daughter Heather appears one day where everyone in the band seems to enjoy her childish tomfoolery. George Martin, Glyn Johns, Billy Preston, and Mal Evans are show smiling and in lovely spirits throughout almost the entire production. George Harrison explains to John and Yoko for the first time that he has enough songs ready to fit his quota for the next ten years of Beatles albums and that he would love to record them all on his own so that he can focus more productively on the group, a proclamation that both John and Yoko agree is a wonderful idea.
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| George of course would soon unleash all of those songs under the working title of Attack of the Garden Gnomes. |
These are but a handful of moments and details that accomplish two very paramount things. As discussed previously, they certainly debunk the fable of the band being overrun by egos and negativity, resulting in an uncomfortably strained relationship between them. Perhaps even more importantly though is that it presents them as logical and compassionate human beings. The Beatles: Get Back is extraordinary in that it showcases extraordinary people achieving extraordinary things, but it does so while grounding John, Paul, George, and Ringo to a mortal plane of existence. For artists that have easily been perceived as mythical figures for more than half a century now, spending over eight, uninterrupted hours with them as they work out the kinks of their situation with unwavering respect and love for each other is something to cherish.
Along with the similarly expansive and sprawling Anthology series which presents a more complete picture of the band's entire existence together as opposed to just a twenty-one day period, Get Back easily stands as the greatest documentary on the Beatles that presumably will ever be made. It is an overwhelmingly positive viewing experience and as ideal of a footnote to the band's most misunderstood era as could have been hoped for. So, so many aspects of the group's history have been painstakingly documented and explored that for something this conclusive and outstanding to emerge after we have all assumed that there was nothing more to tell and nothing more to learn, well, here we are folks and indeed the story has only gotten more inspiring.
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| The audition has most certainly been passed. |
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