The Beatles – Get Back Review
468 Minutes (across 3 episodes), Not Rated
Directed by Peter Jackson
Synopsis:
Documentary about the music group The Beatles featuring in-studio footage that was shot in early 1969 for the 1970 feature film Let It Be.
One cannot be a music fan and hate The Beatles.
There; I said it.
That doesn’t mean you have to love The Beatles, but it does mean you have to acknowledge, even if only begrudgingly, their skills as musicians and songwriters, both individually and collectively, and the contribution The Beatles made, both during their all-too-brief six year “professional” period, and in the years since.
Why are we talking about a band who broke up 50+ years ago on a website whose primary focus is movies, then?
Good question.
[While we will certainly discuss this at some point, I really felt that a timely review was in order, so I busted out the old keyboard and laid this down for you. I hope you enjoy it.]
Right now, Disney+ is showing an exclusive three-part series, directed by Peter Jackson, assembled from sixty-plus hours of film and 150-plus hours of audio recording across some 20 days in January of 1969, as these four, one-named gentlemen (John, Paul, George, and Ringo) came together to attempt what would seem to be an impossible task: to write, record, and perform (in front of a live audience) an album of new material.
A daunting enough challenge for any group of artists, but made all the more difficult by the fact the band was barely on speaking terms personally, much less trodding the fertile creative fields of their earlier days professionally.
The long and winding road to the creation of the album “Let it Be” was previously presented only as an eighty-minute feature film of the same name.
Eighty minutes.
Which, by the time of its release, had become simply a document of the band’s demise, rather than a creative supplement to the music.
Eighty minutes.
Of a whopping 3600 minutes of video footage, and nearly triple that of audio.
That’s TWO PERCENT if you’re keeping track at home.
How much of a story can you truly tell, then, using only two percent of it?
in 2017, Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame) was approached to help Apple Corps (The Beatles’ legacy holders) cull the entirety of the material and present a fuller picture of the band during this period.
Originally hesitant, not only because the story had been told in the aforementioned documentary, but because as a fan, Jackson knew as well as any that this period was the end, that the band was done, and was hesitant to be involved what he believed would simply be a “break-up movie.”
But he agreed to look.
Just to look.
We should all be grateful he did, because now we have this wonderous, surprising, moving, prophetic series which more fully showcases the band in all its glory, its highs and lows, its aggression and affection.
Episode 1:
Clocking in at a challenging 157 minutes, this first episode spends the first 10 minutes reminding the world of the path these four artists took, from Liverpool, to Berlin, to the top of the music world’s Everest, before arriving, in January of 1969, at what came to be known as the “Get Back sessions.”
The stated goal: 14 songs in 14 days, with a live show to cap it off.
From dealing with equipment limitations in a not-built-for-recording soundstage, to not having any material written, only snippets of lyric and fragments of melody, and attempting–but mostly failing–to speak the collaborative language they’d enjoyed seemingly effortlessly before now, their interactions seem more therapeutic than creative.
Though the creativity is still there, lurking just below the surface, it emerges at stuttering intervals, and we see what will become the immortal “Get Back” in its most nascent form come into existence, as Paul noodles on his classic violin bass guitar, was the band waits for John to arrive (as they would all wind up waiting for one another through the sessions).
We see the genesis of many bits of music that will become the “Abbey Road” album (recorded after, but released before, the material that become this “Let It Be” album).
Here we see the band at its creative and interpersonal low point, made all the sadder by those brief moments of brilliance.
The lowest point, of course, being George’s quitting the band.
Yes, George Harrison quits The Beatles first. Not John, not Paul: George.
The other three take a day, then meet with George to talk it out.
It does not go well, and we end this episode with, as Paul puts it, “and then there were three.”
Episode 2:
Now Peter Jackson begins the yeoman’s work, bringing us the meat of the film, clocking in at a massive 173 minutes, as the “Get Back sessions” well and truly begin.
We open with George gone, the remaining Beatles floundering a bit, and we are privy to a great deal of casual conversation in which the personal relationships the band members have, both between themselves and with their families, become clearer.
John and Yoko Ono, the omnipresent figure at his side, are a topic of conversation, and Paul remarks that if push ever came to shove between The Beatles and Yoko, John would choose Yoko, because he was so in love with her. He says this without any animosity, simply as a statement of fact.
He even prophetically questions (in a disbelieving tone) whether those present could imagine people blaming Yoko for the break-up of The Beatles in fifty years.
He knows it wouldn’t be true, that it wouldn’t be her fault, but the statement in and itself is enlightening as Paul borders on explicitly stating the band is over, without actually saying the band is over.
This is a recurring theme throughout the footage, as the band never says, “after this, we’re done,” but many statements of the “if this IS the last one” kind of sentiment are often uttered by the band and management personnel.
They knew in their heads it was over, but it is apparent that, in their hearts, they don’t want it to be. They know what they had, and what they could have more of.
The episode continues and John and Paul debate about what to do, and I was amazed at the fact they often communicated their feelings by singing snippets of their own lyrics. They did what Beatles fans do.
It is, when you grasp it in those moments, incredibly powerful stuff.
It is, opposite of other bands whose careers end in disaster, not the personal things which impact the professional, but the professional cross-roads which creep into the otherwise affectionate personal relationships between the band members.
Finally, after reconciling with George, the band moves from the colossal soundstage into the new Apple studio in London to continue their work.
Often hitting snags in musical arrangement, and lacking enough hands to play everything at once, the band enlists the aid of Billy Preston, a renowned keyboard player in his own right, and his musical skills take some of the weight off the others, and the creative inertia in which they’ve been mired seems broken, and the songs begin to coalesce with greater speed.
This musical momentum seems to relieve the personal inertia, as well, and more and more of the genuine affection the bandmates hold for one another breaks though. Even when a musical sticking point is encountered after that, it is handled not dictatorially by any one member, but lead by whoever’s song it is with the willing participation of the others.
The camera often lights upon Billy’s face, and his smile is enough to ensure us that the tension remaining is mostly due to the self-imposed (though continually moved) deadlines for both recording and performing the songs.
And, in the midst of all this drama, we see truly lighthearted moments of silly tinkering and nonsense lyrical flights of nothing in particular, broken in that moment when the “Recording” light comes on, when the “work” begins.
I can only describe it as a sort of “casual professionalism,” and it was, for me at least, an amazing sight.
As we near the end of the episode, we learn that serious discussion (though not always presented in a serious manner) is given to inviting Billy to join the band, officially.
Watching them work together for mere days, one is left to wonder, what if…?
Episode 3:
The briskest of Jackson’s installments, at only 138 minutes, the relatively short runtime mirrors the frenetic pace of the events it depicts.
With 3 days remaining until what was once proposed to be a seaside concert at an ancient amphitheater in Libya, before becoming a hilltop show in Primrose Park, before becoming a (possible) performance on the rooftop of Apply Studios is to go on, and the band is in a flurry to finish, learn, and record those songs.
Fourteen songs are no longer a possibility, so the goal becomes to finish what they can, play and record them live, and release the LP using those performances, if possible, supplemented by studio recordings of the other tracks.
Polishing the songs they have, playing them over and over, it is easy to see why musicians might become tired of hearing or playing their songs again and again. We see the band’s frustration as last-minute lyric and melody changes are made, learned, changed again, and recorded for comparison, before settling on a list for the rooftop show, now bumped one additional day due to bad weather.
Then… they play.
By God, you cannot have ever listened to music or seen a video and not seen The Beatles perform “Get Back” on the rooftop in London as the police try to get in to stop them due to noise complaints.
“Disturbing the peace.”
Pfft!
The Apple Studios staff does a wonderful job of delaying and distracting police, keeping them from the roof as the band plays their set, some songs more than once, as the crowd below gathers and grows.
This is the moment. These thirty-odd minutes of performance, when, even with the cold biting their fingers, keeping John from making some chords, you can see they all know it’s the end, but reveling in those moments. The joy genuine as John and Paul look at one another and harmonize on “Get Back.”
Jackson manages to expand on that original Two Percent of material in the 1970 documentary and gives us over Thirteen Percent–468 minutes–of material, and manages to make us feel as though we’ve seen everything, that nothing was left out.
Nothing is hidden from the camera’s omnipresent eye, and we see it all.
The good, the bad, and the ugly.
It is real. It is beautiful. It is why The Beatles are THE BEATLES.
It is, put simply, a masterpiece.
As they were.
The Beatles – Get Back is available exclusively on Disney+.
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