Before I started watching, I already knew the ending. But like in so many parts of life, it’s not the destination; it’s the journey. And so it was beginning on Thanksgiving as I settled in over several nights to follow along Peter Jackson’s 8-hour Beatles adventure from January 1969.
It was quite the ride.
I don’t claim to be any special kind of Beatlephile, but I am unabashedly a life-long fan of the fabs, and I’ve been waiting for this with high expectations, as I am also a fan of Jackson’s work. To have access to the entire vault of film and sound recordings made alongside the recording sessions that, ultimately, gave us the last release of the Beatles would be a dream gig. Probably a nightmare, at times, but I can only begin to imagine what it was like working through all those miles of footage…and having seen the final result, I am wondering what kind of gems had to be cut to wrangle this beast into it final form.
Over the years, I have ingested numerous books, articles, radio and television programs and other media about the Beatles. My interest in the group can be blamed almost in whole on my aunt Mary Anne, who exposed me at the youngest age to their music. (She’s also responsible for my Snoopy and Nilsson interests, all of which I can’t thank her enough, really.) Growing up a child of the 60’s, they were damn near omnipresent in my ears, on the radio, even in the classroom, when Mr. B. would visit with his accordion and we’d sit in the circle singing Ob La Di and When I’m Sixty Four and even, at times, Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds.
It was a gas to hear songs on the radio from John, Paul, George, and even Ringo, all now on their own, and demonstrate my musical knowledge to friends who did not know that song was by someone who used to be a Beatle. Over time, we’d compare their independent careers – based mostly on Top-40 radio, so Paul seemed to be the most successful. Naturally, in my group of friends, to be somewhat iconoclastic, I would defend John over Paul, even after he took leave of his music career to focus on fathering and I had to defend his long-worn efforts over the latest and greatest from Paul.
Then, finally, he released his first album in five years, and I was thrilled. I still have the vinyl I bought on December 5, 1980, two and a half weeks after its release.
We know what happened a few days later.
By that time, I had been reading this and that; the rolling stone stories and interviews…the Playboy interview, and a few of the books. I’d managed to see the 1970 version of Let It Be, a film (in my recollection) that was far too dismal to be true. I mean, after the sessions that gave us the album Let It Be, they went back into the studio and gave us Abbey frickin’ Road, a farewell that was a much better gift as their last work, even if the timing of the releases made it seem more penultimate than ultimate.
All of this to say, the story of the Beatles is one with which I feel confident in saying I am quite familiar…and yet…so much over the years was never properly resolved in telling of the end. By most accounts, the sessions in Twickenham, where George famously quit for a few days, were the end of the group. After all, Yoko was there – forever demonized as the catalyst for the split. Of course, very little is made of the fact that Ringo quit the group four months earlier – and stayed away a week longer than George did when he quit – while the sessions that gave us The Beatles were creating more conflict that the Twickenham sessions did.
We weren’t there. We don’t know how they split. Well, we do; there is a timeline, and there is a narrative, but there are so many conflicting stories from the people close the group that have all made it in to this definitive or that definitive version of the story – I’ve lost track. And so many of the stories make the whole John and Yoko story line the reason we don’t have the Beatles today – to which I’ve always called bullshit. (At the risk of digressing too far, it’s worth noting that The Ballad of John and Yoko was recorded four months after the Get Back sessions, and while credited to the group, George was abroad and Ringo was filming The Magic Christian, so John and Paul did it all themselves. There’s a lot of joy on that record.)
At any rate – we weren’t there. And while there is a lot of Beatles history from 1969 we don’t see, Get Back gives us a new look into a part of the year that has been, for more than 50 years, pretty well told.
Or so we thought.
The very first thing we see when watching Get Back (it’s on Disney+ which I’ve kept as a service in anticipation of seeing this) is a notice telling us that what we’re going to experience has been culled from nearly 60 hours of film and 150 hours of audio recordings. Once I read that, I thought crap – we only get to see 8 hours worth… Fortunately, Jackson and crew have done an incredible job of curating this archive for us and creating a story across three installments. I’ll not give a travelogue, other than to say Part 1 is in Twickenham studio and ends as George leaves; Part 2 is the group getting back together and decamping to the basement of their Apple HQ on Savile Row, to be joined by Bill Preston on keys, and Part 3 culminates with the rooftop concert.
Along the way, we get to be the proverbial fly on the wall watching the lads get together each day and make music. Sometimes they experiment with new songs and new sounds. Other times they kick back and play 50s rockers.
How young they looked in this film. The image quality is exceptional, as is the sound, and all throughout I marveled at how good it looked, as if it had been recorded last week. For a very large part of the time, they are just goofing off, playing together, but even when they good off you can see their amazing talent, and then, as I watched, it occurred me: none of them were yet 30, and yet they’d been rocking together as a band, in earnest, for a dozen years.
Also: how tired they looked. On most days, they all display a workman-like mien, coming in at the start of the shift each day to do their job, ply their trade, and lay down some tracks. And while the rooftop concert only yields a handful of songs, by the end of January, 1969, we’ve seen the Beatles create the album Let It Be and get a jumpstart on Abbey Road, plus a glimpse at the solo projects brewing from George’s All Things Must Pass, Paul’s Ram, and John’s Imagine albums.
Get Back is a look with love at the Beatles, from a time that we all thought we knew. But until I saw it with my own two eyes, I never knew that John, Paul, Ringo, and Yoko rocked out in jam sessions – Paul wide-eyed and hooting as he does when he’s in a groove, Yoko ululating in her avant-garde splendor. Yoko wasn’t the only band partner who spent time in the studio during these sessions – it wasn’t the boy’s-only club we thought she broke up from the old, “traditional” narrative.
I am sure that in whittling down the hours and hours (and hours!) of recordings to the mere (!) eight we’re allowed to see, narrative choices were made. Much of the story we knew (at least, thought we knew) is intact. The soundstage, the cameras, the walkout, the move to Apple’s building, Billy, and the rooftop – it’s all there, but presented in a new and more thoughtful manner. Long takes of song fragments are allowed to evolve into the works we’ve come to know. Long dialogues allow us to hear the give and take between the partners, giving us insight into how these songs came to be; and how the band was winding down.
All of this is to say: watch Get Back. If you are a Beatles fan, you’ll better know your band from doing so. If you are not a Beatles fan, you’ll likely come away better knowing why, even today, they are a phenomenon and back on the charts. But one word of warning: this is not something to be binged. I forced myself to watch in chunks. It’s too much to process, all in one setting. It’s like a fine dessert -oh, sure, you could just dig in and eat the whole thing, but it’s better if you take a small slice, savor it, then come back later for more. The good feeling lasts longer, and you don’t overwhelm your senses.
Had the pandemic not set in when it did, it is likely that this would have been a three-plus hour film for release in theaters. Because of COVID, the release was pushed back, and in the interim, the wise decision was allowed to make it longer, in three parts, and, ultimately, better. Well worth the extra I’ve paid monthly to have the Disney+ service.
I’m only giving this two thumbs up because that’s all the thumbs I’ve got.
