I enjoyed Peter “Lord of the Rings” Jackson’s eight-hour documentary Get Back on the Disney + streaming service, reconstructed from the 60 hours of footage shot during the January 1969 recording sessions of the Beatles’ Let It Be album (which was their last album released, but their second to last recorded: they came back in February 1969 to begin the beloved Abbey Road album).
But I have had a hard time figuring out anything true and new to say about it, since lots of people know more about the Beatles than I do (although Let It Be was the first new album I ever bought) and they’ve been discussed endlessly over the last 57 years.
I apologize to those who are Boomer obsession–averse, but, obviously, the pre-Boomer Beatles were key figures in the history of the 20th century.
Peter Jackson’s nine-hour Lord of the Rings is one of the great feats in movie history. But by the time of 2004’s King Kong, it was apparent that Jackson is addicted to repetition, which became clear during the interminable Hobbit prequels. On the other hand, if you are going to sit around with anybody noodling for eight hours, the delightful Beatles would be at the top of many people’s lists.
Jackson presents his reworking of the footage filmed for the unpopular 1970 Let It Be documentary Frederick Wiseman–style with no interviews with older Beatles explaining what is going on. But it’s not hard to look up what the boys said about each song’s development in ensuing years.
Jackson also chooses chronological order rather than splitting up his documentary by song. For example, Jackson has an hour or so on the three-week-long development of the “Get Back” single, a linear proto-punk rocker in the style of “Communication Breakdown,” the B-side of Led Zeppelin’s great first single with “Good Times, Bad Times,” released in October 1968.
We first see “Get Back” emerge out of Paul’s rather formless riffing while he talks to George and Ringo, an incredible moment. And Jackson revisits the song time and again, up through the three live renditions on the roof of the Apple Building on Savile Row in their last live performance.
On the other hand, spread out over almost eight hours, it’s hard to keep track of what exactly they are doing to improve it. Musicians may get a lot out of watching the evolution of “Get Back,” but the untalented rest of us are likely to be stumped by what the boys are doing. (In particular, I’d like to see more emphasis on what exactly the unobtrusive Ringo is doing to make their studio tracks so good. Would a spectacular drummer like Keith Moon have made their recordings better or worse? Presumably, John Bonham would have been better than Ringo, but he was eight years younger, which was a couple of generations in the Sixties.)
Paul McCartney intended the new album to be a palette-cleanser in which all four Beatles got together and recorded a more or less live album without the studio trickery they had perfected on Sgt. Pepper’s. On the other hand, they had to finish by the end of January, when Ringo Starr was going to start filming The Magic Christian with Peter Sellers.
The initial sessions at a vast movie studio sound stage were depressing.
But after George Harrison announced he was quitting the Beatles, the others consented to his perfectly reasonable demands to cancel the live TV special idea and move to a good studio. Once ensconced in their new and better-sounding Apple studio, George then asked his friend Billy Preston, the African-American keyboardist, to drop by. (Similarly, George’s invitation to Eric Clapton had made “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” a classic.)
The other Beatles ask Billy to sit in with them, because their no-overdubs rule is leaving them shorthanded as their music is getting increasingly complex. His sensational playing and great attitude cheer them up no end. Unlike all the English suits they employ, who seem rather ho-hum about them being the Beatles, Billy’s attitude is, more or less, “Wow, you guys are The Beatles!!! and you’re letting me play with you!” Not surprisingly, the mop-tops are bucked up by this outstanding musician’s appreciation.
The last couple of weeks of January go quite well. At the beginning of the month, Paul’s increasing dominance—after all, he was in his prime, much more handsome than the other three, who were looking by this point a little weather-beaten, and insanely prolific of musical hooks—had tended to alienate John and George. But in the last half of the month, John eases back on the heroin and serves as a tremendous second banana to Paul. Overall, Lennon comes out looking very well as a team player.
Late in the sessions, George introduces a tentative early version of “Something,” which Frank Sinatra considered the best song of the era. But the other Beatles don’t quite get it yet, and it will have to wait until Abbey Road.
The unanswered question: How did the Beatles come up with so many catchy hooks? Nobody considers Let It Be to be one of the great Beatles’ albums. And yet it is ridiculously tuneful:
1. “Two of Us”
2. “Dig a Pony”
3. “Across the Universe”
4. “I Me Mine”
5. “Dig It”
6. “Let It Be”
7. “Maggie Mae” (a traditional sailor’s song, not the great 1970 Rod Stewart single)
1. “I’ve Got a Feeling”
2. “One After 909”
3. “The Long and Winding Road”
4. “For You Blue”
5. “Get Back”
Pretty much every track other than the ancient sea shanty “Maggie Mae” and, perhaps, the 50-second “Dig It,” includes a massive hook. And yet nobody considers this a great Beatles album.
After watching the documentary, I’m pretty much stumped how the Beatles did it.
Clearly, they benefited from being at the tail end of the Great American Songbook era of tremendous songwriting craftsmanship, which they helped destroy. (Paul is particularly careless about his lyrics.)
But how did they come up with so many catchy tunes? Was it all musical skill?
I suspect not.
First, because England was so broke after 1945, the world didn’t have a proper victory celebration for the Anglo-American coalition. It may seem insane to see 1960s rock as a party for the winners of the Big One, but notice that the French, Italians, and Germans were not invited to Woodstock.
Second, the Beatles’ producer George Martin cites their tremendously appealing personalities. I suspect that the English traditional emphasis on young male charm played a role. In Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, the Argentine aesthete Anthony Blanche rants:
Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art …
Well, sure, but charm made the Beatles who they were.
