{"id":8383,"date":"2021-12-09T09:56:26","date_gmt":"2021-12-09T09:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/?p=8383"},"modified":"2021-12-09T22:54:09","modified_gmt":"2021-12-09T22:54:09","slug":"the-beatles-get-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2021\/12\/09\/the-beatles-get-back\/","title":{"rendered":"\ud83d\udcfa The Beatles: Get Back"},"content":{"rendered":"
Finished watching The Beatles: Get Back<\/a><\/em>. What a treat! It was well worth the wait.<\/p>\n
\"This

This is how history is made.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Beatles have always been part of my life. My awareness as a child moved to obsession as a teenager in the early 1990s. I listened to as much of their recordings and hoovered up as much information as I could, reading books such as The Ultimate Beatles Encyclopedia<\/a><\/em> from cover to cover. My obsession has waned but my interest is still alive; I continue to pick up the odd Beatles-related book or movie every now and again.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never seen the original Let It Be<\/a><\/em> movie from 1969. It was always out of print and unavailable to buy. But the recording sessions were infamous. I\u2019d read and heard so much about them I felt like I knew the story. It turns out that I did<\/em>, but there is so much more colour to the narrative than I was expecting.<\/p>\n

The three episode format, each one longer than many films, seems like an odd choice at first but makes sense upon watching them. Each one covers a period of about a week or so. The first is based on the sessions at Twickenham Studios<\/a>, the second when they move into Apple Studio<\/a> in Savile Row and the third covers the concert on the roof of the Apple office. Eight hours seems like a long running time but it didn\u2019t feel that way. Usually when I watch a music documentary I am always clamouring for the \u2018super deluxe director\u2019s cut extended redux\u2019 edition and feel a bit short-changed, but not this time. Jackson has judged the running time superbly, having edited it down from approximately 140 hours of audio and 55 hours of video. The edits are superb; you can spot the audio-only segments as they are cut away from the person talking but it isn\u2019t distracting. The first episode seems to run at breakneck speed as different snippets of songs appear before we quickly move onto the next one.<\/p>\n

Jackson has thoughtfully added visual context to the films, interspersing the footage with brief interludes to explain things such as the incredible-looking venue in Tripoli<\/a> that Michael Lindsay-Hogg<\/a> was trying to persuade them to play at, and exactly who Enoch Powell<\/a> was.<\/p>\n

The most incredible scene comes in the first episode where McCartney and Starr are waiting for the others to arrive. McCartney is noodling a riff on the bass guitar and suddenly the basic shape of Get Back<\/a><\/em>, the song, emerges. It is absolutely extraordinary to watch; the audio equivalent of seeing someone take a piece of clay or a blank canvas and create something amazing, new and unique.<\/p>\n

Harrison seems to be particularly productive, staying up late and writing new songs such as I Me Mine<\/a><\/em> which he demos to the others in an almost finished form. Through the first episode I can see why Harrison gets annoyed and ends up walking out. The full attention McCartney gives to Lennon is totally different to the poor-quality attention he gives to Harrison. It seems so passive-aggressive and I\u2019m not sure McCartney was even aware of it. I have to remember that he was only 26 at the time. At one point McCartney disparagingly refers to a Harrison tune as \u201cone of his \u2018last night\u2019 songs\u201d. They touch on gems such as All Things Must Pass<\/a><\/em> but never come back to them again. The others didn\u2019t recognise the wonderful treasures he was bringing to the table.<\/p>\n

The story of The Beatles being Lennon\u2019s band at the start and McCartney\u2019s at the end is well-known. Lennon had already started taking heroin at this point and seemed content to let someone else be the driving force. Towards the end of the first episode, McCartney is talking to the room, saying how they need to have more structure to the work that they are doing and Lennon sits next to him playing seemingly hungover or stoned word-games. I think McCartney comes across well here, showing incredible patience.<\/p>\n

As we move to Apple Studio in episode two it struck me at how expensive the whole adventure must have been. The Beatles\u2019 first album, Please Please Me<\/a><\/em> was recorded in a single day. The contrast with the Let It Be<\/a><\/em> sessions couldn\u2019t be more stark; seemingly endless recording with no proper numbered \u2018takes\u2019 to speak of and a vast number of people milling around the studio. They seem happy to bumble along, singing silly versions of their songs as they record that they know will never make the final cut.<\/p>\n

The second magical air-punch-worthy moment takes place in episode two when Billy Preston<\/a> arrives. He instantly<\/strong> delivers the secret sauce on the electric piano. The riffs are recognisable in the final versions of the songs that you hear on the Let It Be<\/em> album and the whole room seems to lift just from him being there. I\u2019ve heard snippets of his work before, such as the live version of That\u2019s The Way God Planned It<\/a><\/em> at the Concert for Bangladesh<\/a>, but I need to give his studio albums a listen.<\/p>\n

In episode three we get to see the \u2018takes\u2019 that ended up on the Let It Be<\/em> album, helpfully annotated on-screen. Throughout the series there are snippets of conversation that ended up on the record, such as \u201c\u2018I Dig A Pygmy\u2019, by Charles Hawtree and the Deaf Aids; phase one in which Doris gets her oats!\u201d and \u201cThat was \u2018Can You Dig It?\u2019 by Georgie Wood. And now we\u2019d like to do \u2018Hark The Angels Come\u2019.\u201d It\u2019s strange to hear these out of context without the music kicking in straight afterwards. Whatever you think of the lush \u2018wall of sound\u2019 strings that he applied to some of the tracks, Phil Spector did an incredible job to create a now much-loved album out of what he had.<\/p>\n

In the same episode we also see Starr playing Octopus\u2019s Garden<\/a><\/em>. You can see from the film how much Harrison contributed to developing the song. I assume it was de-prioritised in favour of the Lennon and McCartney numbers, only to reappear later that year on Abbey Road<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

The final scenes featuring the rooftop concert are well worth the wait. They blew me away. All of a sudden, the band that had spent endless hours noodling and clowning around in the studio look like a proper group again. Their run-throughs of the songs are electrifying, even when John fluffs some of his lyrics in Don\u2019t Let Me Down<\/a><\/em>. It was amazing how much of the album was derived from the rooftop concert, given that it is outside and they only have late 1960s technology to capture it. Jackson does an incredible job to intersperse the live music with everything else that was going on \u2014 people being interviewed in the street about what they were hearing, and the police being held off for as long as possible. The simultaneous multi-camera shots add to the excitement.<\/p>\n

I absolutely loved this series. It is perfect \u2014 I don\u2019t think I could have asked for more. The years of work that were poured into making this series have paid off in a massive way and I am so glad that it exists. What a wonderful thing.<\/p><\/div>\n

Finished watching The Beatles: Get Back. What a treat! It was well worth the wait. The Beatles have always been part of my life. My awareness as a child moved to obsession as a teenager in the early 1990s. I listened to as much of their recordings and hoovered up as much information as I […]<\/div>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music","7":"category-tv","8":"h-entry","10":"hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11191,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2024\/09\/19\/the-mccartney-legacy-volume-1-1969-73\/","url_meta":{"origin":8383,"position":0},"title":"\ud83d\udcda The McCartney Legacy Volume 1: 1969-73","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"19 September 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"It took some weeks for me to finish this very large book. I was given this as a very thoughtful Christmas gift, but ended up buying and reading an ebook version of it as there was no way I was going to lug this around with me. The authors started\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Physical copy of \u2018The McCartney Legacy Volume 1: 1969\u201373\u2019 by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Image-19-09-2024-06-56.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Image-19-09-2024-06-56.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Image-19-09-2024-06-56.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Image-19-09-2024-06-56.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Image-19-09-2024-06-56.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Image-19-09-2024-06-56.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8492,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2022\/01\/02\/8492\/","url_meta":{"origin":8383,"position":1},"title":"\ud83c\udfb6 The Beatles Covers Project\u2026","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"2 January 2022","format":"status","excerpt":"\ud83c\udfb6 The Beatles Covers Project \u2014 a Spotify playlist of nearly 200 cover songs, all in chronological album order.","rel":"","context":"In "Snippets"","block_context":{"text":"Snippets","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/snippets\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4881,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2018\/11\/02\/4881\/","url_meta":{"origin":8383,"position":2},"title":"Loving this fab new video\u2026","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"2 November 2018","format":"status","excerpt":"Loving this fab new video for The Beatles Glass Onion ahead of the White Album reissues next week. https:\/\/youtu.be\/aBQIAWh3YBs (via Super Deluxe Edition)","rel":"","context":"In "Snippets"","block_context":{"text":"Snippets","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/snippets\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/aBQIAWh3YBs\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5058,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2019\/05\/07\/5058\/","url_meta":{"origin":8383,"position":3},"title":"Hearing The Beta Band\u2019s Dry\u2026","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"7 May 2019","format":"status","excerpt":"Hearing The Beta Band\u2019s Dry The Rain on the way into work today, it struck me how much this feels like The Beatles\u2019 Hey Jude. Anthemic in a very similar way. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uQTvVj68Obg","rel":"","context":"In "Snippets"","block_context":{"text":"Snippets","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/snippets\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/uQTvVj68Obg\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3859,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2017\/12\/29\/3859\/","url_meta":{"origin":8383,"position":4},"title":"Sgt Pepper's Musical Revolution with\u2026","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"29 December 2017","format":"status","excerpt":"Sgt Pepper's Musical Revolution with Howard Goodall is a brilliant documentary. I've seen lots of Beatles films and this is one of the best, with fascinating insights into the music they made and how they made it. Dropped off of iPlayer now but may be available online and well worth\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Snippets"","block_context":{"text":"Snippets","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/snippets\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8165,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2021\/10\/23\/8165\/","url_meta":{"origin":8383,"position":5},"title":"\ud83c\udfac Enjoyed The Beatles And\u2026","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"23 October 2021","format":"status","excerpt":"\ud83c\udfac Enjoyed The Beatles And India (2021). Learned a few new things where I previously thought there was nothing else to know about their trip. Fascinating to hear Indian perspectives. Shots of the Rishikesh ashram that blended footage from 1968 and the present day were wonderful.","rel":"","context":"In "Snippets"","block_context":{"text":"Snippets","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/snippets\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8383"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8386,"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8383\/revisions\/8386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}