The Beatles: Get Back - 2021
The Beatles: Get Back is not a movie. It’s not even a music documentary. This is the Holy fricking Grail! Though its origin has been so oft-repeated that it is approaching cliche, I still feel I must drag us back to the start once more. It’s just too good to pass up. 50 hours of footage not just of any band, but the greatest rock band in history. Oh, and not just of said group in any stage of existence, but in the process of seeming disintegration! 160 hours of audio of these same “sessions.” An inexperienced director, who may or may not be directly descended from the great Orson Welles. ALL somehow existing in a vault somewhere a la a sacred national document in National Treasure (see the Disney connection, friends ;)).
Living and gestating in broken brilliance simply waiting to be discovered, unearthed, disinterred. Waiting, in fact, for a man who knows a little something about groundbreaking epics. Peter Jackson, the Oscars from the LOTR trilogy still glistening in his rearview, somehow (have I used that word enough yet?) gets the rights to these documents! (Aside: My guess is that not too many people really thought all that much of them. After all, the short Let It Be doc helmed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg (of Wellesian notoriety above) was, let’s face it, kind of a flop).
Regardless, Jackson and a few trusted acquaintances worked with the fever of orcs in Mordor to cut, edit, piece together, and collage these tapes. Soon, old PJ came to a realization - Hey Disney, I’ve got WAAAY more here than a feature film. To the entertainment titans credit, they allowed Jackson to stretch this baby out into three separate episodes. After four long years, the director and co. rolled The Beatles: Get Back out to the world this past Thanksgiving weekend. It was, as I’ve said, the very definition of a miracle.
But, just what was it? Oh many things. 8 plus hours of a group of geniuses in a room on a deadline. 22 days (or thereabouts) to release a whole new album of songs, which would culminate in a live recorded show to accompany the album. This is what gave Lindsay-Hogg such ubiquitous access to the band in the first place. What else? Four friends growing up, morphing, changing, feeling internal struggles about where they’d go next as they rounded the corner into their 30’s. (Except George…dude was still a 25 year old baby).
One of the many reasons why I’ve dubbed this work truly marvelous pertains to the content it contains. For starters, the amount of “setting the record straight” this doc does is mind-boggling. What were those Get Back sessions just before the very end really like? Were they plagued by disorder and in-fighting? What did Yoko’s presence in the band do to their natural chemistry? Did she tear them asunder? Was she the death knell for The Beatles? Again and again, the questions music historians have raised for decades rise to the surface, and FOR ONCE, we actually get real answers!
What is all the more remarkable is how much the responses confound and astound us. What were The Beatles like in the last days in person? Well, it turns out generally quite jovial! The doc features SO many instances of the band covering their old tunes or running through a plethora of 50-60’s covers from Elvis to country, folk, and R&B. Many of them performed in goofy voices and with stop-start merrymaking. Things surely went to shit after the Get Back sessions (we’ll get there momentarily), but here this is mostly dudes having a laugh between the serious composing for which they had ostentatiously gathered.
Moreover, Get Back gives us an in-depth look at the real personas of those who once seemed larger than life. Paul desperately trying to hold this quartet together with everything save duct tape (and resisting desperately his urges to go full Type A autocrat on the rest of the crew), John glued to Yoko’s side, his engagement with the group ebbing and flowing as the days passed. George growing up and beginning to feel his oats, i.e. noticing the lack of appreciation for his contributions and beginning to dream of a solo act outside the four walls of the group. And of course, Ringo, the freaking rock-solid glue holding the act together with his gregariousness, hard work, and can-do attitude. It seems John and Paul really just wanted George to be over the moon that he was even in The Beatles. Ringo actually felt that way. (Team Ringo all the way)!
So, as the documentary unfolds it captures these men on the edge of a precipice. John and Yoko’s heroin days would be coming shortly, and George’s oat-feeling would result in a massive album which emphatically proved that it was quite possible he had been under-utilized all along. Paul had solo stuff and Wings ahead of him. We could go on, but I’m interested in the actual doc itself. Not surprisingly, it too has its own intoxicating power. I’m certain some have decried this work for its sheer length. It’s just a bunch of guys noodling around for hours on end! one critic might say.
And you know, as a matter of fact it is. But it is precisely THIS which gives the documentary its raw force. In one moment the guys will sound just like any band that’s ever existed (certainly like the one I played in in my teens) - screwing around, trying out ideas, hoping that dialogue which starts productively does not descend into arguments fueled by fragile egos and personal ownership of art. The only difference here: This is four of the greatest musicians that have ever lived! Even the “noodling” is entertaining.
But then in these rare Grail-like movements one or two of them will “lock in.” Much has been made (and rightly) of Paul just DISCOVERING in real-time the melody to “Get Back.” It is simply magical. But I could make just as big a deal about George dropping in one morning and saying (sorta)…”I was just working on this last night.” Out comes the bare bones of “I, Me, Mine.” Even Ringo sitting at a piano next to George and banging out parts of Octopus Garden which had recently come to him. Indeed, the spontaneity of genius arising out of mundanity is what makes The Beatles: Get Back a towering achievement.
And it shows us, above all else, that The Beatles beyond the celebrity and the mania were just about great freaking tunes. Songs which grew in stature and complexity as the touring years morphed into the studio days. Ringo at the piano made one thing abundantly clear. ALL these guys played multiple instruments, and understood the basics of composition, melody, and harmony. Confessionally, Let It Be is nowhere NEAR my top Beatles album, but the way the songs come together here is still nothing short of brilliant. Side note - If you love Abbey Road, there is plenty of that in raw form here as well.
Ditto all of the amazing side conversations that the multitudinous cameras and mics routinely captured. John tells Paul they’ll just “get Clapton” if George doesn’t come back at one moment. Of course, maybe the most amazing scene, a mic hidden in a table decoration which captures an entire conversation between Lennon and McCartney after Harrison walked out on the group. I mean, you can’t write better dramatic scenes than these!
It all comes together shockingly in a rooftop concert which finds the Fab Four regaining that live magic which so enthralled them to the world in ‘63-’64. The live sound pops and the energy is palpable. The cameras on the roof and on the street, where interviews with real passerbys are taking place…it’s all the chef’s kiss. On that cold January morning, you can see it all over their faces. The Beatles had found something once lost all over again. With Disney’s release of The Beatles: Get Back, a transcendent phenomenon if ever there was one, so have we.
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