I Like to Watch | The Beatles Get Back (2021)
Mom had me when she was sixteen years old and the first true rift between us (aside from her wanting to control my desires to purchase things I didn't need) was that she loved Elvis and I loved The Beatles.
I wasn't old enough to hear their music until just after they officially broke up as a band but Mom had lots of vinyl. Carole King, Jim Croce, Kool & the Gang. Of course, Elvis Presley. And the first four Beatles albums. Aside from the Peter Pan records she got for me (The Pokey Little Puppy, Little Fat Policeman,and Peter and the Wolf) I listened to Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night, and Beatles for Sale with the same fervor as I had for plastic dinosaurs.
Once I was older and she could no longer control my purchasing habits as strictly, I bought the rest of the canon. To this day (and even then) my favorite Beatles album is Abbey Road. Mom loved the early stuff but felt like the Fab Four were making fun of her and their audience as they became more avant-garde with trippy outings like Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Magical Mystery Tour.
By the time I was in high school, I had posters. Lunch boxes. A salt and pepper shaker. A yellow submarine Christmas tree ornament. I went from LPs to cassettes to CDs. I bought the anthology. Lennon's letters in book form. I owned VHS copies of A Hard Day's Night and HELP!. I had seen a bootleg copy of Magical Mystery Tour. By the time I graduated college and headed to the shores of Lake Michigan, I found an odd showing of the documentary film Let It Be by Michael Lindsay-Hogg on a bootleg VHS projected on a screen in an art house theater on Fullerton.
I, like so many, was seduced by the mythology surrounding Yoko Ono (it was she who broke up the band! A woman! Who shrieked instead of sang!). I consumed hours of alternate takes and books about the band. I was a full-on Beatlemanic.
Paul was always my favorite. He was the worker bee. I recall a story from one of the many books about them that detailed the difference between he and John in terms of creation. The album was Revolver and the two songs were Eleanor Rigby (McCartney) and Tomorrow Never Knows (Lennon).
According to the story, Paul came in early for a session and, while he waited for the other three to arrive, wrote the entire song from start to finish, recorded all the instruments, and only had George and John provide minor backup vocals when they finally showed up. John, on the other hand, had an idea for a song and he and Paul spent weeks recording the song, complete with reverse guitar, processed vocals, and looped tape effects. Don't mistake me, I'll always see Lennon as a genius but the focused brilliance of Paul and his musical ethic always appealed to me.
The Beatles Get Back, a three-part, eight-hour documentary made for Disney+, produced by Paul, Ringo, Yoko, and Olivia Harrison, and assembled from Lindsay-Hogg's original 60 hours of video footage and 130 hours of audio tape by Peter Jackson is a wonder. With a caveat.
Peter Jackson might not have been the right person for the job. Watching Get Back, one gets the feeling he’s torn between serving two different audiences: the average viewer who wants a compelling narrative about a difficult and near-final chapter in the life of one of the all-time great bands, and Beatles aficionados who’d like nothing more than to spend as much time as possible with these musicians. He ends up decisively siding with the latter, which means anyone who isn’t a Beatles completist will presumably—at multiple points during this series—get bored.
Alex is correct—anyone outside of a Beatlemanic will find themselves wandering. This is eight hours of almost shapeless hanging out with the four legends both in their prime and demise as a band with moments of absolute astonishment peppered throughout. Jackson made the documentary I wanted to see.
Once all three episodes were available, I scheduled an entire Sunday devoted to sitting on my couch, watching (and in some cases, re-watching) every single minute. Jackson's Wingnut Studios has perfected the art of cleaning up old film so this looks amazing. It's as if it were filmed last week. It sounds like it was recorded last week.
Certainly, only a true fan will dig full half hour segments watching them noodle around on their instruments, launching randomly in Carl Perkins and Chuck Berry songs, making jokes, arguing about the songs they are committed to writing and performing live in fourteen days. But the rest of us, if we are patient, are also privileged with:
Paul, once again early and waiting on John, riffing on his bass and working out a wordless tune that in 45 seconds becomes Get Back.
Paul, sitting at the piano, confronted by Lindsay-Hogg about a potential set build for the television broadcast, sending him to John. While John pulls out a pencil and draws new plans with the idea of plastic boxes for the audience, we see and hear Paul working out a few chords and another wordless tune and in three minutes has written Let It Be.
After George quits the band a week into the rehearsals (he's pissed at Paul), John and Paul decide to have a chat away from the cameras while not realizing the flower pot at their table contains a hidden microphone. We get a truly unguarded and undistilled portrait of their relationship in that moment.
Ringo and George randomly reviewing what television they'd watched the night before and how it inspired George to write a song. The song? I Me Mine.
The myth of Yoko's presence being toxic is thoroughly dispelled and the true cause of their break up had more to do with the untimely death of their manager, Brian Epstein, than anything she brought to the table. There’s a Yoko smile that solidifies this—Ringo slips her a stick of gum. She breaks it in half, hands a piece to John. Her smile at Ringo is simply lovely and his back at her is equally so.
Once in Apple studios, Paul gets a hold of a newspaper hit piece lambasting the group. It's an ugly one and as they are waiting for the sound techs to signal it's time to record, he reads the piece over his microphone. It's so brutal, watching the faces of the boys as Paul regales them with what is already apparent in the room, that John starts playing and singing loud to drown him out. He keeps reading.
Finally, the famous rooftop concert where, for the first time in eight hours of footage, all four of them are having a ball. You suddenly see why they were so revered and why their decision to cease live tours was a true loss.
I won't likely sit through all eight hours again but I'm already dipping back in. It's like being in a room with four effortlessly talented musical legends and hoping they can get it together if only for the music's sake.
