Before I get into the revisionist history of the Peter Jackson compiled Get Back documentary, I want to first say that I would be the last to say that the Beatles are no longer “relevant,” although in the latter stages they were clearly a product of their time, and whether or not their music "speaks" to people today any more than their contemporarie is a matter of opinion. As I pointed out in my overview of The Rascals classic output, there are some groups that still “speak” at least to me.
Of course as complete albums, Rubber Soul, The “White Album” and Abbey Road are still great albums song-for-song, and to my ears Magical Mystery Tour is their best “pop” album. But the Beatles wouldn’t have been as successful as they were if they were not essentially “pop-rock” at their core, with two great songwriters who tried to out-do each other for who wrote the better songs, and occasionally pitched-in to make each other’s song better (after all, even if their songs were not collaborations, all of Paul McCartney’s and John Lennon’s Beatles songs were credited as Lennon-McCartney).
Still, I don’t really listen to Beatles music much anymore because I want to; I guess I have to be in the “mood” for it, and the music I want to listen to has to have a consistent "vibe" to it, usually of the "uplifting" variety—not much of that today with the self-serving “feeling good about feeling bad” mentality—or is lush, string-laden pop productions. Being a Seventies kind of guy, I prefer to listen to the Beatles solo recordings, albums like Imagine and Ringo, and songs like George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” and “What is Life,” Lennon’s “#9 Dream,” Ringo’s “Photograph” and most of McCartney’s Wings or solo hits.
But now for this new documentary, which was finally released on DVD and (overpriced) Blu-ray. I suspect a lot of Beatles fans think that the Malcolm McDowell-narrated The Compleat Beatles is the best Beatles documentary, but it was apparently disliked at least by Paul and is unlikely to see a DVD/Blu-ray release in the surviving Beatles' lifetime, if they have anything to do with it, seeing that they prevented the original Let It Be film from being released on digital format of any kind.
Let It Be apparently was disliked by the group (although possibly not as much by John and George, since it often put Paul in a negative light, and neither was on speaking terms with him at the time). The film largely focused on the songs, although there were two scenes that were given prominence, and suggested a less than cordial production: the infamous confrontation between Paul and George about how to play the guitar…
…and Paul lecturing an apparently bored John about the “old” days. Ringo has criticized the film for leaving out all the “fun” the group had, and to be honest, the problem with the film is that it focused more on the Twickenham sound stage, which frequently had a negative vibe.
Twickenham Studios, as we can see here in the Stage 1 warehouse where the filming there was done, wasn’t exactly “cozy” and had poor acoustics:
This was supposed to be a film about a rehearsal for first a big concert extravaganza, then a television special, and then no concert at all before becoming the rooftop performance. You could tell during Part 1 of Get Back that outside of Paul, no one is really into this thing, particularly George Martin, who was just hanging around looking like he’s wondering why he’s even there. I have to say an hour into the documentary I was almost bored stiff, mainly because everyone involved seems bored as well and trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
But that is not to say that there are not items of interest in Part 1. One thing we realize on Get Back is that the songs were hardly even in their rough stages of composition when recording began, and it is interesting to see how they develop. “Get Back,” for example, was the huge hit, but it started out experimenting with lyrics that addressed the immigration issue in Britain at the time, as exemplified by nativist Enoch Powell, who called for the halting of non-white immigration from Commonwealth countries (where the residents were still technically British citizens at the time), and the deportation of as many as “legally” could be done. The Beatles are also seen rehearsing a McCartney-composed song called “Commonwealth,” which directly addressed the immigration issue and calling for Powell to “go home.”
The other band members (even Ringo) seemed to get into it as a “message” song, but it was never officially recorded. McCartney supposedly did not “like” the song, but the Beatles apparently did not want to antagonize their audience by doing a “political” song, although in “Piggies,” George was clearly making a comment on British upper-class society. Although John's “Revolution” is seen as a political song, it was more a rejection of political action (although he would embrace a “peace” message early in his solo career, and criticize bigotry in “Crippled Inside” on the Imagine album), even pointing out the hypocrisy of support for a mass murderer like Mao Zedong. Speaking of Imagine, another interesting “nugget” from Part 1 is Lennon playing what sounds like the beginnings of what would become “Jealous Guy.”
Part 1 ends with George announcing he was quitting the group. There is a discussion by Martin and others about George's unhappiness with his place in the group, but there are differing stories about why he just “quit” then, with Ringo claiming he was tired of Paul's “bossy” behavior. However there was also the suggestion of a possible physical confrontation with John. George had complained to John that he wasn’t taking the recordings seriously, and then he criticized John for comments he made about Apple’s finances; this discussion was going on when we hear the word “cut” and the filming stops. We can surmise that the feeling was that John could be capable of anything at this point:
Eventually the filming winds up back at the Apple Studios in Parts 2 and 3, and back in familiar surroundings the mood lightens up a bit and the proceedings become more “entertaining” about that time as it is more about the music than worrying about how they appear on camera. George is still gone for most of the first hour when the band is still at Twickenham; there is some discussion about replacing him with someone, but that never materializes. George returns during the filming at Apple, and the positive mood coincides with the songs finally coming together to at least sound like "finished" songs. An “old friend” from the Hamburg days, Billy Preston, shows up (Preston does a fantastic rendition of “My Sweet Lord” for the Concert for George much later):
No "drama" to be found here (although the seeds of it are planted when John mentions they should hire Allan Klein as their manager), and everyone’s on their best behavior:
Preston performs on keyboards notably on "Get Back" and "Don't Let Me Down," both which will be released as their next A/B-side single; George is heard discussing how they should compensate Preston for his contribution, while John speculates that if they want to bring in a "fifth Beatle," they can call Bob Dylan. Meanwhile, George Martin is smiling like he has a purpose now, and there are even a few “cute” moments, like Linda’s daughter from a previous relationship, Heather, combing Paul’s hair:
Yoko of course is hanging around constantly, but she doesn’t seem to “fit in” as well as Linda. We also see George’s wife Pattie and Ringo’s wife Maureen briefly make appearances.
One of George’s conditions for returning to the group was not to perform a concert, but there is discussion about performing a television special, or something. Why should they have gone through all this trouble rehearsing for a concert and there is no concert? The fact is that most of these recordings were still in the raw stage and not really up to par; that would have to wait until Phil Spector was brought in to wade through the 150 hours of tape that John had called "the shittiest load of badly recorded shit." It is decided to do the rooftop performance because there is no time now to set up another venue.
The performance in the documentary is mostly shown in split-screen format, showing what the band, people on the street and later attempts by the police to intervene:
Overall, it wasn’t a waste of valuable time watching this six-hour or so extravaganza; it was certainly a more “truthful” version of events than the original film. If you are a Beatles fanatic, this is certainly a “must-see.” If you are not, there is still some “historical” value in watching the “greatest band of all time" trying to stay on its feet, and sporadically succeeding in spite of themselves.
