To put it plainly, these eight hours of Get Back footage are pure undiluted joy. Granted, Let It Be was my first Beatles album (which could be the reason why I still can't forgive McCartney for disrupting the song order and erasing Lennon's skits), so it certainly holds a lot of sentimental value for me. Still, I believe the appeal is universal: seven-plus hours containing recording sessions and rehearsals for some of pop music's greatest songs. You get to see Paul McCartney inventing the riff of "Get Back". You get to see George Harrison doing the first version of "Something". You even get to see how "Dig It" was borne out of a lengthy jam of absolute chaos. Truly this is magic.
The four of them fill the screen with phenomenal ease, and the four of them come off the way you expected. Harrison is moody and sulky and a bit reticent about the wealth of material he had in him at the time. Lennon is cynical and slightly abusive (especially towards Glyn Johns) and foregoing the role of the true creative force in this particular case. McCartney is the good and reliable one who keeps it all flowing and who seemingly plucks tunes out of thin air. Finally, Ringo is just happy to be there. Creatively, there is an amusing scene of him showing Harrison the brief sketch of "Octopus's Garden", but otherwise Ringo's presence is kept to the minimum (no offense to his drumming skills).
Also, we get to see lots of people around them, and these people (engineers, producers, session musicians, random studio employees) are clearly in awe of what they are witnessing. Glyn Johns, George Martin, Linda McCartney, Billy Preston... They are all reduced to just being fans of the band. In fact, the only person who does not seem to be a fan is Yoko Ono whose presence during the sessions is as unnerving as it is hilarious. I once read an interview with John Cale where he mentioned that Nico was present during the recording of The Stooges' first album. While Iggy Pop was screaming his head off during "I Wanna Be Your Dog", she was just sitting at the back of the studio knitting... Such a bizarre image, such an odd mismatch. Well, this is basically what you get to see here - except there is no knitting but lots of vacant staring into space. Naturally, at some point you stop noticing, and just take it for granted. The way everyone else did. In fact, I do not believe that Ringo Starr looked at her even once.
As I have already said, these eight hours never appear dull, and for each meandering conversation (not quite meandering though, not if you ever cared for the band) you get a moment of genuine mind-numbing greatness. Let me run through some of my notes:
- At some point, Paul clearly tries to give "Don't Let Me Down" some of those trademark McCartney overtones. Thankfully, The Beatles never went that way and the roughness of the tune was preserved.
- Paul really did come into the studio one day and sat in front of Ringo and George and came up with the famous riff of "Get Back". He did that in an offhand manner, with Starr and Harrison barely registering the significance of the moment.
- John Lennon clearly knows how to talk to kids, and his way with Linda's daughter is a revelation.
- They are fooling around and having fun half the time (singing through clenched teeth, playing old rock'n'roll covers, deliberately butchering timeless melodies), but they also know how to get down to work.
- There is nothing here that would indicate that Paul hated Ono. In actual fact, at some point we see him playing drums while John and Yoko are dancing in the studio.
- We actually witness Lennon playing "Long And Winding Road". Surreal.
- George mentions to John the possibility of making a solo album. He has enough material for a handful of future Beatles albums and he sees this potential solo LP as a chance to get things off his chest. Clearly John is not impressed.
- Christ, John Lennon really was infatuated with Allen Klein early on. At which point I should probably attach a link of "Steel And Glass".
- Paul McCartney reading a press article about the band is oddly irresistible.
- George Harrison is rehearsing the earliest version of "Old Brown Shoe", and I still stand by the opinion that this is the greatest song by The Beatles.
- During the rooftop scene, John sings 'everybody had a wet dream' ("I've Got A Feeling") while the camera shows the close-up of a dull face of a police officer who has come to put an end to the concert.
- At various points during the documentary the band can be heard rehearsing the early versions of "Back Seat of My Car", "Give Me Some Truth", "All Things Must Pass" and other songs that would end up on their future solo albums.
The original idea of the Get Back sessions was to do a documentary of Beatles-at-work that would culminate in a live performance. Not everything goes according to plan (in fact, little does, and the sulky George goes AWOL during the early stages of the sessions), but there is indeed a live concert at the end of the whole thing. The notorious rooftop concert, which Peter Jackson makes the climax of these tapes.
The rooftop scenes are still intriguing, which makes little sense considering the fact that you know exactly how it will all end. The Beatles will start playing on top of the Apple studio in the centre of London, people will gather in the street (some amazed, some incensed), and two jobsworth police constables will arrive to establish law and order. The Beatles will do several of their songs (a couple of these takes will actually end up on Let It Be) but will then have to cut their concert short due to police demands (public disturbance or some such nuisance).
However, it is the small details that count. Details like the receptionist (who is the absolute hero, by the way) telling the constables that they can not get up on the roof as there are far too many people there already and the construction may not hold. Like Paul whooping with pleasure when he turns around mid-song and notices a police officer. Or like John spotting the said police officer and still laying into "Don't Let Me Down". And in the meantime, you get to see all these interviews with random Londoners not quite believing their luck or else claiming that this is disgraceful and the Beatles are no longer who they used to be. They had changed too much. Oh indeed.
Truly this film is a treasure trove, and it is quite sad to think of all those fans of the band who will never get to see it. In fact, I would love to dedicate this review to Kolya Vasin, the ultimate 'little man' who took his own life back in 2018 for reasons that may not even make too much sense. The man who never saw these eight hours of The Beatles in the studio in early 1969. Because all the way through these tapes, I kept thinking about Kolya Vasin. I do not know why, but maybe it has something to do with his name written on the back sleeve of the Rubber Soul LP that was part of my mother's vinyl collection as well as my formative years.
