Get Back: Breaking Up with The Beatles
This week, I watched The Beatles: Get Back. The film shows that The Beatles were near the end of their arc as a band. It’s clear without knowing the future. So, an end, but also a beginning, and a continuation.
That period was the start of George’s solo artistic arc. It was the middle of Paul’s creative arc, and he is still moving forward, artistically and musically. John was starting an innovative creative period that ended, as we all know, in his tragic murder in 1980. Ringo released more than two dozen studio and live albums through the 2010s.
Some viewers say they were bored by Get Back —six+ hours of archival footage from 1969 in a contemporary edit by filmmaker Peter Jackson. Bored by the repetition, japes, in-fighting, and the interlopers. I loved it. My empathy for John, Paul, George, and Ringo deepened. I was disturbed when they failed to communicate and desperately hoped as they struggled to continue the sessions and carry on without really knowing the shape and purpose of the recordings and documentary. I loved how they deflected the on-set film producer’s nagging. And I was amazed how the conclusion emerged organically from vacillating intention, opportunity, and chance into the rooftop performance. I was never bored by the repetition and the slow pace. For me, they validated the realities of recording without a producer and of translating inspiration into art in a complex context.
The repetitions of “Don’t Let Me Down” and the other songs recorded during those weeks are a fascinating process of simultaneous learning and writing as a group. “I’m in love for the first time,” John sings again and again in that eternally familiar voice. “Don’t you know it’s gonna last / It’s a love that lasts forever / It’s a love that had no past.” Jackson shows it to us a dozen times or more, almost as if he is whispering through the edits, “Do you see?”
We see it. We hear it.
As a girl and young teenager, I spent hours thinking about The Beatles with pure, electric intensity. I imagined talking about music with them. I was with them through the records.
I sympathized with Paul’s struggle to steer the boat in the early sessions and how all four worked off-camera with George to bring him back. To accommodate the group, Paul achieves some humility and curbs his producer ego. And, might I add, his impeccable taste. But we see how his energy and persistence clear a path for the band to continue. We see his love for John. Even Paul accepts Yoko’s presence. “I’ve Got a Feeling,” he sings. “A feeling deep inside.” John joins in: “Oh yeah / Oh yeah.”
Also, I felt vindicated. I thought, now we can finally stop blaming Yoko for breaking up the band. I said as much to songwriter friends. “You can see that Yoko sat quietly in the corner.” But one friend, a bit younger than I and a man who was halfway through the three films, said, “Not true! She sat right next to John! Why was she even there?”
“They were inseparable,” I said. “It’s what John and Yoko wanted. But why blame Yoko? John was there. Why not blame him?” For that matter, why not blame buzz-kill Michael Lindsay-Hogg, or, if we’re only blaming females, Linda Eastman, or Linda’s young daughter Heather? (Who is marvelous, by the way.) There is only blame if there is bias, and the blame game is pointless. All of the players were living the breakup of The Beatles.
Many brilliant moments struck me. The messy studio, John’s ad-libs, Paul’s work ethic, Ringo’s sweet, sleepy smile, Maureen Starr’s enthusiasm, and Glyn John’s shy, besotted talks with George. Entirely by chance, Billy Preston brings fresh energy and joy to the band. Thank heavens for Billy. George, finally relaxed at Apple studio, is enjoying the sessions. But he is over it. He says he wants to record his songs now. A hundred songs, he says, for many albums. He plays the opening line of “Something,” and a chill rips through me at its beauty. We all know the classic’s eventual power; seeing its genesis on film is quite an experience. The melody is fully formed, but nonsense words wait for the right ones to step in. We know the future.
I watched The Beatles: Get Back over two days and finished it two days ago. Every morning, I wake with “I’ve Got A Feeling,” “Don’t Let Me Down,” and the title song looping on my internal radio. The future is born of a past we live as the present. We live/lived it bringing all our faults, mistakes, misperceptions, intuitions, and hopes. The Beatles touched me and much of my generation incredibly deeply. We shared a communal, cultural experience. They imprinted us with the best of what they had.
As a girl and young teenager, I spent hours thinking about The Beatles with pure, electric intensity. I imagined talking about music with them. I was with them through the records. For artists, this is the great wheel of creativity. It flows between us and through us, even during the tedious hours in the studio when frustration threatens to kill the flow or when conflicting desires halt progress, and you have to work through it or abandon ship. Through the many freak-outs, hasty meals, and mind-flagging time-outs for technical issues. It also flows through the laughter, jokes, parodies, and antics that break an evil spell, so you arrive at the mysterious, wordless moments of joy embodied in a best take.
After seeing Peter Jackson’s loving edit of all those hours, hours that allowed us to be there as witnesses, who can say that Yoko or Paul broke up The Beatles? Who can say that it was not more complex?
Thanks, lads, for giving everything you had to each other and to us.
