My Thoughts on The Beatles Get Back

so in january of 1969 the beetle that's that's my those are the pipes in my building by the way this is what i deal with on a daily basis because i live in a new york apartment hey everyone jt here and i just finished watching the beatles get back documentary on disney plus if i look a little worse for where um i had a beatles gig of all things in pennsylvania last night had two shows had to drive there drive back unload all my gear and wake up this morning and watch the rest of the documentary uh so i uh i'm not gonna ask how's my hair this time but let's talk about the beatles get back so for those of you who don't know get back is a documentary chronicling the beatles infamous let it be project and this time it has been reimagined by peter jackson of lord of the rings fame and i'll just cut right to the chase uh i think it's fantastic i mean as a guy who is not only a big beatles fan obviously is a guy in a beatles tributes and has had so many questions about that whole period of their career um it really does answer a lot of questions um but it's also three parts that are two and a half hours long each um so it's long it's it's very long um and there's a lot of moments where somebody like me who just likes being a fly on the wall of their conversations or the things that they're doing loves watching all these things i think for casual fans or people just getting into the beatles it might be a bit much so i think you gotta go in there just knowing that this is a very raw very long documentary that is meant to make you see pretty much everything as it happened i have seen the original let it be documentary that was released back in 1970. i think the original documentary is a little rough around the edges it seems a little directionless at times the album was sort of remixed and re-envisioned by phil spector and he added all these uh orchestral parts that paul famously hated although it's funny about lawn and windy road he's always said he hated the orchestra parts of the lawn and winding road and then all of a sudden there's a conversation with george martin and paul mccartney and george's like are you going to want strings on this i think you were talking about having strings paul's like oh don't know um so it's interesting to hear that conversation like i said it it answers a lot of questions i've always had about this period in january of 1969 the beatles had the idea to perform a live show of brand new material and they were going to film their rehearsals in twickenham studios they got michael lindsey hogg to film this but the problem was that the beatles were at a very tense period in their career they had just done the white album and there was a lot of infighting rangel left the band for a couple of days um i think george was starting to get fed up with you know writing all this material and not really feeling like he was included and obviously john was now with yoko ono and that's a whole other can of worms that the internet really gets into um and paul was just kind of i think trying to keep it all together so this seems like okay this is a new idea we've done sergeant pepper with all the crazy overdubs and the orchestration and all the studio tricks let's go back to bare bones let's you know be a rock and roll band let's do this all live like we did in hamburg and liverpool and everything so that's really the basic idea of the get back project originally um unfortunately as you see in the documentary things got very tense very fast and there's a couple reasons for this i mean first of all you've got paul mccartney who's um basically taking over the reigns of the beatles especially since brian epstein has died they talk about that um and there's times when paul does come off as a little bit of control freak because paul's very sure about what it is that he wants to do he's very sure um he has like pretty much the whole arrangement of these songs in his head so he'll be telling george like i want you to play this and george famously says oh i don't mind you know what i'll play whatever you want me to play or i won't play at all if you don't want me to um you know ringo's just there to play drums and john i i gotta tell you watching this you just see john he looks hurt man um it's been well documented that john and yoko were taken heroin at this time um and there's just times when you look at john and you're just like god he looks he just looks like he's not even there and meanwhile george it seems like he's really kind of who's gone through this unbelievable growth as a musician and uh a writer you know he's just come back from hanging out with bob dylan at woodstock and writing all these songs that are going to be on all things must pass and he's trying to get his ideas out there and feeling like he keeps being shot down there's this really really sad moment that i've i've always known about this where um but it's interesting to finally see this on tape um uh george's brings in the song i me mine you know fitting title considering all that was going on and john is just very dismissive it is just like you know a little rock and roll group you know what's all this waltzing our waltz with yoko and and george actually says you know i don't give a whether you have it or not i mean it's very passive aggressive and this led to george leaving the band for a few days and that's the end basically of the first episode it's really fascinating because i've known a lot of these things i've actually seen a lot of bootleg footage of outtakes from let it be um and i've heard there's like a lot of audio clips on youtube you can hear but to actually see it and see it all included is it's it's an experience one of the things i've always known is that a lot of songs that were going to be on all things must pass were rehearsed during let it be and there's this one great moment where george brings in all things must pass the song and they start working on it and you can tell john and paul are interested in it they're like yeah well this is interesting let's work on the song and there's this great moment where george has written out the words and there's the line uh he has a line called the wind can blow those clouds away and john who has otherwise seemed kind of not really there he suggests a mind can blow those clouds away which is what the line would eventually be and it's like wow i never knew that john came up with that line that's that's cool and then at one point they're doing uh give me some truth from uh john's imagine album and i was surprised to find out that give me some truth paul and john were working on it in fact paul seemed to remember it better than john did you get to see paul who's very frustrated about what's going on um just kind of in desperation like trying to write get back and the whole way that song evolves throughout the project is pretty remarkable um they come in with i've got a feeling uh my radiator obviously really likes that uh song and don't let me down um a whole bunch of stuff like that and but it's very obvious that in twickenham they're they're just miserable it just looks like the most miserable experience you've ever seen in your life and it gets kind of draining like it's fascinating but it's draining and yoko is i mean yoko's there all the time you know and she was there always obviously for the white album sessions as well and it's not that the other beatles spouses don't come in linda comes in quite often but she tends to take pictures a lot like she feels like she's adding something to the experience um you see patty uh george harrison's wife come in for one scene maureen come marine starkey comes in a couple of times but they're like like cameo appearances even peter sellers comes in at one point but yoko is just always there and it's just this it's this odd presence it just feels like this kind of intrusion like sometimes it looks like you know she's working on an art piece or you know something but half of the time she's just not doing anything she's just sitting there you know like you see a glenn john's like he's coming up with a lot of ideas uh musically and there's this big back and forth between michael lindsay hogg who's got all these crazy ideas we're gonna go out into the middle east and we're going to play a show there and ringo's like well i don't want to play a show there and uh you know they want to do it at a venue in uh in london and obviously eventually they would end up going up to the roof um so there's just always this back and forth with all these different cooks in the kitchen even george martin doesn't really seem that hands-on in this documentary it's kind of odd i guess george martin just sort of felt like well what am i doing here i'm not here to add orchestrations anytime i say something they just dismiss me so you know the beetles are just gonna do whatever they want i've always known that when george left uh yoko basically took george's mic and just started screaming into it in the way you know that yokosuka it's kind of a fitting uh visual for what's happened to the beatles um and then there's this i was shocked that this was in the documentary i've always known this exchange where uh john is talking to michael lindsay hogg about what happened with george and he's saying we're gonna get eric clapton instead you know screw george and yoko just goes into the mic and goes john john john it's like it's insane really and john is just like just enabling it it's it's like it's such a weird dynamic and i'm shocked that yoko signed off on that like it's funny i i my dad and i always used to talk about like why let it be has never been re-released on dvd or anything like that and my dad always had the ideas like i bet you it's being held up because of yoko there's probably a lot of things that documentary that yoko doesn't want the public to see and yeah there's a couple of things but to her credit there are moments when she looks like she's enjoying or there's like a couple moments when you see her and linda having a conversation and you know it's like you know and even like for her crazy like you know dolphin noise singing like it seems like sometimes ringo and paul kind of get a kick out of it so it's just this crazy situation that's going on and then later they talk about alan klein and what's funny is glenn johns actually says i don't know if i trust that guy he's not somebody i would trust and glen john's worked with the rolling stones so the rolling stones famously told paul don't use don't use alan klein um so that's i mean it's almost like all these elements that are going to lead to the beatles demise are all surfacing um there's a point where george says i want to just make my own album i'm just going to go make my own album because i've got all these songs and john and yolk are like yeah go do it man you know um so yeah it's just amazing to see the the seeds of all these uh events that are going to unfold in the beatles career even so many songs come up from abby road are being worked on here you see him working on maxwell silverhammer which is in the original let it be documentary paul plays o'darlin george brings in an early version of something she came in through the bathroom window polytheme pam mean mr mustard uh even her majesty uh golden slumbers i mean you can see it's like they've already got all these incredible songs the second episode starts with paul explaining what's going on and then there's a conversation between john and paul uh where they have a hidden microphone and a flower pot you know i remember this in 1969 it's not like that was very common at that time or if it was it was more just like a thing that richard nixon did or whatever and there's this private conversation between john and paul you're like oh my god a lot of truths are revealed they moved to apple studios in the basement where they're like well you know george is going to come back let's just finish making the record over there and magic alex was this crazy engineer guy they had hired said he was going to build the state-of-the-art studio and when they found what he had they said it was a disaster it was just this bunch of nonsense it was a bunch of noise it buzzed like everything was terrible so they had to rush to cut the entire studio and bring in the a-track mobile recording uh unit so it's it's like god what else can go wrong in this thing and then i tell you man um billy preston they get uh built they invite billy president who he think he's in uh england to do a a tv show i think and while he's there they say hey do you want to play on the album and billy's you know i mean billy's got such a positive like fun personality and i i swear to god it's night and day when billy walks in just the minute he lays into the fender roads and i've got a feeling i mean the music is elevated like unbelievably so and the mood is so different john perks up all of a sudden john is taking the leadership role he's you know really into it and he's you know the john that we all know it feels like the beatles again and you know this one uh outside force has just given them the spark that they need uh george martin famously said that and from then on it starts getting a lot of fun and once they're tight man they sound fantastic you know there's moments when they're just kind of goofing around and stuff and you enjoy it but i mean paul especially paul is just on fire singing and playing and george is playing lots of great lead lines ringo is just there solid as a rock and john starts to find his groove like now john's feeling like john again one of the interesting things like i said this answers a lot of questions i've always had and one of them was who came up with the idea to go up on the roof and you see the moment when glenn johns and michael lindsay ha go up to paul and they say hey let's do it on the roof and paul kind of goes and yeah it's just it's amazing also the timeline because i've seen let it be many many times and i'm never sure like what came from what day so you see the timeline like peter jackson does a great job of showing each day like you see the calendar and they'll cross out every day that happens and tell you what the next day is and they'll have like a goal like they had the live shows that they were originally gonna do that got scrapped first they got moved then they got scrapped all together now it's the rooftop show but there's bad weather so now they're gonna move the rooftop show over here another great thing that happens is like they'll do all these takes of all these songs and they will say this was the take that appeared on let it be um but they get on the rooftop and i've seen the rooftop composer many times for a lot of bootlegs from it and you see these multiple camera angles um all beings on split screens so you get to get this grand scale of this concert that they're doing and i really have a new a newfound respect for that rooftop concert they sound so good even the moments when they make some screw-ups like there's a great screw-up i love when they're doing don't let me down and john uh sings like and this is easy which is great um and they keep it they kept it in the let it be film and i'm glad they kept it here as well because it's just a great moment it's this little happy accident that happens um and then you get to see what's going on with the police what's going on the street level the police come in they have a hidden camera and the lobby and it's just like it's so well done it's just it's one of those things where you start watching the documentary and you think oh god this is so draining and so awful and it's god this is this was like the most miserable project ever and in many ways it was but the way it evolves to the point where by the end they're making this classic music i mean just one after another one after 909 i mean even that song which isn't the greatest song they ever made that the performance is killer it sounds great and they're on the roof in the cold and they're just playing it um and then at the end you see them work out the last couple of songs let it be the lawn and windy road and two of us um and you're just kind of you're just gonna sit there kind of amazed at what you just watched i really have to give peter jackson credit i mean he this must have been a lot of work i mean we're talking i mean i think did they say they had like 60 hours of footage or something like that and like 150 hours of audio footage or audio existing audio i mean the amount of work that must have gone in to not just present this but turn it into a narrative and try to make a lot of this footage usable because there's a lot of times when you can't see who's talking or you can't see who's playing and they have to use other footage in order to show you what's actually happening my final thoughts about the get back documentary by peter jackson is it's fantastic i think if you're a beatles fan you gotta watch it um if you're just like a casual fan of rock and roll or you're just somebody wants to see a cool documentary um i recommend it but i would say that it's a commitment it's definitely a commitment and there's going to be a lot of moments that a non-musician will watch and go no why why did they include this this doesn't seem all that interesting or this just seems like they're rambling about nothing i mean i think for anybody who's been waiting to see a re-release of let it be all these years i mean this is this is like more than i ever imagined would ever come out and um if i do have one gripe it's that i would have liked uh full performances of like when they do let it be that's in the original let it be documentary and the lawn and winding road they only kind of show snippets of that while the credits are rolling that's the only thing i would have changed maybe the full performance of get back but you can see those on youtube you can see those anywhere these days um you can see it in the anthology so everyone those are my thoughts on get back which is streaming on disney plus and let me know what your thoughts are did you like it did you think it was lawn or did you want to see more or is this something you've always been waiting for comment below let me know your thoughts take care i'll see you all soon

Channel: JTCurtisMusic

Views: 13,804

Rating: 4.8562498 out of 5

Keywords: The Beatles, Let it Be, Get Back, Documentary, Review, History of Rock, JT Curtis, JTC, History of Rock & Roll, 1960s, 1969, 1970, 60s, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Reviews, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, George Martin, Yoko Ono, Singing, Break up, Disney +, Disney Plus, Music, Guitar, Bass, Drums, Drummer, How to Play, Live, Performance, Footage, Fight, Heroin

Id: ETb_ZOEljOA

Length: 20min 31sec (1231 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 28 2021