Late one 1970s night, I walked across London in the rain, coming home from a screening of Let It Be, the Beatles film about making the album of the same name. I had enough money for the film, but not the train home. I got back to my off-Baker Street digs saturated and miserable. How could this great musical adventure have ended as the film seemed to portray it? Four “fab” friends as enemies, sniping and storming out, apparently distressed by the presence of John’s new partner.
Film director Peter Jackson got access to all the original material – hundreds of hours of film and audio – and found an entirely different story. Four young men who still loved making music together, bringing each other’s ideas to life. They were as close, still, as four people could be, their partnership strengthened by every new wave of fandom and hysteria.
But they’d been together a long time, Things, and times, were changing, and they were beginning to imagine, perhaps crave, life as four solo performers. Peter Jackson’s epic Get Back documentary brings all this to life in beautifully restored film and sound. You go to work with the Beatles as they go about making hit records. That is not, by any means, an exciting job – it’s slow, repetitive, frustrating, elusive. In that, the many hours of Get Back gets it very right.
But it’s not for everyone. Many have criticised its length, and it goes way deeper than many fans would want. But it is a beautifully made and faithful account of The Beatles at work in 1969, getting near the end, making the last album they would release. I recommend it.
