Get me. I just got around to watching the Beatles Disney+ documentary Get Back directed by Peter Jackson, however belatedly. It’s good isn’t it?
I’d been looking forward to this fly on the wall exposé for some time, especially as, on a personal level, the Get Back 45 — and what was planned to be the title track for what became the band’s posthumous Let It Be album — was the No.1 single in the US and the Antipodean climes of Australia and New Zealand on the day I was born, so it’s doubly fitting Jackson, the man who brought the Lord Of The Rings movies to the big screen, happens to be a kiwi to boot.
Pleasingly devoid of audio narration, Get Back is a three-part, six hour film that chronicles the penultimate Beatles project from start to finish, including the creativity, fun, crisis, and uncertainty about what the end result was actually going to be about.
Jackson does a remarkable job taking us on this often bumpy journey, which, joy of joys, shows the Fabs emerging triumphant by the end as we lay witness to the the preparation and presentation of the band’s final, unannounced live performance on the roof of their Apple Corps building in Saville Row on January 30, 1969, within central London’s office and fashion district. Joined by keyboardist Billy Preston, the band played a 42-minute set before the stuffy old Metropolitan Police ordered them to reduce the volume, even with earplugs firmly implanted in their butt-heads.
Lest we forget, The Beatles parted company a few months after this impromptu concert and contemporaneous press reports suggested there was serious conflict between Paul McCartney and John Lennon because of the latter’s soon to be second wife Yoko Ono who was present during the sessions. A lot.
Watching the film in real-time as Paul tries to keep it together while coming up with instant classics on the fly is simply riveting. The developing relationships of John and Yoko, Paul and Linda; the deterioration of John and Paul’s relationship; George Harrison’s growth as an artist as he played with Bob Dylan and others in America, writing superlative songs that were being begrudgingly accepted by Lennon/McCartney; Ringo and George’s total disillusionment with being Beatles, and major turmoil with their finances that led to explosive divisions between McCartney and the others.
All I can say is thank God for the subtly calming presence of Billy Preston, who has his black and white fingerprints all over these songs; he gives the music and the film an incredible shot of adrenaline.
“It was a very tense period,” explained Paul. “John was with Yoko and had escalated to heroin and all the accompanying paranoias and he was putting himself out on a limb. I think that as much as it excited and amused him, and the same time it secretly terrified him. So Don’t Let Me Down was a genuine plea… It was saying to Yoko, ‘I’m really stepping out of line on this one. I’m really letting my vulnerability be seen, so you must not let me down.’ I think it was a genuine cry for help.”
However, after watching the newly edited footage, what’s patently obvious is how much the bandmates went to great lengths to conceal signs of conflict from the cameras. They are still buddies, only that Paul did also go on record to comment that John was so occupied by his new life with Yoko that he will choose her over the group eventually. It’s bad but it’s not wrong.
No matter what cracks are papered over and PRd to death, I’m not convinced she wasn’t the reason The Beatles broke up, and I am unanimous in that. Their business tussles with Allen Klein just made matters worse, the managerial monster another disruptive outsider brought in by John.
It’s so obvious now that Lennon was in a subtly abusive co-dependent relationship, and it really soured his relationship with the other Beatles. I mean, it’s striking, nay, disturbing how many scenes have Ono smack dab in the middle of everything — rehearsals, conversations, meetings, etc… She was like a vampiric black hole. Such a clear personification of a malignant narcissist, and any band’s worst nightmare.
If I started dating a person who played violin in the Orchestre de Paris, I would not be sitting next to them on stage, and most certainly wouldn’t be screeching glib pseudo-art into a mic whenever I could grab one.
Still unable to keep his residual paranoia in check, in one of his last interviews in 1980, Lennon claimed that “there’s some underlying thing about Yoko in [the song Get Back], claiming that in the studio Paul McCartney looked at Ono every time he sang “Get back to where you once belonged.” Other accounts that the song was borne out of a rabid press headline on immigrants are available.
Dear Yoko’s always been a fairly ridiculous figure, and like a lot of oh-so-clever post modernism, her oeuvre has aged very badly.
Unlike Get Back, which, despite its slightly excessive length looks and sounds fabulous and is well worth a solitary month’s subscription to Disney’s burgeoning streaming service.
The other Beatles single that was No.1 in Britain the day I was born?
The Ballad Of John & Yoko.
Oh, the irony.
Steve Pafford
If physical is your bag, The Beatles: Get Back is available to purchase on Blu-ray™ and DVD formats from July 12, 2022
