As a lifelong Beatles fan, as someone who’s seen Paul McCartney in concert three times and (literally) bumped elbows with Ringo in Los Angeles right before the pandemic, director Peter Jackson’s new three-part The Beatles: Get backDisney+’s docuseries is a joy for all fans. One that’s so good, it’s almost impossible to put into words.
It’s hard to know where to begin. This is the fly on-the-wall perspective of John, Paul, George and Ringo recording and composing in Abbey Road. Finally, there is a lot of footage available from the roof concert. McCartney comes up with masterpieces almost entirely on the spot. You can see the quarrels, smoke breaks, funny hijinks and all other aspects that make this portrait of the band much more real than anything its members have seen in photos, news articles, films or videos. In fact, one of my favorite things about this project is that’s almost less a documentary than it is a kind of reality show. As if someone had just turned on a camera and pressed record. Not that there’s any complaint here, of course, nor from the rest of the global Beatles fandom.
This is something that can never again be captured on film.
Paul McCartney was the most successful song-writer ever, and he penned one of his top hits out of thin air at just 26 years of age.pic.twitter.com/nYZmWTfe8T
— The Beatles (@BeatlesEarth) November 30, 2021
However, many people still get it wrong. First, a quick recap.
Let it beThis is the title for the second album that The Beatles released as a functioning band. Original plans were for the band’s performance to be followed by a documentary. But the album documentary back then, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, ended up seeming to capture the group’s disintegration in real-time. This made it less behind-the-scenes. Let it beIt’s more of a making-of movie about the most famous rock breakup ever.
Decades later, Peter JacksonHe gets the original footage. He restores it and re-assembles it into a new package — a three-episode, six-hour docuseries streaming now on Disney+. And, voila. All around the world, fans feel that the story has a better end. That the bandmates weren’t at each other’s throats 24/7. The breakup was a bit exaggerated. This is the visual proof. Lindsay-Hogg must be wrong.
But, everyone forgets one thing.
The Beatles during the “Get Back” sessions, 1969
📸: Linda McCartney pic.twitter.com/P7vvly7wIT
— The Beatles (@BeatlesEarth) November 26, 2021
Yes, this is a great story that’s told in The Take BackDocuseries. But it’s not the whole story. I sympathize with those fans who feel that this change everything. But you can’t point to the roughly six hours of footage herein as a basis for that. Jackson and his team sifted through 56 hours of footage for the project.
Meaning, there’s still a staggering amount of Beatles footage from this era (another FIFTY hours or so) that Jackson couldn’t shoehorn into this project for one reason or another. This is to say that the original beliefs about the end could still be valid. Assuming that all of the extra content is ever released.
This is, in the end, a minor point. At this stage, the details surrounding how and why they split are irrelevant. The Disney+ series is a good example of how a lot we knew was incorrect. I suspect that everything still in the vault might put the lie to that assessment, but one thing won’t change:
The group’s incomparable music will always be with us, as fresh and dynamic today as it was then. You have to admit, seeing how chaotic and loosely organized the group was in this documentary will forever amaze you that we got the same quality and quantity.
