Get Back
Directed by Peter Jackson
Starring John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr
Music by The Beatles
Executive producers Jeff Jones, Ken Kamins,
Producers Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono Lennon, Olivia Harrison, Peter Jackson, Clare Olssen, Jonathan Clyde
Editor Jabez Olssen
Running time 157 min (part 1), 173 min (part 2), 138 min (part 3) 468 min (total)[1]
Production companies Apple Corps Ltd., WingNut Films
Distributor Disney Platform Distribution
For years, if I had to rate the 13 Beatles’ albums by how good they were, their final album, “Let It Be” would be last. (FWIW, Abby Road is my favorite). LIB seemed a bit spiritless, and droned in places. The overall atmosphere was one of sadness, a great group gone haywire. The documentary that followed a year later only reinforced that feeling.
So when a friend gave me a copy of Let It Be Naked, the unadorned version that was just the four Beatles and the instruments they were holding, I gave it a listen. It wasn’t that I had high expectations or was all that curious, but it had been some twenty years since I had bothered listening to the original, the only album of theirs not on my personal playlist. Even if the music hadn’t changed, perhaps I had, and return visits to such works often told me a bit about the nature of my own personal changes.
Let It Be Naked was electrifying, as good as anything the Beatles had done over the past three years of their existence. The trademark exuberance and amazing talent, washed out by a muddy sea of Spectorization, had returned. It was the Beatles the way I wanted to remember them.
It made me much more receptive to the notion of an eight-hour documentary about the Making Of. Based on my impressions back around 1971, I would have sooner listened to a drunk Scotsman playing covers of the Beatles on bagpipes surrounded by cat fights and police sirens.
I was a bit reluctant to review the Peter Jackson project anyway, simply because when I was done watching it, my response would be about the same as everyone else: the mood was totally different from what the previous movie had presented, the creative process presented was utterly fascinating, Yoko Ono was off the hook for breaking them up, and the music (along with the spirit underlying the music) was much better than what appeared on the album. If you like the Beatles to begin with, it is a massive treat.
There! You see? Not one original thought!
The greatest delight is the rooftop concert. Someone very cleverly recorded the reactions of passers-by who stared up into the London gloom, trying to divine if what they thought was going on on top of an unremarkable rooftop was what they thought their ears were telling them. It was truly the Beatles’ greatest prank. For Londoners, it was a bit like going down on the Tube and finding Taylor Swift performing in the Lancaster Gate station for coppers.
The reactions were wonderful to behold. Londoners are always at their best when encountering the unexpected, and find marvelous ways to rise to the occasion. Including one charwoman (in 1969?) in pancake makeup who was an absolute ringer for Terry Jones’ screechy woman, and I’m not entirely sure that particular snaky fellow hadn’t been snuck in as a ringer. The time frame is right. If so, and either way, a marvelous moment in a marvelous documentary.
Now on Disney.