After watching The Beatles: Get Back, Peter Jackson’s highly anticipated seven-hour-plus docuseries on Disney+, you’ll almost feel like you played a part in recording Let It Be.
Let It Be we see the Beatles in the thick of the creative process and seriously contemplating a breakup.
McCartney’s intensity is something else entirely, and totally unexpected. Far from an innocent, he’s infused with pure energy; in ways subtle and overt, he can’t help imposing himself on everyone around him. Even when he’s in his “unfailingly polite” mode—as Michael Lindsay-Hogg is at his most insufferable rambling on about Arabs holding torches—he’s brimming with hidden force, the biggest person in the room. (For those of us who find ourselves having to stay measured in the face of nonsense, particularly around the holidays, McCartney is a great teacher.)
Huffingtonposthighlights 10 things we learned about collaboration from watching the band do their thing in “The Beatles: Get Back.”
Beatles fans have long believe that the two-week recording process of Let It Be – and rooftop performance it culminated in ― was fractious and argument-ridden and one of the driving forces behind their breakup.
And if you’ve seen Lindsay-Hogg’s Let It Be, it’s easy to believe the recording process was pure hell. Jackson features many of those tense moments, but he also reintroduces footage that shows how much genuine fun the boys were still having while collaborating in 1969.
Your work doesn’t have to be perfect at first go
The scrappy first take off I Got a Feeling has nothing on the rollicking, perfect last take. McCartney good-naturedly grimaces at how off-key Lennon is on an early version of the Abbey Road tune Polythene Pam. he songs are in iffy states, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that it all gets recorded; there will be time to refine and shine them up later.
Harrison attempts to work out the lyrics for a nascent version of another Abbey Road track, Something.“Something in the way she moves / attracts me like …” he says, fumbling for the right word.Lennon’s sound advice? “Just say whatever comes into your head each time – ‘attracts me like a cauliflower’.
A leadership vacuum can easily create a sense of chaos
The shadow of Brian Epstein, the manager who discovered the Beatles and guided them to superstardom before dying of an accidental drug overdose in 1967, looms large in the doc. McCartney explicitly states that the band is in deep need of a “central daddy figure” to keep them on task, but he’d rather it not be him.
Absent a leader, a beleaguered McCartney takes the reins as taskmaster.
The rest of the band feels uneasy about that, too, especially when Macca slips into micromanager mode.
Humour gets you everywhere.
When Harrison half-jokingly suggests bringing Dylan in to join the recording process (at this point, Harrison and Dylan are friends), McCartney zings back: “It’s bad enough with four!”
Don’t underestimate a less veteran member of your group
When the Beatles did finally call it quits for good, Harrison released a critically acclaimed three-disc album, “All Things Must Pass,” which was number one worldwide for weeks. The title track to Harrison’s album is workshopped in the footage, but never sees the light of day on any Beatles album.
Create alone, hone together
This is incredible. Paul McCartney showing amazing talent in this clip. He comes up with 'Get Back' within 5 minutes in front of George and Ringo #GetBack pic.twitter.com/1CVm36XMZo
One of the most magical moments in The Beatles: Get Back is watching McCartney take the bare bones of Get Back and turn them into a full-fledged song, with some noodling and feedback from Harrison and Starr.
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