Beatles to the Rescue
I must confess to hitting physical and emotional burnout this week, after nearly two years of slogging in the trenches writing articles and blog posts, speaking at rallies, organizing fundraisers, thousands of hours of Covid-19 research, and the writing of two new books: Diary of a Pandemic Year, poetry, Chameleonfire Editions 2021 (https://www.seanarthurjoyce.ca) and the forthcoming essay collection Words from the Dead: Relevant Readings in the Covid Age, Ekstasis Editions 2022. So I’ll depart from the headline Covid news of the day for now to offer my readers some much-needed relief, courtesy of The Beatles and Peter Jackson. (Please note: For those who haven’t yet seen his documentary Get Back, this article contains spoilers!)
With pandemic restrictions opening a black hole for arts and culture, one of the few—very, very few—moments of cultural serendipity has been the release of Peter Jackson’s film Get Back, his monumental re-edit of the original Let It Be footage shot by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Although at more than 7 hours it still could have used a trim in my opinion, it offered us so many moments of sheer delight in the unknown history of The Beatles. The very fact that anything new could be learned about this most famous band in the world was in itself a revelation. We see the incredible moment early one morning in the studio when Paul comes in, plugs in his bass, and starts vamping the riff to what would become “Get Back,” while a still-sleepy Ringo and openly yawning George look on. I whooped involuntarily when I saw that!
With the incredible resolution of the cleaned-up footage, we see a lot more into their faces—one step closer to reading their thoughts and emotions. Ringo emerges as far more sensitive than his jokey persona had led us to believe. You can feel the pain in him as he watches the band bickering—close to breaking up in the hostile environment of Twickenham Film Studios. When George declares he’s leaving the group, the remaining three go into a huddle, throwing their arms around each other. It’s a moment that couldn’t possibly have been scripted, yet it’s filmmaker’s gold, and would have failed if it had been scripted. As in a marriage, when one partner finally does make good on the threat and walks out, you realize just how deeply bonded even conflicting partners can be. Ringo is the first to open his arms, and throughout this film you see what an easygoing, loving person he seems to be. He really cares about his mates and about this band. When John doesn’t show up the morning after George leaves the band, Paul is heard saying, “And then there were two…” and with the increased resolution of the film, you can see the tears welling up in his eyes. Poignant and real beyond what any contrived script could ever have achieved.
There are other assorted A-ha! moments throughout Get Back, as when skeletal versions of songs from Abbey Road are first sketched out in the studio, including several takes of “Mean Mr. Mustard” and “Polythene Pam,” which seem to be mostly John numbers. Indeed, it seems that nearly half the songs on that album were first introduced in these sessions. There’s a very sweet moment when their longtime friend and roadie Mal Evans gets to play a minor part by striking an anvil for “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” The sheer delight in his face is a joy to see. There’s a lovely interaction between George and Ringo during an early draft of “Octopus’s Garden.” It’s a sequence that finally does justice to the musical genius of George, as he astutely points out to Ringo just exactly what chords are needed and where in the song. Another revelation is seeing George introduce much of the material that would make his first solo album, All Things Must Pass, so wonderful. Having just come off writing stunning songs like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and the haunting, melancholy, and often overlooked “Long, Long, Long” from the White Album, George is clearly reaching a songwriting peak that would culminate in such classics as “Something,” “Isn’t It A Pity,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “My Sweet Lord,” “Wah-Wah,” “Beware of Darkness,” “What Is Life,” and “All Things Must Pass.”
As with probably millions of others, I signed up for the Disney channel entirely on the strength of that show, since almost nothing else on their channel is of any interest to us. (I can’t bear to watch what they’ve done to the Star Wars franchise.) It was amazing to be immersed in the process of recording Let It Be, even if at times the constant start/stop start/stop of rehearsals gets boring and frustrating. In that respect I felt the series sagged in the middle and could have been cut back by an hour or so with no great loss. Still, it does have the effect of humanizing The Beatles. Yes, they were musical geniuses, but at times they too had to struggle to achieve their goals like the rest of us. It wasn’t instant—they had to work bloody hard to get results. They were thoroughgoing professionals, as seen here by how civil they were to each other during even the toughest moments. Despite the simmering tension, there are no explosive blowouts. George’s departure is so understated you almost miss it. John often relieves the tension by making faces, hopping around like a gnome or telling jokes. Paul reveals a hidden talent for silly accents and character impressions but is almost always right on the money when the tape starts rolling. Paul acquired a reputation for being pushy at this stage of the band’s career, but in fact it’s his dedication and professionalism that shine through consistently.
It turns out we the audience are feeling much the same as the band in the early phase of the film due to the terrible creative environment of the Twickenham film studio. But once George returns, insisting that they return to Apple Studios on Savile Row, the entire mood shifts toward the positive, especially with the arrival of the effervescent, brilliant Billy Preston. The band visibly comes alive again, goofing off with each other as they’d always done. Preston seems custom-made to slide seamlessly into The Beatles’ sound and the band actually discusses making him a permanent part of the band. One of the great delights of Jackson’s cut is seeing the joy on the band’s faces as they listen to the playback of their new songs in the control booth. This is damn good stuff and they know it. I can only imagine what future Beatles albums would have sounded like with Preston, post Abbey Road… just as I often wonder what songs John would be writing now had his life not been cut so tragically short.
And then of course the film reaches its ecstatic climax with the Rooftop Concert where we see The Beatles perform live for an audience for the first time in nearly three years. This again is where Jackson’s cut reveals its strengths. Throughout the sessions, director Lindsay-Hogg is constantly badgering the group to put together a grand theatrical finale, such as flying to Libya to perform in an ancient amphitheatre. You can see the boys politely ignoring his grandiose and often overblown ideas. After all, this was not the vision the band had in mind for Let It Be. What they wanted was a return-to-roots album, just the four of them playing and recording with as few overdubs as possible. Much of the bickering in the early part of the sessions revolves around Lindsay-Hogg’s proposed finale. When he finally suggests the rooftop concert, you can see Paul’s eyes light up instantly. This definitely fits with the band’s early image of itself as a rough-and-tumble rock ‘n’ roll group slogging it out 10 hours a day in a dank German strip club. To suddenly just “show up” on the roof of a Savile Row building and blast out loud rock music in mid-afternoon was Lindsay-Hogg’s one inspired idea. (Though of course this “spontaneity” would take some days of preparation to reinforce the roof and ensure the band and film crew’s safety.)
You can see from the looks on the band’s faces on the rooftop that this is as close to heaven as it gets for them. It’s the secret power that kept them going through all the hassles and setbacks—playing great music together. The pampering of the world’s biggest pop stars had caused a certain amount of ennui to set in, affording them almost endless time to muck around in the studio. But where the rubber meets the road is the Fab Four plugging in onstage and letting loose. It’s one of the most joyous moments in popular music history, and it is certainly a joy to watch with Jackson’s fantastically realistic resolution of the restored film. Some songs they play twice on the rooftop; in total I think there were only four distinct songs performed. With anyone else this would be a mark against them; with The Beatles, it only leaves you wanting more.
Get Back is a beautiful reminder of what made The Beatles so universally loved in the first place—the joy of life found in so many of their songs. I’ve often felt that The Beatles were the yin and the Rolling Stones the yang of the rock music scene in the Sixties. From a Jungian point of view it makes perfect sense that they would both have appeared simultaneously on the cultural scene—one provides the light, the other the shadow. Of course, with someone like John Lennon in the band, The Beatles too had their dark moments, in songs like “I’m A Loser,” “Baby’s in Black,” “I’m Only Sleeping,” “Yer Blues” and others. But listening through their catalogue, the overwhelming emotional impression conveyed is one of joy and delight. The word “love” shows up over and over again in Beatles song titles and lyrics. While it’s easy to dismiss this as pandering to a pop music market rife with love songs, there’s another perspective. For all we know, the repetition of such a positive emotion may have an incantatory effect on the subconscious. At very least, it does no harm and directs us to the higher rather than the lower passions. As the closing suite of songs on Abbey Road so aptly concludes: “And in the end, the love you take / is equal to the love you make.” Cynical materialists can dismiss it all as blowing smoke in the wind but let them come up with something better. Read between the lines: this too-easy dismissal of the “love and peace” message of the Sixties reads like a direct retort from society’s power brokers, who profit from division, conflict and war. I know what happens to me when I listen to The Beatles: my heart begins to feel like it might actually still heal after two years of constant battering.
The Beatles are a reminder that music, like any art, is first and foremost a result of chemistry, an unpredictable combination of disparate elements that magically—in the literal meaning of the word “magic”—results in a grand whole. Either that magic is there or it isn’t. It can’t be forced, as the Twickenham sessions prove. And it can’t be created by today’s approach of drafting entire teams of songwriters for mega-stars incapable of writing their own material. The four unique individuals who made up The Beatles had that magic in spades. Even with some of the brilliant music John, Paul, George and Ringo made in their solo careers, that magic would never be repeated. It’s therefore little wonder that The Beatles’ music is a universal touchstone across the generations. For me, listening to them again has the feeling of “coming home.” No doubt millions of people suffering through soul-crushing lockdowns are deeply grateful to Jackson for his accomplishment, his gift to us. For just a few hours during the past two years of unremitting Hell, we were indeed able to “get back” to a glorious time when all things seemed possible and the world was still an optimistic place to just “let it be.”
P.S. For the audio equivalent of Get Back, I highly recommend the remixed album Let It Be: Naked, which strips out some of producer Phil Spector’s excesses. This is especially noticeable on “The Long and Winding Road,” such a powerful song that it sounds great in both mixes. But Paul was reportedly incensed when he first found out what Spector had done to it, issuing a warning in a letter to “never do that again to one of my songs.” (Source: Beatles Anthology book.) Let It Be: Naked also manages to overcome the occasional shrillness of digital recordings with a more warm and expansive sound reminiscent of analog. A great way to hear a beloved old classic again, even if I still prefer the original track sequence.