Welcome back...
So now that you're acquainted with the characters of the story, now it's time to jump head first into the content. Content seems to be the ultimate word of the 2020's. The zeitgeist of every social media influencer, video maker, musician and podcaster is making content, and wether or not that content is good, meaningful or even exceptional is for us consumers to ultimately decided and reject. Given the short time the Beatles were together, and the Swinging London and Apple Record apparatus, not including the films, other music and books during their life time, they produced a lot of "content". To sort thru the "muck and the mire", I'm going to walk thru the Beatles Essential albums, films, and books to get one more involved in the Beatle world.
Essential Beatle Books
The Anthology Project brings the entire lifespan in a cohesive narrative, aligning the Beatles story to Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. It's a great icebreaker, but like my other post mentions, it says away from some of the darker and salacious elements of the band's history. As much as they are musical heroes, they are broken humans and over the last 20 or so years the real story is slowly taking shape. In the past, there have been some books that flesh out the story, warts and all, only to be shuffled away and left to Beatlemaniacs to stumble upon. There are a ton of Beatle books, and where to start can be daunting. The level of study of the Beatles is perpetually limitless with each year new books expanding on the myth and the music.
- The Beatles: All These Years, Volume One: Tune In by Mark Lewisohn
Tune In is the first volume of a three-part series by self-proclaimed Beatles historian and mega-fan Mark Lewisohn. Having written a number of Beatle books beforehand (Beatles Recording Sessions, Beatles Chronicle, Beatles Live and the Beatles' London, all which are essential), Lewisohn is researcher supreme in Beatles fandom. The book is one of the greatest Beatle books, and for a casual fan it might go beyond the Beatles lives, pulling things out of the darkness. Once you get into the book's flow, the read becomes engrossing, every new Beatle detail popping from the page.
Revelations and uncovering abound, Tune In is is rich in depth, but fails narratively. Lewisohn is not the greatest of scribes in Beatle bookdom and for that Tune In suffers for it. The prose is at times dry, wordy and pensive, leading down roads of pessimism, dejection, and binary. Where the art of word craft is needed, the reader is met with brute force of awkwardness. The first volume is in two forms, the 944 abridged, but standard version which I read and later listened to as an audiobook and a 1,728 extended special edition that dives even deeper into the Beatles' early lives. I have the standard edition, which I think is decent enough for any Beatle fan wanting all the story and new details. Eventually I'll make the jump and get the extended edition.
With that in mind, Lewisohn, himself is a polarizing figure with Beatle fandom. Most recently he has been annexed from the Apple archive for some undisclosed reason. Many have speculated but Lewisohn has not given a reason for this prohibition, and it has likely slowed if not soft canceled the following volumes Turn On and Drop Out until something has changed in the Beatles legalsphere. Other books have been released with far more ramifications on the Beatle myth that have been published (see: You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup by Peter Doggett; Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans by Kenneth Womack), but why has Lewisohn bared the brunt of it all?
Volume 2 is on its way, according to Lewisohn, but time will tell if that happens. Lewisohn has spoken about revising and adding new discovered information for Volume 1 after publishing the final volume.
- The Love You Make: An Insider's Story of the Beatles by Peter Brown
By Beatles insider and Brian Epstein's personal assistant and Apple Corps board member until the band's dissolution, The Love You Make: An Insider's Story of the Beatles is one heck of a book. A complete story, albeit written and published before John's death, it is an engrossing 1970's biography of the Beatles that doesn't hold back on the darker aspects of the story. This book blew my mind when I first read it in High School, touching on subjects glossed over and excised out of the Anthology TV series.
It's that Peter Brown in 'The Ballad of John and Yoko' that evicerates the myth of the Beatles and revels in excess brought on by fame and fortune. While I hold back on saying that I had a positive idea on who the Beatles were, but with the Anthology project, the Hard Day's Night and Help films forming my idea of what the band was like, it's hard to say I wasn't swayed. This book colored my Beatle world darker, expelling the myth entirely with tales of extramarital affairs, profound drug use and abuse, misogyny, covetousness, anger, personal growth, abandonment and violence. Like all of us in this world, the Beatles are not exempt from their own brokenness, and at times, it swallows them whole.
Salacious at times, piercing and fierce, the book changed my perspective on the Beatles. Akin to Kenneth Womack's Mal Evans biography and Tune In, TLYM brings the Beatles myth to a halt, deconstructing it, breaking it, leaving to explain their meteoric rise in historical terms, and detail the personal and professional effects of their success. It also explains the reasoning of construction of the Bealte Myth and why it was important. This Beatles story I found the most compelling came in this book.
Where Anthology holds back, TLYM and Tune In, dives in head first.
- Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles by Kenneth Womack and You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup by Peter Doggett
To me, the fascination of an ending is the examination of the steps leading up to the ending. The concept of examination of steps in a journey that culminate in "the end" is an eternal and biblical concept. Stories are inherently sequential, and human existence is sequential; we rise, we fall, and the after effects. The myth-making of the Beatles and the 21st century deconstructing of it requires scholars to determine a guaranteed "ending" to which we then walk back on to discover the events leading up to this proverbial "end."
Solid State, along with You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup by Peter Doggett are well-execute end-of-the-Beatles documentations of the end of the Beatles. These books I pair together because they bleed into each other. Solid State takes an in-depth look at the final gasp of the Beatles. Leaving behind the Let It Be/Get Back Project, Paul McCartney is determined to get the legacy of the Beatles correct somehow. George Martin is in on it, too, although disillusioned by the upsetting sessions of the White Album and the Let It Be/Get Back, he puts his foot down and is in-charge of the Bealtes both as mentor, producer, and musical director. With Martin back as musical "headmaster", Paul is (in theory) in check having Martin as sole producer. Going back to The Beatles (album) and the Let It Be/Get Back Project, while being two major milestones in the Beatles; history, they are incredible missteps and blunders for the band. Grouping together The Beatles and the Let It Be/Get Back Project, the band is teetering on the edge of disaster. Viewed with history, we need to see this period of the band where the lack of direction renders the band inert. They are essentially leaderless, threefold with Brian Epstein's recent death, George Martin's self-exclusion of the White album sessions, and John Lennon's descent into heroin use and rejection of the Beatle as ideal, self and band. Yoko takes the blame in the cultural zeitgeist, but in history and hindsight, it's Paul who speeds up the band's demise. Solid State is an engrossing read of one man holding together loosened ends to make one final statement, in hopes that these loosened ends would organically grow back. It's also a sad read, but the information on the recording technology and George Martin's control over the band and the record is fascinating to discover. Here was the man who fashioned the band into something greater than it's parts and doing so a final time, and ultimately, creating what modern pop and rock music was going to be for the next 50 years. We have yet to move from the White Album and Abbey Road as far as sonics, texture, mixing, and production, much like R&B and modern pop music hasn't moved passed Thriller and Bad. The template for guitar based pop/rock was demonstrated and purposed with the White Album, and perfected sonically in Abbey Road, and retroactively and unfairly with the White Album Giles Martin remix. They are modern rock records and perform as such. Solid State perfectly marries a complex interpersonal drama with high technical documentation.
You Never Give Me Your Money picks up the story essentially, recounting the end of the Beatles, the Lennon-McCartney feud of 1970-1972 and all that followed. What YNGMYM succeeds in is demonstrating the overall legality impact the break-up had on the Beatles and how it looks to the end of Beatlemania as its starting point. The scope of this book is enormous, reaching far into the early 21st century and accounting everything after 1970 in detail. At times, the book can drag and focus too much on certain areas of post-Beatle life, some other books are doing this better, and Doggett can descend into legalities boring and uninspired. It paints Paul as the primary instigator in the break-up, which I believe is to be true, but John and Yoko are not blameless. Dogget's first part of the book gives each Beatle his due, ascribing the break-up to all, yet, Paul who was the one who drew the line in the sand. Nobody wanted to commit to the band being no more, in essence, but it took Paul's April 10th, 1970 press release to seal the deal.
The second half of the book is the reconciling of the individual Beatles over time, the calamity of John's murder in 1980 and the new Beatles resurgence starting with the induction at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Anthology.
- Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band & the Whole World by Rob Sheffield
Rob Sheffield is an American music journalist, well-known within rock circles and for his work at Rolling Stone Magazines. While working at a local bookstore, this came out and I was drawn to Sheffield's thesis. I read the book almost 6 years after its initial publication and wished I had read it sooner. The book not a biography but a series of essays demonstrating the emotional and cultural impact of the Beatles on Sheffield and his siblings. While not having the Beatles in his lifetime, Sheffield draws from a new wellspring of Beatle-styled thinking, second generation and third generation Beatle fans. What works the best about the book is touching on the idea that the Beatles have transcended generations, and how the repackaging of the Beatles presentation informs each generation's view on the band. It's a celebration of the music in the most purest form, and spreads beyond the music, into movies, other bands. Not a biography, there is biographical information, but it's mostly a cultural examination of the most successful rock band.
- Here, There & Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick and Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust by Ken Scott
Geoff Emerick was the Beatles' second most important person in EMI studio. As an audio engineer, Geoff Emerick was the architect of the sonic palette that the Beatles and George Martin created. Breaking rules and protocol, Emerick provided the freedom the Beatles needed to achieve the sounds on Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Abbey Road. His book is an essential read for some of the more technical aspects of recording, there are some dips into biography and snippy comments about Beatle sessions. Emerick can rub readers the wrong way on certain topics. On the flip side, Ken Scott's Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust is similar in tone, but light in the technical side. Other than working with the Beatles, Scott engineered key albums in the early careers of David Bowie and Elton John.
- George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door by Graeme Thomson
The erroneously quipped quiet Beatle, George Harrison's post Beatle career is an interesting tale of indifference, friendship and tragedy. Out of all the Beatles, GH I believe was the most effected by Beatlemania and spent the rest of his life trying to balance work-life-music into one cohesive moment. Graeme Thomson's book is a great read, touching on highlights and lowlights of George's life.
- The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions & The Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn
In tandem, these two tomes of information are the foundation of Mark Lewisohn's research. The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions lists and documents all of the Beatles' recording sessions from Hamburg to I Me Mine. Lewisohn adds comments and biographical information for the sessions. Both books are not for the casual fan, but those looking to examine the Beatles' day by day and how much work they accomplished over 7 years. The Beatles Chronicle builds on his first book, the Beatles Live, a document of all the Beatles live dates between 1958 and 1966.
- The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1 by Adrian Sinclair and Allan Kozinn
Following Lewiston's lead from Tune In, Sinclair and Kozinn's first volume of the solo years of Paul McCartney is an amazing labor of love on the most critical years of Paul's life. Volume 1 documents the fallout of the Beatle's end, Ram and the first band of Wings and McCartney's constant distancing himself from the Beatles. Legacy, Volume 1 is a great read to find out more about the dark McCartney years.
Books I Haven't Read but are Essential
- The Philip Norman Biographies: John Lennon: The Life - Paul McCartney: The Life - George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle
Philip Norman is a premiere music biographer, and his relationship with the Beatles and readers began with the hastily post-Lennon 1981 'Shout: The Beatles in Their Generation.' (Which I have not read and not essential.) 'Shout' is notorious for having outdated information and hasn't been consistently updated. The Lennon biography is a staple of music biographies. The latest in the series is George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle after 2016's Paul McCartney: The Life. I haven't read any of Norman's books since becoming a Beatle fan and that's mostly because my taste is less about biography information but the combination of how their lives informed their music. Eventually...
- The Beatles by Bob Spitz
While Tune In/All These Years remains in its limbo status, Spitz's The Beatles is regarded as the pinnacle of Beatles Biographies, replacing Peter Brown's The Love You Make. Published in 2005, this biography brings the Beatles story into the 20th century.
Essential Records & Songs
- Beatles For Sale (1964): No Reply/ I'm A Loser/ Baby's In Black/ Rock & Roll Music/ I'll Follow the Sun/ Mr. Moonlight/ Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!/ Eight Days a Week/ Words of Love/ Honey Don't/ Every Little Thing/ I Don't Want To Spoil the Party/ What You're Doing/ Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby
The last album within the confines of Beatlemania, Beatles for Sale is anomaly. Littered with covers from their live set, and some of the greatest original Lennon/McCartney songs, BFS finds the band under strain and exhausted. There's something about this record that sounds tired, but not the John-constantly-in-bed-sound ("I'm Only Sleeping", "I'm So Tired"). They are stretched musically, but the focus is on the Lennon/McCartney songs which outshine anything on the previous albums. These are exemplary examples of guitar pop, "Eight Days a Week", "No Reply", "I'll Follow the Sun", "Every Little Thing", "What You're Doing", "I Don't Want To Spoil The Party", and "I'm a Loser". For the rest of the record, the band is on autopilot for the covers, somehow misfiring on the most pleasantly horrendous Beatle cover track "Mr. Moonlight" and leaving the unreleased "Leave My Kitten Alone" in the vault for nearly 30 years. If this is the Beatles when they are tired, imagine what they sound like when they're fully rested... well, read on!
- Rubber Soul (1965): Drive My Car/ Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)/ You Won't See Me"/ "Nowhere Man/ Think for Yourself/ The Word/ Michelle"/ "What Goes On/ Girl/ I'm Looking Through You/ In My Life/ Wait/ If I Needed Someone/ Run for Your Life"
December 1965, the Beatles released Rubber Soul. While the US version was an amalgamation of the acoustic tracks of the British release and leftovers from Help, the British version is the arrival of the modern Beatles. While BFS, has classic Lennon/McCartney songs, Rubber Soul has the band working fully as a studio unit, and all principle songwriters firing at all cylinders. The voices of the Beatles are prime on this album with tracks like 'Nowhere Man', George's indifferent 'If I Needed Someone' and the girl group inspired deep cut 'You Won't See Me'. The experimentation of the band in the studio is now a trope, in comes the sitar, fuzz bass pedal, twelve string guitars on stun. Sunshine pop at its finest.
- Revolver (1966): "Taxman/ Eleanor Rigby/ I'm Only Sleeping/ Love You To/ Here, There & Everywhere/ Yellow Submarine/ She Said She Said/ Good Day Sunshine/ "And Your Bird Can Sing"/ For No One/ Doctor Robert"/ I Want to Tell You/ "Got to Get You into My Life/ Tomorrow Never Knows"
If Rubber Soul is side A, Revolver is Side B. Turning up the gain on the guitars, Revolver pushes the band into rock territory and ups the experimentation. The sunshine pop of Rubber Soul is still there in tracks like "Good Day Sunshine", "I'm Only Sleeping", and "Here, There and Everywhere", but the band swaps acoustics for electrics, creating power pop in songs like "Taxman", "Doctor Robert", "And Your Bird Can Sing", and "She Said She Said". The
variety continues, expanding into novelty ("Yellow Submarine"), singer-songwriter ("For No One") and eastern-inspired pseudo spiritualism ("Tomorrow Never Knows"). Revolver isn't a rock record in the traditional sense, but an art rock record, relying on eclecticism and artistic tools. Each song requires multiple listens to peel apart and then to construct for enjoyment. Is this the best Beatle record?
- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967): Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"/ With a Little Help from My Friends/ Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds/ Getting Better/ Fixing a Hole/ She's Leaving Home/ Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!/ Within You Without You/ When I'm Sixty-Four/ Lovely Rita/ "Good Morning Good Morning/ Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)/ "A Day in the Life"
Childhood. Home. Love. The ultimate 60's record and quite possibly the greatest art rock record, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the quintessential collaboration of Lennon/McCartney as a songwriting partnership, George Martin as a producer and the Beatles as a studio unit. Preempted by the double A-Side "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane", the collideascope and charm of Sgt. Pepper lies in its songs and production. The attempt to remove themselves entirely as "Beatles" frees them to experiment beyond fuzz basses and string quartets. Themes of childhood, home, drama and the "rockshow" run through the record. The band reshapes the modern rock band as the new carnival attraction, mirroring the Beatles themselves and Beatlemania. At the end of this record, the Beatles being to fall apart, trying to remain a cohesive unit.
- The Beatles (1968): "Back in the U.S.S.R./ "Dear Prudence/ "Glass Onion/ Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da/ Wild Honey Pie/ The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill/ While My Guitar Gently Weeps/ Happiness Is a Warm Gun/ Martha My Dear/ I'm So Tired/ Blackbird/ Piggies/ Rocky Raccoon/ Don't Pass Me By/ Why Don't We Do It in the Road?/ I Will/ Julia/ Birthday/ Yer Blues/ Mother Nature's Son/ Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me & My Monkey/ Sexy Sadie/ Long, Long, Long"/ Honey Pie/ Savoy Truffle/ Cry Baby Cry"/ 5. "Revolution 9/ Good Night
Massive and sprawling, The Beatles or the' White Album, is the template for the modern rock/pop record, in sound, and presentation. What's unique about the White Album is the quality and quantity is almost evenly matched. Styles fly in and out, staying for three minutes at a clip maximizing the charm of the entire record. It's polarizing, and compelling, leading legions of fans to create their own single version (more on that later). This is the sound of a band teetering on the edge, four artists vying for space, artistic freedom and individuality.
Essential Compilations
- Anthology 2 (1996) and Anthology 3 (1996)
Anthology 1 was more of a sound collage and companion to the Anthology TV series. Being a 90's Beatles fan, I had the CD version and enjoyed it immensely. The audio clips of John, Paul and Brian Epstein in-between live Beatle tracks and outtakes made the listen richer and more like an audio drama. It worked! But once Anthology 2 and Anthology 3 dropped, the audio clips were swapped for more outtakes and alternate tracks. Understandably, the Anthology TV series achieved what Anthology 1 was trying to at the same time, albeit on a smaller level. My experience was unique with Anthology 2&3, I was hearing works in-progress and later hearing the final versions when I was able to buy the CDs. These are now reconned by the box sets released by Apple over the last few Christmas's but there's some interesting George Martin remixes and edits sanctioned by the three remaining Beatles. I also don't understand all the hate for "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love", they are great songs in their own right. They might not be tradition canon Beatles Songs, but they are a pleasant epilogue to the entire Beatle recording saga. I don't know essentially what they are.
- 1 (2001)
In and out of the Beatle compilation hierarchy, 1 is a interesting variation of the Greatest Hits. 1 contains all the Beatles number one hits in one place and unfortunately subtracts some of the album highlights from the Red and Blue compilations. The presentation of Beatles as a single based band is not entirely false. The simultaneous creation of pop singles and the album as a single piece of work makes the Beatles unique in the realm of rock music. The Stones and The Kinks did this as well, but as the 60's became the 70's these groups changed with the times. With the Beatles ending in 1969, and formally in 1970, they remained in those two tiers, and I highly doubt that would be the case, Paul approached the first three years of his solo career with the same singles/album format. With the Beatles, the canon of music and films is finite, resulting in time to examine the band in a myriad of ways, 1 is just an example.
Essential Films/Documentaries
- A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
A Hard Day's Night is a strange artifact within the Beatles canon. Solidifying the Beatles as a current mid-60's cultural phenomenon, it also characterized the band's individual personalities unfairly for nearly half a century, forcing the Beatles themselves to continuously want to shake this unwanted public perception. While, in film, their personalities were based in truth, the screening writing of AHDN has a way of exaggerating these small kernels and expounding on their personalities. Each Beatle had a specific delineation; Paul IS the cute Beatle, John IS the witty Beatle, George IS the quiet Beatle (which unfairly and upon closer rewatch isn't the case, his scene in the fashion magazine's office, he'd more rightly be called the Honest Beatle or Snarky Beatle which I think he's closer to), and Ringo is the funny Beatle. I can't find a definitive textual source for this, but it most likely came from the group's dynamic thru press and TV interviews, and live performances. In AHDN, they are solidified and the public will perceive
the four-headed monster within these idioms. As much as these personas are fabrications and the Beatles themselves complex individuals, even more so as Beatlemania goes on, it's the grounding for the film in which is a day-in-the-life documentary-style film in which the band is scheduled to do a TV broadcast a la the Ed Sullivan show. Hijinks ensues when Paul's trouble seeking grandfather instigates and questions Ringo's autonomy within the band and Ringo goes "on parade" prior to the band's spot on the telly. The rest of the Beatles go to try and find him, while Paul's grandfather makes an attempt to sneak past Paul and their managers (loosely based on their actual financial and tour managers Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans). The film is a series of vignettes, porto-music videos, and frame story, that's enjoyable, quotable and fun. Recent cultural examinations are trite and dumbfounding, trying to make the film into something it is most certainly not. A product of it's time, the film is a cheap quick money grab at the height of Beatlemania, but somehow transcends beyond that because of the Beatles themselves and the Beatles machine that would result from the film. It is hilariously funny, but as a film it works strictly FOR Beatle fans, music fans at the time, and now most certainly musicians and eternal Beatle fans who like the film and watch it annually and occasionally. Subsequently a flood of imitators followed (Herman's Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, The Monkees' TV show and film Head.)
Film is quite responsible for the spread of the rock and roll genre. Blackboard Jungle, released in 1955, featured 'Rock Around the Clock' by a then struggling 29 year-old country and western singer Bill Haley and his band the Comets, in the opening and closing of the film, sending shockwaves through post-war Britain and creating 50's American teenage culture. The Rock and Roll American subgenre exploded with films like Rock Around The Clock (1956), The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), endless Elvis (B-)movies, Calypso Heat Wave (1957), High Confidential! (1958), Beach Party (1963) and it's exhaustive sequels, and Rock, Rock, Rock (1956), combining soft plots interspersed with musical performances. The musical had been around since the advent of sound in film, but the rock and roll film was rooted in grindhouse theater and exploitation cinema, produced quickly to cash in on the latest fad. Its eventual growth from exploitation subgenre to serious filmmaking made its leap with AHDN, expanding into films like Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, the experimental Head, Midnight Cowboy, the Graduate, narrative concert films like The Song Remains the Same, and the Last Waltz, and in the 70's with rock musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Phantom of the Paradise, Shock Treatment, Tommy the Musical, the Bee Gee's Sgt, Pepper Film).
A product of its time, A Hard Day's Night creates a foundational work in the Beatles mythos, and simultaneously brings rock and roll/popular music into cinematic and video culture.
- Eight Days a Week (2016)
Ron Howard's documentary on the Beatles' touring years is enlightening and the anti-A Hard Day's Night. Where the fictional account of a Beatles's day in 1964 is that of acute chaos where the band can rest and also take part in the madness, Eight Days a Week has the viewer along with the band riding on the edge of Beatlemania. Eight Days expands and delves into the harsh truths of the Beatles' touring years and how it affected them to stop completely and become a solely recording unit. Tales are recounted from the Anthology project, but with seriousness and tact, much like the Peter Brown and Bob Spitz biographies. It's unfair to the story of the Beatles to say that they "just stopped touring" after 1966 at Candlestick Park. The story is darker, building upon increasingly harrowing experiences and challenges the band had to face when only they wanted to play their music to fans and see the world. It's heartbreaking, but understandable. You can visible see the band's foundation cracking when the documentary finishes and they transition to a recording-only band. The four-headed monster died in 1966, yet it continued on life support.
Highly recommended, the documentary is candid and honest, featuring excellent stories and choice interviews by a master filmmaker.
- Get Back (2021)
By the time Get Back appeared on Disney+, the Beatles had become perennial. 50th, and now the 60th anniversaries of albums, films, dates and shows, the Beatles as a cultural phenomenon has been solidified. Much has to do with the incessant repackaging and remixing for Gen Z and listeners accustomed to modern music, but there seems to be an endless vat of Beatle related things now slowly being unearthed.
Peter Jackson's reworking of the Let It Be film as Get Back reconstructs the narrative of the Beatles at a critical point in their recording careers. Instead of the drab and dreary Let It Be, Get Back takes the initial footage and puts forth the true narrative, a band struggling to move forward without their guide. When Brian Epstein died, the Beatles began a two year tailspin, fracturing slightly but not completely falling apart. Aimless, John Lennon most surely felt this the most. In his notorious interview with Jann Wenner, Lennon Remembers, Lennon says, "I was stunned. I don’t know whether you’ve had it, but I’ve had a lot of people die around me and the other feeling is: ‘What can I do?'" John effectively shuts down and builds a barrier between him and the other Beatles, his new love Yoko to picking up the pieces and offering him another pathway. Paul, on the other hand, rooted in the London rock culture sees the band as an important, and even crucial to the British way of life. He lives to produce music and his musical output doubles, may even triples in 1967 to 1970. The freedom to write at home and explore new musical ideas at the studio propels Paul from the occasional sole songwriter and constant collaborator, to a virtuoso songwriter. Ringo descends into drink, and drug pacification, ready to start a new project and subsequent acting career with The Magic Christian. George does as well, but there's a deep wound in the youngest Beatle. The first episode of Get Back ends with George leaving the group, frustrated with Paul, recalling a prior recording session for Hey Jude where a huge row had taken place. George had been relegated to one song per side, resulting in 22 compositions, and a couple that were reworked into solo tunes. By early 1969, he had a backlog of songs as early as 1966 that were either voted down by the other Beatles or remained with his person. Continually, he wasn't as prolific Paul within the Beatles or even later during the solo years, but there was a wealth of untapped material. Each of the Beatles were coming at the unit in different measures, and at the heels of the White Album released in November of 1968. With all this in mind, the Beatles are vying for something unique to themselves, and are restarting a new musical project only two months after the release of their last. They're collectively exhausted physically, mentally, and with the themselves individually and as the Beatles. It's so clear from the celluloid. What they need is a break, a solid vacation and maybe a series of solo recordings to try something fresh. But that doesn't happen. They follow the familiar formula and continue as if everything is ok, sunny and bright...
Expanding Let It Be's 80 minutes into 468 minutes in three episodes, Get Back reshapes not only the end of the Beatles, but clears the room of indecision and why of the
end of the Beatles. There was a path forward, requiring a desperately needed break. The
tension of Let It Be is tampered in Jackson's series, and yet flares occasionally when power struggles and decisions are talked about. Unfortunately, Paul suffers much like he did in Let It Be, but slightly less, and in a different way. In Let It Be, his presence dominates the screen, resulting in the "Paul is God" quote from John after initial viewing. Both the album and the film are culled from overall subpar under recorded material which the Beatles themselves abandoned. In Get Back, Paul is still domineering, but not as much as he is desperate. He foresees the band falling apart multiple times in the miniseries, breaking down even in Episode one. His relationship with John had eroded, and with Yoko arriving, Paul has lost his collaborator completely. The Beatles truly end when the Lennon and McCartney songwriting partnership dissolves, and Jackson pulls out the prime piece and makes it the defining moment of the entire series. Paul is on a mission to not only rescue the band, but the lifeblood of Lennon/McCartney, and this desperation pushes George aside. It goes unnoticeable that George does not perform any of his songs on the roof. While the break-up of the Beatles isn't documented in the series , Get Back shows Paul's indecision on touring and going back to live shows, John's lack of drive and want to be in collaboration with Yoko spur on the end. The overall aimlessness of the group and work for work's sake makes the series uncomfortable at times, over-rehearsing songs for naught... is it an album? Is it a film? Is it a TV show? There is no end goal, where the end goal of a rock and roll band as big as the Beatles is to writing and record and album, and go back on the road. But that doesn't happen.
***Each Beatle, except Paul goes back to live performance almost immediately the break-up, John is the first pre-break-up with Live Peace in Toronto, George and Ringo with the Concert for Bangladesh. It takes Paul until February of 1972 to play a live gig.
The series ends with the Beatles leaving 3 Saville Row, and George talking to John about his backlog of songs. While at Apple, George worked as a producer for many Apple acts, more so that John and Paul, contributing possible Beatle compositions to these artists. He broaches the idea to John about a solo record of all George songs and the reconvening as the Beatles later. Interestingly enough, John humored George with the idea...
Hindsight is key to Jackson's work, opposed to Michael Lindsay-Hogg's original film which was cast unfairly as an epilogue to the history of the Beatles. Let It Be has been treated unfairly, and "lost", only to be bootlegged and replaced by Get Back. This reframing is not about the end of the Beatles, but a band on the edge of two possibilities, continuation or fracturing. The latter takes place, and we don't get those early 70's Beatles records, but somehow we do get Abbey Road, a template for the future Beatles. More on Abbey Road later and why it's the template for Beatlesque, Wings, George as "The Beatle" and not my favorite Beatle record by far.
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