‘Get Back’: The Beatles smile and make faces, while Peter Jackson suffers from 'Scorsese syndrome'

The eight-hour monolith of rock docs, Peter Jackson’s Get Back has been dissected from so many angles by Beatle super-fans that this is simply one more “opinion piece” on this all-too-weighty documentary. On the whole, I think Get Back has a bunch of golden moments and is also very much a beached whale-like creation, incredibly similar to Scorsese’s films of recent years (rock-docs and his fiction films), in that it is *way* too long and desperately needed to be edited down. It is only for fans of the Beatles, and as such, can’t be labelled “an all-time great rock doc” — because the all-time great music films draw in new fans to the musician(s) being profiled; they don’t just appeal to the diehard, as Get Back does, from its very inception back at the end of 1968 until today. 

As it sits, the experience of watching all eight hours of the film is like seeing an already-long movie (say, three to four hours) but with countless moments that are DVD supplements (at best) plunked down in the “body” of the feature. Nothing could be set aside, everything is given equal importance.

One can only imagine how extremely repetitive the other 52 hours of footage from these sessions are — although there are probably many more sour faces and verbal jousts in that footage that couldn’t/wouldn’t be included here, because this film is, at base level, Paul McCartney’s much-hoped-for rejoinder to Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s original Let It Be (1970) assemblage of the footage that did indeed show “the unhappy Beatles” and shocked many people wanting the “quirky moptops” back. Lindsay-Hogg’s film also left us wanting more at 80 minutes; Jackson’s film is an overdose. 

So, in order to move more quickly through the elements, I hereby submit the very bad and very good elements of the film. I loathe “top ten lists” (even worse, “every song/movie/book, ranked”!), but since Jackson produced a beached whale of a work, I felt I had to take an approach that was counter to that. 

The bad elements of the film:

— The ridiculously forced frivolity and giddiness. To counteract the “downbeat” mood of the original film, Jackson seems to have mined the 60 hours of footage for deliriously happy moments. Any Beatle smiling, making a silly face, doing a silly dance. It’s adorable, yes, in small doses. In very large doses — as when Jackson knows we’ve now seen them sing a particularly sub-par song (“Dig a Pony,” anyone?) upwards of five times, so he offers us a “music video” of them bein’ goofy lads — it’s sheer performance and no longer a documentary. 

It’s insane how much happy-go-lucky footage there is; some sad moments are present, but they are heavily counterbalanced by what seem like hours and hours of the Beatles being ridiculously happy. Certainly, they must’ve had some carefree moments during this project and they also did partake of some *wonderful* chemicals, but their forced giddiness seems to also be the result of seasoned on-camera performers turning on the charm for Lindsay-Hogg’s omnipresent filming. “Fly on the wall” films have occasional glances by the subjects into the camera. Get Back is four gentlemen and their crew performing directly for the camera. 

— Why exactly did George Harrison leave the band? Jackson had a mandate to clearly make a happy version of Let It Be, but he also noted he didn’t want to diminish the preceding film, so he used alternate takes of certain scenes. Thus, the most famous interpersonal moment in the original film — when a frayed George Harrison does not want to be instructed by McCartney anymore, so he tells him “I’ll play whatever you want me to play. Or I won’t play at all, if you don’t want me to play. Whatever it is that will please you, I’ll do it.” — is here shown from a different, more distant angle where George is out of focus and the scene goes on longer in order to establish, “Look, look – these guys weren’t mad!”

Jackson noted in interviews that he used different takes of the material than were used by Lindsay-Hogg in order to "respect" the original film. This is admirable, but someone in the Beatles organization (with the initials PM?) pulled Let It Be many years ago. (It never was issued on DVD and is absent from the repertory circuit.) It's all over the Internet, in versions gotten from the VHS and LaserDisc releases, but has been MIA from legal distribution for a good two decades now.

Jackson's editing is smooth as silk (and the picture quality is such that we can be sure the original film elements NEVER looked that good, even when they were just back from processing at the lab; digital restoration of film makes it look as it never, ever looked before). It's disingenuous to "paint over" the George-Paul argument, though, since Harrison left the band at one point during the shooting. What was he so pissed about? 

It’s entirely possible that Lindsay-Hogg got absolutely no footage relating to this during the 60 hours he kept cameras rolling, but it's more likely that Jackson just wanted to entirely obscure it. And so he does, with George’s departure seeming to come out of a clear blue sky. Especially because the "angry George" moment was softened in this edit, and the "Silent Beatle" kept rehearsing for the rest of that day.

—Bored Yoko, in the center of things Yoko did not break up the Beatles — but John demanding she had to sit right next to him during these sessions must’ve driven the other guys nuts. (No matter how many times we have inclusions of McCartney saying she’s great... because he’s in front of a camera!) 

Yoko often noted she didn’t know anything about the Beatles, that pop/rock held no interest for her. Here she sits in the middle of the four collaborators and reads magazines, files her nails, and definitely communicates that she has no interest in what is going on around her. 

Yes, Jackson found some footage from the later days where she is actually rocking back and forth enjoying the music, but even he couldn’t disguise her evident boredom. She was born to a wealthy family and clearly disdained popular culture. Here we see her display that boredom, and we also see John making her “equal” in their relationship — by having her sit by his side and do nothing? (An odd form of feminism for the new-model couple.) 

— Third-person talk about the Beatles’ past, by the lads themselves. In the “wow, this seems awkwardly made up for the cameras” department, there are incredibly “formal” discussions by the Fabs about the death of “Mr. Epstein” and the trip to study under the Maharishi that was productive songwriting-wise, but not spiritually (well, perhaps for George, who was the only one following that form of spiritualism anyway). These sequences come off, again, as performers speaking to the audience, not each other. 

— Arguments are more compelling than old friends smiling at each other. The scenes in which actual tensions are in evidence are fascinating — when McCartney is indeed lecturing the other three (while saying he doesn’t want to lecture them); also when Harrison is indicating he doesn’t want to do a live concert or anything beyond albums (and when he notes to Lennon that he wants to do a solo album). 

Look at George's face.

Since the band did break up after the recording of Abbey Road (a far superior album to any grouping of the Let It Be/Get Back songs), there has to be some explanation for what went wrong. Jackson’s film includes some hints toward the simmering tension, but the forced-giddiness factor undercuts it entirely. Thereby making Get Back a pretty bad chronicle of a band’s break-up. (There are several books that cover this period in detail and explain beautifully what happened; Jackson conceals it with sleight-of-hand-like misdirection to the many moments when smiles or funny faces erupted.) 

— Nobody’s happy on the Apple rooftop. One of the most jarring things about the original Lindsay-Hogg doc is that no one is seen smiling on the Apple rooftop during the final concert, in which the Beatles performed nine songs (four of which were retakes). Lindsay-Hogg cut the retakes in the original film, and here they’re notable only because Lennon had big trouble remembering his own lyrics, since these were songs he didn’t seem to really care about at all. (Anytime the Beatles left “placeholder” lyrics in their songs, you could tell they were just trying to fill out an album.) 

In the happy-go-lucky Jackson assemblage of Lindsay-Hogg’s footage, the same is true. Yes, Billy Preston is smiling throughout, but he was barely on-camera. One older woman in a green sweater and a younger woman in a green dress are seen in brief shots smiling. Three girls on an adjacent roof are seen being happy. Otherwise, absolutely no one, most importantly the Beatles, is seen smiling on the Apple rooftop as they play. (I’m discounting John’s post-song jokes — those are part of a performance.) Compare this with the Rutles mock-doc All You Need Is Cash, and you’ll see that the fake version (“Get Up and Go Back Home”) is the happy rooftop concert as it exists in the imagination of Beatle fans. 

The real thing was historic indeed, but was also a stunt (to give the film something outside of the studio) in which the group were never seen by their audience, unless they worked across from Apple and had roof access. The sequence rises and falls in both the ML-H and Jackson versions on the viewer’s reaction to the on-the-street footage of Londoners hearing unfamiliar Beatle tunes without being able to see them. The lack of smiles at this key moment — which was 100% genuine — underscores the forced nature of the smiles in the studio. (Of course, Jackson trumps that by having a Beatle “listening party” back in the studio after London bobbies shut the rooftop concert down; everyone is grinning ear to ear and “larkin’ about” yet again. And yet they all broke up nonetheless….) 

— The Let It Be/Get Back set of songs are the weakest in the second half of the Beatles songbook. Sure, “Get Back” is a great rocker, “Let it Be” is a great serious number, and “Two of Us” is a quite poignant “looking back” song for two friends. (“One After 909” and “Across the Universe” are also very good, but both were older compositions and are not shown being rehearsed much at all in Jackson’s assemblage of Lindsay-Hogg’s footage.) 

“Dig a Pony,” “I’ve Got a Feeling,” and “Don’t Let Me Down,” three very minor Beatles tracks (and three *truly* uninspired lyrics) are seen to distraction in Jackson’s film. They are driven into the ground — we see them rehearsed over and over and over AND OVER. George’s three songs are pleasant (including “Old Brown Shoe”), but they’re nowhere near the quality of the two he had on Abbey Road and the trove of stuff he put on All Things Must Pass. If there is any one reason one would want to fast-forward through parts of Get Back (which I didn’t do, because, again, I love these guys!), it would be the incessant repetition of a very meager group of songs. 

The good parts of the film: 

— The moments of genuine emotion. Much has been made of McCartney noting “And then there were two” when George has left the band and John is arriving late one day; that is a genuinely authentic-seeming moment. The same for Lennon’s sarcasm about the Rolling Stones (always a sore point with him, despite his palling around with Mick and Keith during this period) and his calling Glyn Johns “Glynis” repeatedly (am sure Glyn had to take that in stride, but it must’ve conjured up the schoolyard for him; even during his peace-and-love days, John could be a really acidic person, and yet (or because of that) he's my favorite Beatle!). 

The all-too-brief moments where George’s feelings about wanting to leave the band do seep through Jackson’s slap-happy montage also resound. And, of course, Ringo’s “I’ll do whatever you guys want to do” attitude is the leveler, since one assumes he rode on the very erratic waves of the other three gents’ egos. And that odd but truly genuine bit of surreptitiously recorded talk between John and Paul about how to get George to come back (after John brusquely had volunteered that they should just get Clapton). 

 —The insane jam with Yoko. George (whom they knew since he was 14) has left the band, so what better time to play a cacophonous jam with John’s omnipresent partner who clearly looked down her nose at their music and wanted to do some squalling instead? It’s an odd reaction to what has just taken place, but they do seem so taken aback by George’s leaving that IF the Beatles were going to have a jam with Yoko, that would be when it took place, and it did. 

 — Seeing George break out. Yes, we’re stuck hearing his Let it Be album contributions and “Old Brown Shoe,” but we can see that his composition of “For You Blue” had an interesting source-point, and we also see him having a silent but steady hand over “Octopus’ Garden.” And then there’s the small bit of him working out a new song called “Something.” That was the point where the future was certainly an open book for him. “Silent Beatle” no more. (And he was known to have as cutting a sense of sarcasm as Lennon.) 

— Seeing George Martin guide them through every mini-crisis. It always seemed rather weird to fans that the Beatles didn’t have George Martin produce the LIB album. The fascinating thing in Jackson’s assemblage of the footage is the constant presence of the stolid Mr. Martin, who was the only “adult” (he was 43, fourteen years older than Lennon) to guide the group after the death of the aforementioned “Mr. Epstein.” After the crisis is averted (read: Harrison returns), Martin appears to have been in the studio nearly every day of rehearsal and recording, troubleshooting tech problems and tamping down the egos of the four “boys,” as he called them. 

— Billy Preston gets his due. The only non-Beatle to be credited on one of their 45s and an invaluable contributor to the LIB sessions, it’s very good to see him come in and melt instantly with the band. His electric piano parts of these songs stand out, and in a few cases make the song re-listenable. Clearly the presence of a fifth musician (not someone reading a magazine) diffused some of the tension in the room. (You know, the tension that Jackson spent a lot of time erasing by his choice of happy smiling faces and little dance moves….) 

— The songs that are NOT part of the LIB album. The single best thing in Get Back is the footage of the Beatles playing songs that were not in that small group of songs they finally put into the LIB hopper (which were then remixed and ornamented by Phil Spector; I might be one of the only people who feels that his “messing” with McCartney’s songs was exactly in synch with McCartney’s highfalutin corniness, esp. on “Long and Winding Road”). 

If there is any “gift” that Lindsay-Hogg did give us by filming the group non-stop through the month of the LIB project, it was this aspect. If I could view any amount of the 60 hours of LIB footage, this stuff is what I’d want to see. As it stands, Jackson does include the Beatles doing various other songs, but either they close the song off in a chorus or two, or Jackson cuts it off — to get back to “Don’t Let Me Down,” “I’ve Got a Feeling,” and “Dig a Pony.” Fuck! 

The five categories of songs-you-wanna-hear that are played by the band to pass the time in the studio are: 

—Rock oldies. This is the stuff they loved. Lennon always wanted to be playing the early rock ’n’ roll tunes, and hearing the Beatles do classics by Berry, the Everlys, Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, Ray Charles, and, of course, Elvis (among many others) is wonderful. One of Jackson’s best editing moments is a montage contrasting the shaggy older Beatles singing Chuck Berry's “Rock ’n’ Roll Music” with them as younger moptops singing it live to a choir of screaming girls. Most unusual and welcome cover, hands down: "The Third Man Theme," played by John on guitar. 

—Early shards. Lennon/McCartney compositions from their early days. Some are truly crappy, but others probably could’ve been reworked into something memorable. Further evidence that these guys were insanely productive from the moment they became friends until they broke out into solo careers. (And of course they were all under 30 for that whole journey.) 

— Their own earlier records. To pass the time, either John or Paul would break out into often satirical versions of songs from their earlier albums. Hits like “Love Me Do” and “Help!” are spoofed, but two of my faves come up out of the blue and sadly go back there: “Every Little Thing” (an album track that is catchy as can be) and “Woman” (a McCartney song written pseudonymously for Peter and Gordon; back at the time when even the Beatles’ “gifts for friends” compositions were terrific). 

— Songs that wound up on Abbey Road. A far superior set of song to those on LIB, these songs just crackle compared to… well, “Dig a Pony.” It’s also fascinating to contemplate that all the shards on the second side of the Beatles' actual “farewell album” were initially going to be full songs, but they were put to better use as part of that complex whole. (But, really, how long could “Polythene Pam” or “Carry That Weight” have lasted?) 

— Songs that appeared on the Beatles solo albums from 1970 on. Besides the great tunes that were left over from the “White Album” (“Teddy Boy,” “Child of Nature”), we hear here different configurations of Beatles doing John’s “Gimme Some Truth” (with input from… McCartney?), Paul’s hooky “Another Day,” and “All Things Must Pass” from George’s startling debut album. (Which, like the Beatles albums, seemed like a weight George carried around over the years — could he ever put out an album as good as that one? The answer was no, but he continued to write great singles.) 

I hereby suggest that you follow my lead — if you were worn down by the giant whale titled Get Back, the best way to get it out of your head (or to simply remember the good moments) is to play the Beatles songs you like a whole lot better than the ones that made up the official LIB line-up. You’ll probably want to avoid “Dig a Pony,” “I’ve Got a Feeling,” and “Don’t Let Me Down” for the next few decades….