The Beatles have always been a hard act to follow. Director Peter Jackson's three part documentary "Get Back" makes it clear that they'll remain an impossible act to follow until our species gets around to making another leap in consciousness.
If you're a fan, prepare to have all your theories about the last days of the Beatles annihilated. If you're not a fan, prepare to be enlightened.
"Get Back" now streaming on Disney+ is such an audacious piece of work that there's no way a public afflicted with attention deficit disorder can digest it all, even in two-plus hour installments spread over three nights.
For every sublime moment featuring Paul McCartney generating riffs for an instant classic like "Get Back" at will while George Harrison yawns and Ringo Starr listens attentively, there's three times as many scenes of mundane studio cross-talk highlighting the minutiae of being a rock band on a deadline.
Despite Jackson's much criticized penchant for narrative bloat, I can't think of another instance in which a group's creative process has been captured in such a compelling and interesting way. For all of its dull stretches, "Get Back" is electrifying more times than not.
Because I never saw "Let It Be," the 1970 documentary by Michael Lindsay-Hogg about the making of the last album released by the Beatles, much of "Get Back" was new to me. I avoided the bootlegs of the film for decades because I heard it was a desultory affair full of acrimony and enough egomania to dampen one's Beatlemania forever.
Jackson had access to the same 150 hours of raw audio and 60 hours of film footage recorded over 21 days in January 1969 to play with that Lindsay-Hogg did.
Those who have seen both depictions of that period of the Beatles work history prefer Jackson's more optimistic version, if only because the context for everything is much clearer on an eight-hour canvas than compressed into a conventional movie length. Both the humor and pathos of the Beatles as a group of ambitious but exhausted musicians who owned the decade musically comes through.
"And now, our hosts for the evening, the Rolling Stones," a seemingly wired but affable John Lennon says at several points before launching into a fragment of an original song or cover. After a while, it doesn't seem strange at all, given all of the babbling the series documents.
Because the viewers are finally privy to the secret of the Beatles' lyrical genius — the liberal use of nonsense verses and assorted babble with the right number of syllables to lock down melodies until the lyrics are workshopped — we quickly become acclimated to whatever gibberish is offered in the name of efficiency. And what glorious gibberish it is.
What's inspiring is that the Beatles never lost faith in their ability to pull classics from out of the ether even when they're on edge and anxious about so many things following the death of their long-time manager Brian Epstein.
Sometimes their interpersonal dynamics left something to be desired as evidenced by George Harrison's decision to quit the band after long simmering resentments about McCartney's de facto leadership of the band boiled over as the cameras rolled.
"If he doesn't come back by Tuesday, we get Clapton," Lennon quips. He might only have been half-joking at that point. That incident provided a perfect cliffhanger leading into episode 2.
A heart-to-heart about the situation between Lennon and McCartney with intimations about their power struggle was captured by a hidden microphone in a flower pot.
"You have always been boss," McCartney tells Lennon, the band's founder, as if to reassure him. "Now I've been sort of [the] secondary boss," he says acknowledging the legitimacy of Harrison's complaint that he's assumed Epstein's role and disrupted the band hierarchy.
"We're all guilty about our relationship to one another," Lennon says. "[My] goals, they're still the same: self-preservation."
All of the silly arguments about Lennon and McCartney's respective contributions to this album are conclusively settled by the evidence included in the film itself. Most of the time, McCartney was teaching Lennon and his bandmates the songs that were destined to become classics.
Whatever the band's prior history may have been, Paul McCartney was the acting boss and the band's most essential composer during those sessions.
While his partners were often distracted with discussions about album cover designs and concert locations, McCartney was quietly composing classics like "Let it Be" and "The Long and Winding Road" on a piano in a corner.
He was the personification of "focus" and showed up at the studio every day with the intention of writing and recording at least one viable sketch of a song. He easily outproduced his main writing partner who seemed to have checked out until late in episode 2. If this doesn't rehabilitate his reputation with folks who reflexively hate him on behalf of John Lennon, nothing will.
The only noticeable shift in energy and enthusiasm within the band occurred when keyboardist Billy Preston, a friend from their days playing in Hamburg, showed up to watch them record a song or two.
Little did Preston know that the band was looking for a keyboard player with his specific skill set. Harrison and Lennon invited Preston to sit on "Get Back," and he predictably infused the rocker with the forward momentum and melodic cohesion it needed.
And just like that, Billy Preston had been quietly recruited as the fifth Beatle at a time when the band's days were effectively numbered. Still, the joy on his face to be a part of the world's greatest rock ensemble was palpable. He couldn't stop smiling.
When "Get Back" shot to No. 1 that year after it was released as a single, the label credit was "The Beatles with Billy Preston," the only time the band ever shared joint credit with another artist.
Had the Beatles managed to hold on and become a touring band again after its final live performance on Apple's rooftop, Preston, Clapton and a few other well-known performers might have become auxiliary members.
But to their credit, the Beatles realized they had reached the end of their road together and weren't inclined to keep trudging along, even with inspiring friends, just for the money. "Abbey Road" was their final studio album. "Let It Be" was recorded earlier but released later, giving many the impression that it was their final album. The documentary of the same name certainly made "Let It Be" feel more like a swan song than the band intended.
A half-century after the Beatles broke up, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are, fortunately, still with us. For different reasons, they were always pegged as the most optimistic members of the band. Studio technology may have disrupted their partnership in the studio a half-century ago, but their friendship has remained solid. "Get Back" does an effective job of shattering the myth that the Beatles hated each other during the recording of those songs. It also exonerates both Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono of the charge of "killing" the Beatles.
While there was some passive-aggressive backbiting at times, there was more love and respect on hand than previously advertised. These four men who had known each other since they were teenagers, loved each other and were still having a lot of fun together.
They also loved their fans enough to create music that will remain indelible for at least a few more generations. The fact that they composed and recorded some of their greatest songs on camera decades before reality television was an evil glint in a cable TV programmer's eye is yet another testament to their forward-looking genius. It is such a privilege to be alive when music of this beauty and complexity is in the world.
