I have never liked to watch or read things about the Beatles' later years. I already know how it's going to end, and it doesn't end well, and most material I've seen tends to take a very negative attitude to what led up to the already unhappy ending (sometimes to their entire story, too). I have still never seen Let It Be, which has a reputation for being a particularly huge offender in this area. I mean, why would any Beatles fan want to see the boys so unhappy and on the verge of breakup and not even getting along anymore??
So when I first watched the trailer for Get Back, I was expecting more of the same. But the first thing I noticed was how happy it seemed. Not what you normally think of when you hear about the Later Years at all. The Beatles are just being playful and having fun, more like what you see in A Hard Day's Night or Help! than in any account of the later years. (Gosh, I love those movies.) And then I started to think... Maybe? Maybe this one will be done well and I can actually enjoy it? Maybe I'll give it a try....
I did watch the documentary very recently (last December, as I write this in late January/February) and I'm very glad I did. All of the playful, irreverent energy that attracted me to the Beatles back when I first watched their first two movies at the age of 14 was present here. Yes, there were also some darker, heavier moments, but altogether the movie showed a very nice balance, and I would say the positive, fun moments far outweighed the negative, heavy ones – especially when they return to their own familiar studio and stop putting so much pressure on themselves to do a live show they aren't remotely prepared for in only two weeks. It's a far cry from what you hear about Let It Be. Honestly, considering what we hear about the Beatles' later years suggests they were always fighting, I found the Beatles' way of handling any differences that did come up to be quite mature. There was absolutely no sign of any raised voices or baseless insults (“If you weren't so...” “If you hadn't done such-and-such...” you know the kind I mean). But more than that, the Beatles for the most part seemed very aware of what the others needed and very keen to make sure everyone's needs were met.
Actually, the series kind of makes you question every apparent problem we've been told the Later Year Beatles were having. Yes, Paul is taking charge and is quite keen to make sure everything gets done and is done right, but he never struck me at all as controlling or overbearing, and the others were always able to get through to him. There's a part towards the beginning of the documentary where George and Paul clearly have some tension between them, and Paul is openly acknowledging there's a problem here and trying to address it, though George insists nothing is wrong. At another point later on, Paul is worried because the Beatles didn't get any good recordings done that day, and John is there to reassure him that they were all just tired and will do better tomorrow – and unsurprisingly, they do. John is hardly just standing back and letting his band fall apart – he just has a more laidback approach to things, that's all, and it balances out Paul very nicely; they still have a great dynamic both as friends and as bandleaders. I very much appreciated John's tendency to use his brilliant sense of humour to diffuse the tension. John's incredible wit comes up quite a bit throughout the documentary, which is no surprise to me since it's one of the first things I ever noticed about him and a huge part of the reason why he's my favourite Beatle if I had to pick one. But again, not something I hear talked about very often when people write about John. Even the most common photos of him tend to show him with this very serious, almost sad, look, despite numerous photos I've found of him with this bright, playful smile. I really don't get it at all – John's humour seems to be such a huge part of his character! Why isn't it talked about more??
Yoko, meanwhile, was really doing nothing to justify being blamed for the Beatles' breakup. She was literally just sitting quietly on a chair beside John, very rarely speaking and not bothering anybody (usually she brought something to do), while the Beatles and their team did their thing. In the entire documentary I don't think she offered a single intrusive opinion on how the Beatles ought to be doing things. And I must add that all her little romantic interactions with John were very sweet. She's not even the only Beatle family member who gets to come into the studio while the Beatles are working – Linda, Maureen, and Pattie all show up at least once, and there is one very delightful scene in which Linda's little daughter Heather joins the group (look out for that one if you watch the documentary; it's one of my absolute favourite parts). Now, of course, I do understand that having a new person around will alter the dynamic of any group no matter what said new person might be saying or doing, and now the Beatles have to work within this new dynamic all the time. So it is possible that the dynamic with Yoko wasn't working for some of the other Beatles as well as it was for John. But that wouldn't be Yoko's fault if that was the case, and besides, none of the other Beatles ever acted like her presence was a problem.
Paul and John are also – again nothing like what I'd heard before! – super encouraging to George and his budding songwriting talent. When George mentions wanting to record a solo album of his own songs without leaving the Beatles (I want to emphasize that part), John in particular is incredibly supportive, and neither he nor Paul seem the least bit threatened by George's blossoming talent. (I also absolutely love when John refers to one of George's songs as a “Harrisong”. Is John the king of clever wordplay, or what!) The sweetest part of the many songwriting sessions we get to see in this documentary is how the more experienced songwriters in the Beatles help the less experienced ones – George helps Ringo figure out the chords to Octopus's Garden, and John gives George lyric-writing advice as George shows his bandmates an early draft of a song that would go on to become Something.
It was delightful to see the Beatles' songwriting process. A lot of the time, it seemed as if their lyrics just occurred to them off the top of their heads as they played (so I have my doubts now as to how many deep, complex interpretations of these songs would actually be accurate). We also hear so many snippets of songs that were sadly never finished, or ended up as much shorter songs by the time they got to the album. Do you know Dig It was originally a full four-minute song (if still a very silly one)?? And I've always felt, listening to the end of Abbey Road, that I wished the Beatles would have completed the last few songs instead of throwing them all together into a medley, and seeing those songs just beginning to blossom at these recording sessions makes me want that even more. I mean, apparently Carry That Weight was originally meant to be a song for Ringo and had a story for the lyrics and everything! Why couldn't the Beatles have carried on down that path instead of just making it a repeat of You Never Give Me Your Money?!
The grand finale of the documentary is the iconic Rooftop Concert, which is actually foreshadowed once or twice earlier on before the Beatles even knew they'd be doing it. The scene is shown from a number of different perspectives, including those of the police trying to get up to the roof and force the concert to stop. I felt the police were being very unfair, honestly. The officer who comes to complain says he's received so many calls complaining about the noise in the past hour – meanwhile we see interview clips that prove just as many people, if not more, were enjoying it! Nobody was being hurt or put in danger or anything like that, and the police's job is supposed to be defending and protecting all the people, not sorting out the people's differences by taking one group's side against another's. Honestly I think the people who complained were being a bit unreasonable – I mean, I get it, they were all set to carry on their day like normal and maybe they had plans and then something disturbs it, I know how frustrating that is – but there was a live Beatles concert happening in front of them! How often will those people be able to say that happened?! Actually, we know the answer to that – never again; it was the Beatles' very last live show. I wonder how all the complaining citizens and police officers who took part in prematurely ending what was essentially the Beatles' farewell performance felt about it when they realized what they'd done? I mean – when they look back at it years later, which will have the more lasting effect on their memories? Their normal productive day getting disturbed, or the unexpected treat of a free Beatles concert??
This documentary did not show me a band unable to get along anymore, and it didn't show me a great group that had run its course and was now ready to come to its very natural conclusion. Everything I saw suggested they had so much more life ahead of them together, so much more they could have achieved as a band. (Witness the beginnings of several Beatles solo songs we see, begun with the band still very much together!) Everything I saw in this documentary makes me wonder, more than ever, why they did split up. Perhaps the main difficulty was that the Beatles and their various team members were a little too focused on the problems at times – they knew exactly what the problems were, and that's good, but then they kept going over the problems again and again instead of trusting they would find a good solution, or focusing on what was going well: the Beatles were together and ready to make music. Whatever the case, I felt like this documentary series gives the band closure. It kind of gives a more satisfying ending to what used to be a pure downward spiral into disaster, even if the end result itself isn't any better. It opens up the Later Years again as something we Beatles fans can enjoy, clearing the bad reputation around them and allowing us to take pleasure in all eras of the Beatle years – which is even more important considering they did only have like eight of those!
I'm not entirely sure how to give a star rating to a documentary such as this one, there are some different factors from rating movies, but to sum it up: If you are a Beatles fan, and especially if you've been upset by normal Beatles Later Years content, I highly recommend giving this series a watch. Just be aware – the second episode is very long, over three hours if I remember right, so you might want to watch that one in two parts. I feel like four episodes would have been a better way to divide up this series. But other than that – definitely worth watching.
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