Don't worry kids, there are 52 more hours of tape not seen. I am sure some
day it will surface. Within are probably another 25 versions of Get Back
and Don't Let Me Down. What would be cool would be having all the Beatles
still alive watching this together and making smart-ass snide remarks and
the cameras capturing that as well for the Blue Ray.
We do get eight hours of the Beatles. It is both very dull and astonishingly
fascinating. I guess where one falls on that scale depends on how much of
a fan one is. I would imagine that people under thirty might watch this and
think, what the hell. I am a big fan but not a fanatic. I still can't sing
any of their songs all the way through - "If I fell in love with you, would
you promise to be true" is about as far as I can get. I did cry though when
John and George died. It felt like a little bit of all of us died with them.
Even if you don't like them, you can't overlook their contribution to popular
music. In eight years they took music from Love Me Do to the second side
of Abbey Road and took all of music along with them. When they broke up that
was the end of their innovative music. It was the weird group dynamics of
collaborating and competing that produced genius. When they went solo they
just became artists with a bunch of pop songs, some good, some bad. With
perhaps Plastic Ono Band and Harrison's All Things Must Pass being the exceptions.
But they didn't change music. Everything they did as the Beatles did. And
I would venture to say that in the fifty years that followed, music has been
at a standstill. Some great artists but nothing that has moved the yardstick
of music. Nothing that 50 years from now people will be debating on how important
it was. You might say such and such a group were better than the Beatles
and you might be right - but the chances are that if the Beatles didn't come
along they would not have existed or would be singing like the Four Seasons
or all the teeney-bop that prevailed when the Beatles came out of Hamburg.
Elvis was over and nothing new was on the horizon. They set music free to
be creative and wonderful.
And that is what we get here - an eye witness to the creative process from
the Beatles in their prime. Creating, competing and co-operating. It is lovely.
Out of thin air stuffed inside a studio with a deadline they start coming
up with songs. Never easy, always a struggle. Paul hums a few bars of Get
Back and just keeps at it through various versions. One version is a brilliant
attack on Enoch Powell, who at the time was this anti-immigration racist,
and Paul just comes up with the lyrics on the run. You hear him with the
opening notes on the piano of The Long and Winding Road and slowly it comes
together. Even Ringo one day sits at a piano and knocks out Octopus's Garden.
George has Somewhere down but can't get one word right and so uses cauliflower
as a stop gap. He also has All Things Must Pass but it doesn't seem to pass
muster in the group. Lennon has Across the Universe which is perhaps one
of their most poetic perfect songs. Their goal is an album and a presentation.
The presentation plans begin with hiring a large cruiser to take an audience
to Tripoli and playing at an outside theater - and by the end it is their
famous rooftop concert which no one even bothered to get a permit for.
All the songs on Let It Be begin to form but not only that - they also have
the beginnings to most of Abbey Road. Let It Be has some great songs on it
but it was a very conservative album for them. Kind of back to their rock
and roll roots. It was a rest stop. They broke off recording it and instead
recorded Abbey Road which is nearly perfect if only that first side did not
have Maxwell's Silver Hammer, perhaps their worst song ever. Then it was
back to Let It Be which is so different than Abbey Road. And it was the end
of the road. During the sessions they break into loads of other songs
from their past but also other artists - one player will start singing it
and the rest of band will join in like osmosis. For all the rumors I heard
for years about how these sessions were bitter, we get very little of it.
Paul gets on George's nerves at one point and George quits the band for a
few days but comes back.
Most of the time they get along just fine. Joking together, dancing, clowning
around. Paul and John clearly share the same kooky word play sense of humor.
Maybe that is what brought them together long ago. Different personalities
- Ringo just drums and keeps mum, George throws in an occasional comment,
John in the first episode seems elsewhere planting a benign smile on his
face like a Little Buddha with Yoko constantly at his side, but by episode
2 he has come alive and shows his incredible wit and Paul is a bit of an
ass at the beginning telling the others that he has become the boss because
none of them seem interested - but within a few days they are this tight
group who look out for each other. They invite Billy Preston to come in and
play electric piano and that seems to center them. Every now and then
Yoko would begin wailing into the microphone and the others would play along
- but the funniest moment is when Heather, the young daughter of Linda Eastman,
shows up one day and does a Yoko imitation and does it better. But the seeds
of destruction are introduced. John brings in Allen Klein to represent them
and to a large degree the legal wrangling's around who would represent them
destroyed the group. Some would say it was inevitable but if you watch this
you just see young men who love music putting any differences aside and making
great music.
