On Letting It Be

George Harrison (1969)

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The Beatles: Get Back is an eight-hour, surreal experience that feels more like voyeurism than a documentary. The fly-on-the-wall footage is tedious, raw, and uncomfortably intimate. And yet for all these reasons: astonishing. 

For the uninitiated, The Beatles’ iconic run lasted roughly a decade. 1960 to 1970. That’s it. They really ripped it between 1963 and 1969, growing in spirit, style, and musical prowess at every six-month album release interval. The bowl-cut phase launched The Fab Four from Liverpool to New York to a four-year world tour that almost broke them. The crowds, toward the end, became so incessant, so loud, that the band couldn’t hear themselves play. After a 1966 sold-out show at Shea Stadium, George said fuck this, and John, Paul, and Ringo agreed. From that point forward, the music was all that mattered. Without the worry of press tours and performing, The Beatles became strictly a recording band. Every last drop of creative energy pumped into experimentation. Not evolving was not an option. They ditched the clean cuts, denounced segregation, critiqued conservative Christians, and started getting stoned. Acid and India added to the myth (and sound), yielding Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt Peppers, Magical Mystery Tour, The White Album, and Yellow Submarine. All within a three-year sprint. All number ones. 

At this point, in their late twenties, they were unfathomably successful, oppressively famous, and nearly burnt out. No longer having to answer to anyone, they were starting families and projects of their own. No one could blame them. And they didn’t blame each other. Grand plans were made for one more album and show. They’d record at a film stage in Twickenham, England over a three-week period and then play the new songs to a live crowd. A film crew was brought on board to capture the entire process. But it never came to fruition. The Beatles dissolved shortly after “Let It Be” and the fifty-seven hours of footage was vaulted away for fifty years until Peter Jackson cracked it back open.

I recently listened to the timid, brilliant director discuss the footage on an episode of Marc Maron’s podcast. Jackson admits that for his whole life he’s been a musical moron. With one exception. For him, The Beatles folklore was as impactful as Tolkien’s. As a teenager, he would fantasize about taking a time machine to any point in history, and how if it was up to him, that destination would be a Beatles recording session. Amazingly enough, he got his chance. 

Jackson made a few crucial creative decisions. For one, he convinced Disney and Apple Corps Ltd (The Beatles holding company) that the film needed to run eight hours in length over three installments. Anything less, as far as he was concerned, would not do the footage justice. Disney obliged. Next up, he decided there would be no present-day interviews spliced in. No Paul or Ringo commentary. No expert takes. He knew the drama of the story, like a Planet Earth segment, would speak for itself. For added effect, he removed all the grain and choppiness from the original tapes. A ridiculous feat of modern editing. He did this because he wanted the audience to feel as if they were sitting in the room with the band, experiencing the story in real-time rather than “watching something old.” These were the right calls. 

‘Get Back’ sessions (1969)

I admit, the enormity of “Get Back” didn’t hit me until I had a few days to process it. I realized what made The Beatles so extraordinary was, well, just how ordinary they all were. Instead of polishing over the cracks, Jackson leans into them, forcing the audience to sit with the uncomfortable realities: the egos, procrastination, passive aggression. There’s Paul’s tendency to control, George’s inferiority complex, John’s strung-outness. All on display. To my eyes (and ears), these painfully human shortcomings amounted to nothing but added seasoning on top of the undeniable and equally displayed talent.

The Beatles will go down in history with Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. And at their core, they were just…people. Four friends who dicked around more often than they were serious, drank, smoked a ton of cigarettes, struggled with relationships, and ultimately did their best to create something worth lasting.

I can see why critics and fans struggled to accept John, Paul, George, and Ringo in such natural light. Meeting one's heroes can be a jarring experience, let alone sitting with them for eight hours. Some, I’m sure, would prefer to keep the rough edges of reality buried behind B-roll, film grain, and retrospective commentary.

I became a bigger fan. 

That life weighed on John so heavily he resorted to opiates is what makes his harmonizing vocals in "I’ve Got A Feeling" all the more compelling. That Paul, despite the creative incongruence of his bandmates, took the helm and pulled "Get Back" out of thin air and then, with them, decided it would be a protest song, is what makes the title track that much more badass. That George, insecure, belittled by John and Paul, left the band and then came back is, to me, what makes his famous solo in "Let It Be" that much more triumphant. 

You see, the context matters. The nuance matters. More often than not, the truth falls somewhere in the middle of what we’d love to think and what we’d hate to think. It’s easy to conflate greatness with unrealistic standards of discipline and intensity. Blink and you’ll miss the next best self-help thread or Tim Ferris life hack. We’ve come to value efficiency more than originality; productivity more than creativity. I don’t think the same constraints apply to art. The Beatles knew this. And so did Peter Jackson. 

It’s why he removed the grain.