GET BACK

Get Back, Peter Jackson’s delightful recut of Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 documentary Let it Be, transported me back to a chapter in my life I seldom share, because it’s kind of incredible.

During my senior year in high school I was a stock boy at Loft’s Candy Shop in the Forest Hills, Queens Continental Avenue subway station.  Soot, brusque commuters and the clamor of trains made work really unpleasant.  Weed and rock ’n’ roll barely mitigated the distress.

 

But cannabis did enhance my active fantasy life.  So when in early February 1970 I learned from Earl Wilson’s syndicated column, “It Happened Last Night,” that Apple Records had an office in midtown, I imagined I could walk in, chat with whomever was in charge and secure something far better than the confectionery gig.  Which, miraculously, I did.

 

At first it was a bumpy ride, because I knew nothing about how such enterprises functioned.  My dad owned a dry-cleaning supplies business, and when I was a child, he’d brought me to visit his vendors on the lower East Side.  But those “take your kid to work” outings  provided no insight into the exigencies of a company’s headquarters, so it was hard for me to convince Apple’s office manager, Rusty Rahn, that she needed my ministrations.

 

I led with, “You have to hire me.” “We’re not hiring,” she replied.  When I pitched my (non-existent) coffee-making skills she pointed to a Mr. Coffee machine.  I served up my (also non-existent) housekeeping talents and she aced her return, pointing out that the building had a custodial staff.  Watering plants and running errands were non-starters.  And then I said three magic words - one for each remaining Beatle: “What about correspondence?”  “Oh God,” said Rusty, “We’re six months behind.  When can you start?” The next day I ditched my last class and got to work early.

 

Thus, a  month before the 45rpm single “Get Back” dropped in April 1970 -- two months before the “Let it Be” album release and six weeks prior to the Lindsay-Hogg movie premiere – I began to read and respond to Beatles fan mail.  Like those whose missives I perused, I’d envisioned being close to our heroes during what I imagined to be alchemical music-making rituals.  Working at Apple – meeting George Harrison on my first day there, occasionally seeing John and Yoko chatting up promo director Pete Bennet down the hall from my cubicle, and meeting my favorite FM disc jockeys – made me feel like my dream had come true. 

 

It turns out that many Beatles fans longed to be close to our idols and dreamed of attending their recording sessions.  Peter Jackson, a half century later, has enabled us to do so.  Whereas Lindsay-Hogg highlighted musicians at each other’s throats - a cherry-picked distillation of 60 hours he’d filmed of the band writing, producing and performing together in 1969 - Jackson reshapes the same footage to let viewers hang out as flies on the wall while songs evolve from fragments of melodies into full blown rock classics.  There’s tension as “the lads” make music, of course, but there’s also joy, humor, intimacy and magic. 

 

Showing viewers how John, Paul, George and Ringo create, the director walks a tightrope.  He invites us behind the curtain as lyrics fall into place, harmonies are worked out and the playfulness of singing with accents or through clenched teeth, too fast or two slow, enable The Beatles to find each number’s essence - much as actors’ exercises enable them to find the core of their characters.  In so doing, he could have demystified The Beatles creative process in an unpleasant way.  But because of Jackson’s skill and sensitivity the magical mystery of the process remains. A difficult guitar riff suddenly appears, when it’s performed for a live audience, as the natural, easy one we’ve come to know.  Breakthroughs occur after a good night’s sleep.  Or through the haze of a hangover.  Peter Jackson thus reveals the process without diminishing its enchantment. 

 

As I said above, some of Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s footage of disintegrating relationships remains. Get Back’s Part One builds, painfully, to George Harrison’s nonchalant announcement, “I think I’ll be leaving the band now.”  But the sequence somehow plays as compelling drama, not soap opera.  When Lennon and McCartney’s collaboration on “Don’t Let Me Down” begins to soar, Harrison is treated more and more as a sideman.  This rankles because he’s become an estimable songwriter himself.  Ever the dramatist, Peter Jackson makes the lead guitarist’s departure a cliffhanger; the rest of the band will spend days away from the film crew pleading with George to return, as we await the next episode.

 

When he does rejoin the band, things get better all the time until, finally, the fab four play more dynamically than ever. They hadn’t rehearsed 8 hours a day since their legendary sojourn in Hamburg 7 years earlier, before international fame. The lads seem ecstatic as they get back into that groove. 

 

Capturing the euphoria – which viewers experience as well – is one of the filmmaker’s remarkable achievements; he makes ordinary workdays of conventional duration sizzle.  Toast and jam upon arrival at work.  One hour lunch breaks.  Tea at teatime. A glass of white wine toward evening.  Day after day.  But we’re riveted because slowly, painstakingly following routine, The Beatles are making a record that will continue to delight for half a century and beyond.

 

As deadlines loom, requiring the band to work on Sunday, the boys do what we filmmakers do in the same situation: bring the family to work.  Enter Paul’s wife, Linda, and their precocious, shockingly musical daughter, Heather.  Maureen Starkey shows up, as does Patti Boyd. And, of course, Yoko is there.

 

Oh, Yoko!  She’s at all the sessions. But the portrait Peter Jackson paints of Ms. Ono is quite different from the obtrusive villainess depicted by Michael Lindsay-Hogg.  In Get Back, John’s wife chats amiably with Paul’s.  When, before work, she grabs a mic and begins one of her signature avant-garde vocal performances, Messrs. Starr, Lennon and McCartney gleefully accompany her.  The Beatles’ bassist later mocks the notion that 50 years hence pop culture historians might believe that the band broke up "because Yoko sat on an amp."

 

In choosing to tell a love story - one about four men whose tender attachment to one another is unmistakable despite creative tensions - Peter Jackson finds an external foe: the director of Let It Be.  According to legend, John Lennon originally wanted Jean-Luc Godard to make a documentary about the band, but Paul wanted a filmmaker over whom they’d have more control. He chose Michael Lindsay-Hogg, a player on the London scene, who’d directed promo films for The Beatles’ singles, “Paperback Writer,” “Rain,” “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” – prototypes of what would come to be known as music videos.

 

With Lindsay-Hogg as a screen presence, Get Back is as self-referential as any late sixties Godard picture, including the Rolling Stones film One Plus One, but without that movie’s assaultiveness or Maoist rhetoric.  Jackson chronicles The Beatles trying to come up with songs for a new album and an event to take the place of a tour, with almost no time to do so. As the songwriting geniuses work, we watch the flamboyant, feckless director pitching grandiose ideas for a spectacle that will celebrate completion of the work.

 

I was surprised to learn how many friends and colleagues didn’t know that Lindsay-Hogg is… wait for it… Orson Welles’s son.  Once you learn this, you can’t miss what a chip off the old block he is, facially, vocally and temperamentally.  And certain odd moments in the film begin to make sense.  A digression about time spent with “Orson” during rehearsals of a stage production of Chimes at Midnight, for instance.  Or John Lennon noodling Anton Karas’s Harry Lime theme from The Third Man.  

 

Everyone in the band is a noodler, and throughout the film, they riff on all manner of rock songs, displaying a knowledge of rock ‘n’ roll that's beyond encyclopedic.  Anytime there’s a lull or a bit of tension in the room, the boys find a way forward by playing covers.  Well-known or much less so.  Old or new.  Dylan.  Chuck Berry.  The Band.  Motown.  Peter and Gordon’s version of a Lennon-McCartney ditty.

 

In Lindsay-Hogg’s Let it Be The Beatles warmed up with Smokey Robinson’s “You Really Got a Hold on Me” (which they’d covered on an early album).  One song.  What we see in Get Back. though, is that their songwriting grew out of intense study of countless compositions and recordings.  The deepest of deep dives.  They were keepers of the canon. 

 

This is especially meaningful to me as I teach aspiring filmmakers.  More than anything, I emphasise the urgency of devourning and digesting as many great films as possible.  You can’t make movies without carefully watching lots of them.  Nor can you do so without collaboration, another essential theme of Peter Jackson’s doc.

 

An unexpected bit of musical wizardry occurs in Get Back as The Beatles address a need they all seem to feel:  to expand their quartet.  It’s clear from the start of their writing and rehearsal sessions that some of the new songs need a keyboard player.  Paul has a go at it.  So does John.  Nicky Hopkins’ name comes up. And then the boys’ old pal and former member of Little Richard’s band, Billy Preston, shows up. 

 

When he does, tight deadlines, squabbles about how things should culminate, soundstage acoustics. personal strife and Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s annoying intrusiveness all take a backseat to the genesis and development of the songs. Preston is inspired and inspiring, essentially becoming “the fifth Beatle.”  He shines from the moment he appears, completing and enhancing every song he plays on – especially “Get Back” and “Don’t Let Me Down.”

 

His perpetually positive presence enables Peter Jackson’s documentary about The Beatles to end on a high note, with a live performance of finished songs on the roof of Apple Records.  It’s exhilarating, it’s joyous and it leaves you wanting to watch the eight-hour cinematic journey again.  

The denouement – the final unravelling of the Fab Four – occurs in our heads.  It’s what we know.  After George Martin took over producing honors from Glyn Johns, Phil Spector had a go at “Let it Be.” Paul signed a business management arrangement with his father-in-law. John Eastman, when the other three went with Alan Klein.  As the documentary lingered in post-production, “Abbey Road” was released.  On it were “Something,” “Octopus’s Garden,” “I Want You (She’s so Heavy)” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and more, all of which we hear in nascent form in Get Back.  It was followed, in December 1969, by the Christmas record, a floppy vinyl made for and sent exclusively to Beatles Fan Club members.

 

In April 1970, Paul officially left the band and put out his first solo record.  George released “All Things Must Past,” which he we see him working on with bandmates in Peter Jackson’s documentary, as the title song of a solo double album. That’s the LP he was readying for release when I met him at Apple.  Later the same year Ringo offered an collection of country tunes.  And John debuted "Plastic Ono Band,"on which he declared, "I don't believe in Beatles."  “Child of Nature,” from the the Get Back soundtrack, morphed into “Jealous Guy,” and appeared on his "Imagine" album in 1971.

 

Me?  I only stayed at Apple until I started college in the fall of 1970. The following summer I attended George’s Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden, where I sat with my high school pal Lisa and empresario Sid Bernstein, who produced The Beatles first Shea Stadium concert.  I’ve stayed in touch with one co-worker from my teenage afterschool adventure, John’s assistant and onetime girlfriend, May Pang – ever warm and generous!  And I – like anyone who’s read this far – remained a huge Beatles fan.  Deeply saddened by the loss of two Beatles who were way too young too go.  Now delighted by Giles’ Martin’s remixes and remasterings for Get Back.  And ready to watch it again.  And again.  The way we used to “play the grooves off” our heroes’ records.  

 

As I finish writing this post, I’m leafing through my favorite holiday gift, the best-selling book Get Back, based on the movie.  It’s a transcript of the film with amazing photos – stills from the movie and many behind-the-scenes pics by Linda Eastman McCartney.  It contains such artifacts as call sheets from Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s shoot, which indicate the “artistes’” call times – 10am daily, 90 minutes after the crew call.  The book, like Peter Jackson’s masterful documentary, is a gift that keeps on giving.