‘See you ’round the clubs…’
This time I really have gone mad. Long term readers (my wife and my cat) will already be aware of my tendency to become obsessed with one thing. My recent and ongoing compulsion for The Beatles is perhaps the most monomaniacal of them all. Since Peter Jackson released his epic documentary Get Back, I have watched all nine hours of that, I have watched the original Let it Be movie, I have revisited every Beatles album since Rubber Soul, I have watched the John Lennon: Imagine documentary, and as I write this, I am currently sat in a hotel room in Liverpool having yesterday spent two hours at the Beatles Story Museum followed by a pint in the building that inspired the song Eleanor Rigby. So yeah, as I said, this time I really have gone mad…
This all started when Jackson dropped his jaw-droppingly wonderful trailer for Get Back in December 2020. Since then, I’ve pretty much only listened to John, Paul, George and Ringo and my enthusiasm remains undimmed. So, like everyone, I went into Get Back with insane expectations. And yet, this exceptional documentary manages to live up to the hype.
Chronicling the fraught Let it Be sessions, first at Twickenham and then at Apple studios, Get Back is akin to Howard Carter rolling back the stone of a tomb in Egypt and discovering the mummified remains of Tutankhamun. This is not a documentary, it’s a historical artefact. And seeing the lads preserved and presented at something approaching their peak is a truly incredible experience. It’s also striking just how human they all are. George’s insecurities, John’s wide eyed idealism, Paul’s astonishing natural talent and work ethic and Ringo… well Ringo is probably the nicest of the lot. It is also interesting to note how unsure they were as to what the Beatles should be at this point. The fact that the idea of playing in the desert to ‘2000 Arabs’ by torchlight is not immediately dismissed perhaps suggests that this is a band not entirely sure of where to go next. And sure enough, within two years, The Beatles were no more.
But the human element is not the only reason we are here, of course. We also want the superhuman part of the story. And we see that here too with George casually jamming Something, possibly the greatest love song of all time, and Paul conjuring up Get Back out of nothing more than a rudimentary riff. Further proof that if anything, The Beatles were actually underrated.
And then we have the denouement. The iconic rooftop gig. A blistering, magnetic performance tinged with sadness and draped in pathos. Knowing what would happen to the band in the years since that gig ensures that their final performance remains genuinely affecting all these years later. But boy, isn’t the music great?
All the criticisms of Get Back are probably valid. It is long, it is meandering and it is repetitive. But it’s also utterly unique and has set a new standard for what a music documentary can achieve. But don’t worry about any of that. Tune in. Drop out. And let the greatest band of all time wash over you in an awesome wave. You’ll never see their like again.