One pleasant entertainment surprise dropping over the Thanksgiving holidays was The Beatles: Get Back, Peter Jackson’s three-part docuseries on Disney+. The series is a look at the end of an era through eight hours of gorgeously restored behind-the-scenes footage of the what essentially is the end of The Beatles.
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Jackson proved his unparalleled mastery in painstakingly precise restoration in his 2018 WWI documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, which made me particularly excited about what he could do with such a treasure chest of music history.
The result isn’t an exciting binge-watching worthy documentary, so don’t expect that. It is instead an invitation to visit this band in an up close, intimate way. The restoration is so crystal clean, it is as if it were filmed last week.
The first episode gives viewers a quick refresher of the intensely quick journey of The Beatles’ rise from ambitious teens to the biggest band on the planet, to their crumbling friendships just before that last attempt to do something together resulting in the famous rooftop concert on Jan. 30, 1969 on their Apple Corps headquarters in London.
The remainder of the series is where the “new” footage begins, with a day-by-day look at the creative process, emotional landslide, and the countless lost and found songs, concepts and ideas batted around before the band’s final performance together.
The segments pick up a little each time, with the third installment by far the most interesting. Watching this entire series is certainly too much of an investment to sit down and take in all at once. My 12-year-old, a massive fan of The Beatles’ music, watched some of it with great interest, but not all of it. For her, it was wild to see the real people behind disembodied voices on her music player or the grainy retro still shots pinned on her walls.
My 19-year-old seemed connected on a different level. She really seemed to find the humor behind the back-and-fourth appealing, and enjoyed the birth of a couple of familiar songs that have been around her entire life. She also didn’t have any real knowledge of the tension caused by the constant clinging presence of Yoko Ono at John Lennon’s side, and got to “experience” her singing for the first time. She watched as George Harrison’s disillusionment became too much for him to face, and as all four of the band members’ spouted on what they felt were novel and intellectual takes on politics and current events. She was able to see these four music legends simply as humans only a few years older than herself.
That was the main thing that struck me about The Beatles: Get Back as well. These four incredible music talents were still very young. All of them were still in their 20s. They had seen a lifetime of phenomenal and unprecedented fame in such a short time, during an era where the counter culture was clawing at their backs. They were so young, but already “so over it all” by the time they first set foot in the dauntingly boring soundstage of Twickenham Studios. They had given themselves a self-imposed deadline and number of songs they were going to play, and had some pretty unrealistic goals of how and where to perform live. By they time they reached the end of their first week, you felt a little jaded along with them. That was when George called it quits, and I couldn’t blame him. There was a sense of renewed energy when they moved it all back to their familiar studio and when they were later joined by Billy Preston, but it was like witnessing a last “friendly” date of a soon-to-be-divorced couple. There wasn’t any hatred between them, just that sense they they were ready to move on. They had other things to do.
As a kid in the 70s and a teen in the 80s, The Beatles were already the “old guys” to me. That’s not to say I didn’t hear and love their music. It was everywhere in the 70s, and when John Lennon was killed in 1980, it was everywhere once again. Yet, I never realized how young they were at their peak. No matter how ambitious and talented they were then, the burden of being The Beatles was just too much to take for these guys. This documentary fantastically captures that feeling of the desperate goodbye that yielded one of their most beautiful songs ever written.
Is this hefty look at the band worth your time? Yes, but in small doses.
If you are a Beatles megafan, you will be fascinated with this entire process. However, I can’t see the average Disney+ viewer stopping on this one as they go down the rabbit hole of toons and superheroes. Honestly, The Beatles: Get Back almost feels well made for this streaming service.
From a technical aspect, I found The Beatles: Get Back to be an absolute masterpiece in dedication and restoration. The original footage shot more than 50 years ago by Michael Lindsay-Hogg was so thorough, Jackson had more than 60 hours of film footage and 150 or more hours of audio to try and squeeze into three two- or three-hour events.
From a music lover’s point of view, it was at times something I wanted to sit down and absorb and at other times simply have on as background entertainment. Eight hours is more than enough footage, even for The Beatles. If you only watch one segment, jump to the third, because this look at the rooftop performance is the best footage I have ever seen of that event.
Finally, from the experienced eye of a parent and former twentysomething, it was heartbreaking and eye-opening to see the final flame burn out from the four very young men who sparked one of the biggest fires in the world of music.
I am thankful Jackson cared enough to sit down and “Get Back” a little of that spark to remind us why The Beatles had such an impact on the pop culture world for generations.