I was so excited to hear that Peter Jackson, who’s a terrific director (did you see “They Shall Not Grow Old”?), was doing a documentary on the Beatles—one based on a lot of previously unseen video and unheard audio. Yes, Jackson’s “Get Back” documentary will be released on August 27 of next year, and I’ll be the first in the theater (assuming that theaters are open then!).
Just as a teaser, Jackson has released four minutes of new Beatles footage (below), which is remarkable. For once you can see that it wasn’t all work in the recording studio—that the boys were really having a good time. What a great job—if you have the talent!
As CNN notes:
“The Lord of the Rings” director is assembling the film drawing from 56 hours of previously unseen footage of the band shot by Michael Lindsay-Hogg in 1969, as well as 150 hours of audio. The project is currently scheduled to hit US theaters in August.
“Get Back” is described as the story of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Star when the Fab Four were preparing for their first live show in two years, showcasing their camaraderie and spirit as they wrote and rehearsed 14 new songs.
And from Rolling Stone:
Featuring footage shot in early 1969 — including clips from the band’s legendary 1969 rooftop concert in London — the film promises to be “the ultimate ‘fly on the wall’ experience that Beatles fans have long dreamt about — it’s like a time machine transports us back to 1969, and we get to sit in the studio watching these four friends make great music together,” according to Jackson.
Get Back will build on 1970’s Let It Be — also shot during those sessions — but will present a much sunnier vision of the Beatles’ breakup. As Ringo Starr said in a release: “There were hours and hours of us just laughing and playing music, not at all like the version that came out. There was a lot of joy and I think Peter will show that. I think this version will be a lot more peace and loving, like we really were.”
See if you can spot a very young George Martin in there. Yoko is omnipresent, of course, sitting right by John in the studio during the recording. And, amidst all the pandemonium and fun, I wonder if anyone thought about how musical history was being made.
It’s going to be a great movie!
If I see only one film in 2021…Fantastic!
Very Hard Day’s Night and Helpish in their joy! Looks good!
Was expecting this to get posted – precisely the fleeting detail I noticed – a youthful-looking white-turtlenecked Martin?!
I noticed Linda who appears very briefly. And was that Paul’s offspring on his shoulders? The views go by so quickly they make you want to see more.
That’s Heather, Linda’s daughter from a previous marriage. Paul adopted her when he married Linda.
I am looking forward to this more than almost anything else I can think of at the moment.
Looking forward to this! 🙂
“I wonder if anyone thought about how musical history was being made.”
I think they probably did.
This clip completes my day which began with my going out early this AM to finish some last minute Christmas shopping. I tuned my car radio to SiriusXM holiday music, but couldn’t quite get into it, so I switched to the Beatles Channel and caught a full 40 minutes of Breakfast with the Beatles. I was 13 years old when I first saw them on Ed Sullivan. It was my older sister who was living in Paris in 1963 who first alerted me and my brothers to the group from England and predicted that they would be a big hit in the USA. Hearing early Beatles music (hell any Beatles music) time warps me to some of the clearest images in my mind of my teenage years. It is the closest experience I will ever have to time travel.
Great memories! I wonder how many others got advance notice of what was coming. I was watching a lot of TV in late 1963, because of the JFK assassination, and there was a spot on the news about a band that had created a stir in England. I remember watching it without the slightest sense that they would soon come our way.
A sister in Paris?! Back then, the world was so much larger, and Paris may as well have been a million miles away for most American kids.
I will go far out of my way to see it, like I did for They Shall Not Grow Old (now on dvd of course).
Rockumentaries are just fun to watch. Recent ones include “Eight Days a Week” one on Hulu, which tells the very detailed story of the touring years for the Beatles. You can learn how much it really sucked for them, and how insane those years were.
Then there is this marvelous one about the BeeGees: “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” on HBO. Its very interesting to learn how they put together their sound, etc.
Those days of extraordinary musicians and talent are long gone. Now when I catch a glimpse on whats’ up for Grammy Awards, I pretty much want to hurl.
Like John Lennon said: “You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not.”
And unless I miss my guess, they weren’t phoning it in from god knows where with crappy drum machines and “perfect-sound-forever” pre-fab digital files. Does anybody record with musicians in a studio anymore?
Yeah, today’s pop/rock music sounds to me like so much disposable sonic plastic; it’s superficial and lacks soul. I might be an old fuddy-duddy hippie peacenik who grew up listening to and memorizing the Beatles songs, so I’m willing to be enlightened by the youngins who might find today’s music deeply satisfying. BTW, was that a young Billy Preston on keyboards in this video? I remember Preston with a big afro.
That was Billy!
Of course. Go to YouTube, search for Snarky Puppy/Lingus (and other songs from the We Like It Here album). See a great band recording live. Guitar rock is on the wane, but there’s still lots of great music being made. (I’m 59 years old, so this isn’t some millennial claim.)
I should also, add, check out the Radiohead “From the Basement” Sessions on YT. You can never reproduce the Beatles, but I’ve been happy to find I can still find great music in the world. Some new, some the second coming of old but great music I hadn’t heard (or seen!) before. All at our fingertips on YT, Spotify, Apple Music, etc. Viewed large, music is better than it’s ever been.
I’ve tried Radiohead many times. It isn’t terrible. I am commenting on the sorry state of the mainstream. Turn on the radio and you will hear it.
Oh, there is current stuff that I like well enough. But are they in the mainstream? Played on the radio?
Some comedian on the youtube comments said to Peter Jackson, “Just release the full 56 hours of tape, we’ll buy it.” He’s probably right!
One of the joys of getting old is knowing that the Beatles really will last.
I would love to see all 56 hours of it! Since I’m now in the downsizing stage, just tonight I pulled the Beatles Vinyl LP Collection out of the closet. It’s the Mobile Fidelity Box from the original masters, supposedly worth $1,000.
Yes; they have really lasted.
They Shall Not Grow Old was amazing, so that augurs well. I’m currently reading Craig Brown’s 1, 2, 3, 4: The Beatles in Time (which recently beat Matthew Cobb’s The Idea of the Brain to win the Baillie Gifford Prize). Because there are already so many biographies of The Beatles, he takes a very eccentric and oblique approach to documenting their careers – it certainly won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I’m enjoying it so far and he has a good eye for the usually overlooked aspects.
Coincidentally, my dad was in the world premiere of a play written by Alun Owen, who went on to write A Hard Day’s Night. The play was also broadcast live by the BBC in 1959, and the cast of eight included June Brown (Dot Cotton in EastEnders) and Ronnie Harwood (who won an Oscar for his screenplay for The Pianist). https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0a2e3ad932344cf29d24ec75be329a1d
I forgot to mention my gripe about Brown’s new Beatles book, which is that it won a major prize for non-fiction but has no bl**dy index. Infuriating!
Hot damn!
That’s a hell of a cast, Jez: apart from Brown, Harwood and your dad, it includes Jack MacGowran, Patrick Allen, Alan Dobie and Rupert Davies. All wonderful actors. I particularly recall Davies as Maigret on the Beeb in the early 60s. It was all B&W in those days, which somehow suits Simenon, I think.
Yup, they all went on to do great stuff apart from Dad – though he made a living all his life in a field with an 85% unemployment rate (and the 15% in work are very often the same people), so that’s success of a kind. You can see him here as a killer nun in the 1960s TV show The Avengers: https://www.dissolute.com.au/the-avengers-tv-series/series-2/large/nunman.jpg. He’s still with us, but sadly remembers nothing about his career, these days. And although he and mum live a short walk away, we can’t have them here for Christmas Day thanks to the Tier 4 restrictions.
It’s going to be a hard days night watching this new Beatles movie as so much of my early days on the planet and still a fair amount of my late go to musical life is wrapped around this band.
My take on They Shall Not Grow Old in one word : stirring
… that means essential viewing, on a life the universe and everything level…
Jerry et al., I think you’d enjoy the movie “Yesterday,” the premise of which is that an unsuccessful folk/rock singer wakes up from a “blackout” to a world in which he is the only person who has heard of The Beatles. He becomes an enormous star, but the attempts of record executives to market him are priceless.
That was a marvelous movie. Very heartfelt. The ending is funny as hell too.
Should come with an Ed Sheeran trigger warning tho’ 😉
Seconded. I watched “Yesterday” with fairly low expectations, but found it really charming. Himesh Patel was amazing.
Where the hell would they find 56 hours of never-before-seen Beatles footage? Should be interesting.
Fantastic. As a teenager in the 1980s I watched the original movie of those sessions so many times I just about wore out the tape. They were really at their peak about that time. It is good New Zealand genius Peter Jackson is in charge of this production also.
I’ll see you at the front of the line!
D.A., NYC
That was really good. Much better than I thought it would be.
I suppose it doesn’t hurt having such a good song with such a good intro as backing.
The footage is so much at odds with the rock journalism saying it was all tension when recording Let It Be. Can’t wait for the film.
I’d like to put in a word for the original Let it Be film, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, which I don’t think Jackson will be able to drastically improve on. I’ve listened to hours and hours of bootlegged outtakes from The Beatles’ Get Back/Let it Be sessions, and the best performances are in the film.
Paul, Ringo and the other powers-that-be have tasked Jackson with assembling a more positive film, but I never found the original film that bleak. I sat down to watch it expecting something depressing and was happily disappointed. Even Paul and George’s “fight” was just a passive-aggressive snip, not a hateful argument.
I would be happy just to purchase a double Blu-ray set of the best footage from the sessions instead of Jackson’s documentary (just as I’d rather watch the preserved footage used for They Shall Not Grow Old, rather than Jackson’s sweetened, colorized version), but I’m still excited for the new film.
Also, though I don’t deny there were happy moments during the Get Back sessions, they did mark the beginning of the end of the Beatles. Lennon was distracted by Yoko and heroin, and not writing as much, Harrison was resentful of playing second fiddle, and McCartney was trying to hold the band together but looking bossy as a result. There’s lots of sloppy playing on the bootlegs, because Paul was the only one fully onboard with the project. The band pulled itself together to achieve the short rooftop concert and cut some good tracks, but even those are overshadowed by the Beatles’ last hurrah, Abbey Road.
I love the music of my youth (like many others). But the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd (among many others) … I was spoiled.
I can’t wait!
There were actually 5 musicians during the Get Back sessions — Billy Preston an old friend of the Beatles was invited to participate with John, Paul, George, and Ringo. All the hammond organ playing was by Billy including his brilliant solo on Get Back.
That aside Peter Jacksons 5 min snippet of the Beatles during the Get Back sessions is a breath of fresh air.
Still remember watching the original Let if Be movie decades ago, apart from the music the mood of the Beatles was serious and unfriendly or was that how original director Michael Lindsay Hogg preferred to show the public when it may not have actually been like that?