Paul McCartney is the only one excited. He arrives, sits down, crosses his Höfner bass, some phrases on the screen warn us that the Beatles are racing against the clock creating songs for an imminent television special that will try to renew them as a group starting in 1969 and suddenly, like when the sun's rays slowly begin to color the dawn, a familiar melody emerges, a hummed lyric that advances without much body but suggests that something big is being born. "Get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged."

The Beatles - Get Back: check out the Cult special about the band's fascinating documentary

In front, Ringo Starr and George Harrison barely open their eyes, they get stuck in a couple of yawns, they observe distractedly, they battle their heads against the morning sleep caused by recording schedules more typical of film routines than of music, especially in their case, accustomed for years to dispatch masterpieces under the thickness of the night.

There is nothing more human than boredom and drowsiness. There is nothing more extraordinary than a Beatle creating a classic of our era in just minutes. There is nothing more universal than feeling bored by a working day. There is nothing more unique and amazing than watching a pop culture genius design and solve a legendary composition in seconds.

In that counterpoint - a musician creating and his two companions dozing - is the core of Get back, the fascinating documentary by Peter Jackson already available on Disney +. In that scene of January 5, 1969, on day 4 of recordings for the most ambitious audiovisual project of the Fab Four and that would later lead to the harsh Let it be (1970), there is practically everything we came for: the most exceptional group of all shelled in all its forms and shades . In the ordinary and in the splendor.

Get back does not drastically or definitively rewrite the epilogue of the English, but it does expand it, exhibits balances, banishes prejudices, balances views, opens up previously omitted details. It shows them chaotic, hesitant, worried, happy, playful, defiant, stressed, animated in the face of their friendship, indifferent to their greatness, uncomfortable looking at the cameras, and not just as the group that died between rage and mutual contempt as we had believed. for five decades.

Like flies stuck to the wall, we can closely sniff even his smallest gestures and dialogues, in a deep immersion in the daily Beatle like never before in audiovisual terms , looking in detail at his work as true artisans of the song.

The cliché is tempting to conclude that here John, Paul, George and Ringo appear "more human than ever", but perhaps it would be more appropriate to determine that they fall naked "naturally", as precisely they intended to promote this project in 1969, appealing to appear as such. which they were, without frills, without additives, without too many cuts or second readings.

They did not succeed at the time, conditioned by the trauma of a breakup where it took years to detect constructive aspects (the documentary Let it be premiered three weeks after the breakup was made official, that is, when the blood and tears had not yet they finished running).

Peter Jackson gets it now, half a century later: The Beatles in Get Back show their collapse for what it really was. Or as close as it could have been. Or perhaps as they themselves wanted to write and narrate it.

Just for fans?

To reach that result, the New Zealander had to accept that this was a titanic journey. 60 hours of recordings and more than 150 hours of filming that were delivered to him in 2017 so that from there he could determine the new direction of what was supposed to be written on fire. But like an archaeologist who finds pure gold where once there was only rocks , the filmmaker was surprised by the overwhelming amount of material that at least staggered the idea of ​​Let it be as the testimony of four musicians caught in a combustion about to shatter.

These were the same recordings that Michael Lindsay-Hogg recorded in January 1969 -responsible for promotional clips of the band, such as Hey Jude or Revolution, and of The Rolling Stones' Rock and roll Circus-, with the purpose of showing the musicians composing and recording songs for a TV special that would culminate in their great return to the stage after three years, in an amphitheater, a luxury cruise or even the excessive ambition of going to the pyramids of Egypt.

In order not to add even more mileage to something that was already marathon, Jackson decided to start his own Get back 2021 with a rushed summary with archive shots of the Beatle career, from his school days in Liverpool, his amphetamine blank in Hamburg, the first hits suit and tie, the Beatlemic outburst, the lysergic experimentation, the trance to austerity that precipitated the White Album and finally Let it be in 1969, the project that would bring them together in the last year of the decade that catapulted them to glory, more adult and determined to reinvent themselves. The final landing. The landing port where Disney places us today.

The calendar -an image that marks the day-to-day progress of the documentary- takes place on January 2, 1969, day one of rehearsals, and we are immediately notified that there are about two weeks left for the Beatles to offer their comeback concert, so they don't have too much time to rehearse songs, record them and then show them off in front of a currently indefinite audience.

In that narrow timeline, the record is presented as a race against the impossible. Like a suffocating battle against an unseen rival, against tyranny exemplified so simply and masterfully by that very calendar: can the greatest gang of them all meet the deadlines, flaunt their genius and hit the required times?

As the minutes tick by, Jackson cunningly plays with the idea that even they can't do it: there are close-ups of McCartney worried about not being able to solve some chords, others of Ringo -many many- exhausted by the high-speed dynamics of the initiative, while in other sequences his colleagues ask Lennon if he has any new composition to offer. He just says no. Get back is also a game that invites us to see how geniuses geniuses are.

All this happens in the first part of the record -the first almost three hours-, unfolded in the Twickenham studios, a kind of spacious, soulless, leaden, clasutrophobic and unattractive shed in west London, destined for cinematographic activity and where they secluded themselves to finally be safe from the eyes of others and work in peace.

Perhaps as a way of showing the group in its most informal state possible, the first few minutes are unique for any fan of The Beatles or anyone familiar with their history; there are no allusions to great hymns or high-intensity sequences, but rather that spirit of the common men, with an anonymous hare krishna guest of George Harrison surveying everything from a corner (unperturbed by what he is seeing), while John sings On the road to Marrakesh, a theme that two years later he would recycle as the heartfelt love hit Jealous guy on his album Imagine.

George asks where the recording consoles are and no one seems to give him a satisfactory answer. Or no one knows. Chaos, disorder, accommodation and slight confusion at takeoff. Get Back is all of that, and also a full-length slide for only the most hardcore fans, those obsessed with details, resolutions for debate, or chapters that open multiple folds for interpretation.

The auditors less linked to John, Paul, George and Ringo must arm themselves with patience -if they dare- before long seven hours of filming. A kilometric terrain not suitable for those who tire easily.

The myth of Yoko and Paul's genets

Although, in its first part, it also gives away material even for those who wish to see the group in its most logical and elementary facet (playing), or in the one that has historically aroused more curiosity (the presence of Yoko Ono next to John in all the recording).

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There is also another aspect to applaud: the quality of the image and sound - restored, enhanced in their colors, in amazing HD quality, with the voices of the musicians much more prominent - gives an unusual aspect of sophistication to scenes billed more than five decades.

In rehearsals, and as the days go by, there is room to see them perform Don't let me down, I've got a feeling or even a wonderful short version of Bob Dylan's I shall be released. Unpublished songs from the quartet are also shown (you read well with all that that means: songs never heard before from the band) , many of them written in their fifteen-year-old days, long before fame and celebrity, such as Just fun, Because I know you love me do and Won't you please say goodbye. Also the incredible My imagination, pure noise and madness, signed by its four members. How is it possible that we have not met them before?

As the mandate was to release compositions as soon as possible, the musicians travel back to prehistory in order to get their hands on an immediate repertoire. They themselves laugh at walking backwards: it's like calling on your classmates to help you with your current job. Of that handful of songs from his youth, only One after 909 remained on the album Let it be.

But they also thought about the future. When putting forward their respective proposals, Lennon suggests that they include Gimme some truth (also later present on the Imagine album) or Harrison does the same with All things must pass, which in 1970 would baptize his solo debut. Everyone sings both songs, in another splendid moment that connects what they were (a school band) with what they would be (four guys who a year later would be separated thinking about their solo adventures). All this added to the sketches that begin to emerge of tracks that would make up the title that they would record just weeks later, Abbey Road.

More about Get Back Special

Doesn't that sound very demanding and devastating for anyone? The Beatles themselves find the days exhausting. Realizing that, Macca sings about the end of one of the work days I'm so tired, the theme of the White Album belonging to his partner -an ode to laziness that causes emotional and work overload-, in another sample of respect and affection for each other's material, while everyone falls asleep and exhausted above their instruments.

The only one who hardly shows any shocks in the entire footage is Yoko: she is by John's side every minute, even when they go to the bathroom, confirming the myth of her omnipresent woman. Alto: Yes, she doesn't budge from the love side of her life, but she never interferes in the recording or rehearsal process. What's more, at times everyone seems to be moderately pleased with her presence. He talks with Linda Eastman -McCartney's partner-, gives away chewing gum, starts knitting, paints Japanese calligraphy and at the end of the first part he improvises his well-known screeches and howls while the band is pure distortion, with Paul bringing his bass closer to the amplifier to generate one of the most Jimi Hendrix images of his entire career. Pure relief.

What's more: it's as if the four of them needed an alien and indifferent figure to be able to move on. Yoko does not appear under the prejudice of the woman who broke the quartet. Peter Jackson manages to at least dispel the ghost that haunted her for decades.

In turn, he corroborates another: if The Beatles got here, it is largely the responsibility of McCartney. Strictly speaking, the man who made the greatest creative contribution (the best songs) to the project that would end in Let it be. These images reinforce his supernatural talent as an author and instrumentalist.

(For the post-documentary conversation there remains a certain interpretation: Yoko and Paul, the survivors, are the ones who come out of this adventure the best, perhaps the effect of still being able to tell the story according to their creeds and visions, added to that touch of fantasy that it always offers a brand like Disney, perhaps for the purpose of sweetening something that was always sour).

George Leaves: The Record's Biggest Conflict

"I don't want to seem like the boss," says the author of Yesterday in the middle of a meeting, when they talk about the money and rights that it would mean to give a large-scale show in an unusual place. How could a group of friends subjected to the pressure of time not be stressed between composing a majestic album and at the same time having to decipher business and money problems?

Macca seems to have the compass of a muddy area at all times, when he asks his colleagues if they are really enthusiastic about the project, when he indicates how to sound, when he talks about how complex it has been to choose a site as inhospitable as the Twickenham studios, when suggests the initial idea of ​​the subsequent concert on the roof (that almost punk wish of “we want to be taken away by the police”) or when, with a working-class spirit, he reconfigures Get back again and again, with an ironic allusion to the Pakistani immigrants who in those years arrived in Great Britain, which was removed from the final version so that it would not be understood as a racist manifesto.

It is the role that could previously fit John and that he began to assume with greater security after the death of manager Brian Epstein, in 1967. He also gives him the opportunity to write down his opinion about Yoko or he does not even get angry when he detects the obvious: Lennon He arrives very late every day. Punctuality is not his thing.

The attitude would be slightly reversed. In the second part of Get back, the action focuses on the Apple studios, in the center of London, where they go to record the songs, with John absolutely electric, energized, hilarious, without any trace of the apathy of the first days. , for many caused by the heroin addiction that began to hit him in those days.

For the rest, the real breaking point of the documentary is not marked by him, but by George Harrison, who on day seven of work abandons the initiative, bored with the mess, with how little they show him and simply fed up with an idea that never interested him. He is at his creative peak, more empowered than ever even to give his opinion every minute about the direction of the compositions -unthinkable only years before, now throwing phrases like "we are going very slowly"-, so he does not tolerate that his role is minimized or questioned.

"See you at the clubs," he says as he walks away and throws everyone off balance.

The next morning, no one quite knows how to act. They have a couple of meetings at Ringo's house and it's only after almost a week that the four of them return to the studio. When Harrison has "resigned" status and is not on the set, Get Back takes a surprising shortcut: it shows an audio-only recording of Paul and John chatting in a coffee shop, debating the future of the band. .

Only with his voices bouncing between the insipid image of the redoubt that Jackson shows us, they seem like two ghosts in the middle of nowhere trying to save everything . Another success that plays with the desperation of two creators against time.

"This is a giant wound," Lennon qualifies about the departure of his friend. "Stop reproaching the rest, because it's the same thing you don't like being done to you," John attacks his comrade, who defends himself as best he can: "You're the boss here, but the last time It has cost me to take that position and it is very difficult”.

Like those same disembodied voices, there is something intangible but leading that slips through absolutely the entire film: the feeling that at any moment everything can go to the garbage can. From that ghost of always being on the edge of the precipice, these images seem never to have been shaken off.

But there is also something undeniable. When the four of them are together, it's still pure chemistry. The complicity looks of John and Paul are exceptional, as well as remembering anecdotes like "when she played She loves you in Sweden", recalling a milestone from her beginnings, that awakening in which they were a totally different group.

Billy's friend and Spector's cunning

In fact, when George decides to go back, everything seems to flow again. There are jokes, clowning, laughter, shouting in the studio, strident jokes, the usual camaraderie even to show each other the records they have recently bought, such as the seminal Beggars banquet (1968), by The Rolling Stones, accompanied by an improvisation fermented into pure blues, as they read gossip about themselves in magazines and newspapers spread across the floor.

Paul also seems ecstatic, giving away short studio versions of old hits like Please Please Me or Strawberry Fields Forever. They are the most joyous passages of the entire tape.

On his side, it is Harrison himself who proposes Billy Preston for the sessions, a fundamental part of the album Let it be and who has the immediate approval of all his comrades. The figure of Glyn Johns also appears, the producer who would be in charge of assembling everything recorded, the guy who would catapult himself as the great mentor of the sound of this album.

He was hired by Paul and his mission would be precisely to give the songs a more crude and everyday air, more natural and without ornamentation, which in the long run he could not do: as the album ended in reluctance and total detachment, he ended up at the hands of Phil Spector. He ultimately got the artificer and producer credits.

Of course, Spector was astute in replicating the same conversations, encounters, phrases and dialogues captured by Johns -all present in the documentary-, throwing the same on the album that we all know the feeling that we are closer than far from the Beatles

Along this always confusing path, Get back is also the portrait of four musicians who jump from majesty to simplicity in just a couple of days. Longing to play in the pyramids or in a Roman amphitheater located in Libya or Tunisia, they end up going up the stairs to perform on the roof of the same building they share every day, a show that appears here in full for the first time (42 minutes). They didn't even need to take a taxi for the most emblematic concert in their history. The most copied, the most honored, despite the fact that it hardly seems like a rehearsal between the cold and the noise of London.

That pendulum seems to mark all the vertigo of Get back. A group that simply collides with the imperfect nature of its decisions and its march through time. There arises the right midpoint between the brilliant and the trivial, between the extraordinary and the ordinary. Neither more nor less than the simple symmetry that we needed to understand his goodbye.

*Get Back will premiere in three parts on the Disney+ platform, on Thursday the 25th, Friday the 26th and Saturday the 27th.

Keep reading the special of Get Back in Cult:

Paul McCartney: “We were a democracy. The four of us had to agree or it wasn't done."

The story of Get Back, the cursed project of the Fab Four

From “it excites me” to “a second-rate album”: what place does Let it be occupy in my beatlemaniac blog

Billy Preston, the chiaroscuro (and the genius) of the last "fifth Beatle"

Let it be or the collapse of the Beatles song by song

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