Peter Jackson’s magnum opus, The Beatles: Get Back, makes you a fly on the wall in a masterclass in creating musical diamonds from a mess of coals
They knew the Beatles were ending but spent three weeks in studios composing two albums worth of new songs and then playing them live in one grand farewell concert
It’s hard to believe that the four men in the room were in their twenties during those four weeks in 1969.
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They are sometimes referred to by their initials in Get Back, the eight-hour three-part tele-series that Peter Jackson crafted painstakingly from 60 hours of video and 150 hours of audio footage that had been shot in various studios over three weeks. JL was 29, PM was 27, GH was 26 and only RS had hit 30. In Get Back, John, Paul, George and Ringo are just boys with their toys, goofy, cranky and brilliant by turns.
The Beatles had already been rock royalty for almost eight years, electrifying and enchanting the world with their timeless songs. But in 1969 the band was on its last legs and relationships were stressed.
Lennon was distracted by his love for Yoko Ono; George felt bossed around by Paul; Ringo felt ignored; Paul felt burdened by having to lead. At one point, George leaves the Beatles, saying quietly, “I’m leaving the band now.”
They knew the Beatles were ending but nevertheless agreed to spend three weeks in studios composing two albums worth of new songs and then playing them live in one grand farewell concert. Get Back shows the world how they did it. Watching it is a masterclass in creativity and hands-on musical genius. Here are five lessons I learned
1. Don’t confuse creativity with originality: People who change the world understand that everything is inspired by something, that nothing comes from nothing. McCartney’s eternal classic Yesterday sounds so much like Nat King Cole’s Answer Me, My Love; George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord is shockingly like He’s So Fine by The Chiffons; the opening lead riff of the Beatles’ I Feel Fine is uncannily like the lead of Bobby Parker’s Watch Your Step.
Watching Get Back is a reminder that creativity is the unexpected juxtaposition of familiar things, when something new emerges from something old. McCartney sums it up perfectly when he sings, “Take a sad song and make it better” in Hey Jude.
One of the most irreverent moments in Get Back is when the boys, inspired by a news item, break into a rock’n’roll jig about the anti-immigration politician Enoch Powell, singing “Commonwealth! Commonwealth!” as the refrain. It was spontaneous composition, unrehearsed, unplanned and born whole with lyrics, chords and arrangements—but put aside and forgotten forever once they got back to the real work of composing songs with real deadlines.
2. It’s okay to goof off sometimes: Get Back demonstrates the value of goofing off and doing crazy things that make no sense. Sometimes the Beatles are just making a racket, screeching, creating pandemonium with whatever’s handy, singing through clenched teeth for fun, putting on voices or piping corny remarks into each other’s songs. They had just three weeks to get a catalogue of songs done but they also understood better than most that it is when you monkey around that you set your mind free to play with the unexplored.
3. Pay attention to details: In Get Back, you see the Beatles toiling over the trivia of every song, changing their minds even well after the wrap-up. A song might start out as a mere beat or a strummed rhythm, with gobbledygook and words mumbled for lyrics, and space-holders where there would later be riffs. For the longest time, the first two lines of Harrison’s hit song Something were “Something in the way she moves reminds me of a pomegranate”. The girl who thought she was a woman but was another man in Get Back was first called Loretta Marsh. Lennon cheekily suggested Loretta Meatball, rejected. It wavered between Marsh and Marvin for weeks before suddenly becoming Martin.
Endless iterations for weeks, dozens of times a day, and tweaks upon tweaks later it was the song that became an instant #1, with Ringo’s galloping snare drum, George’s chopping lead and Paul’s old-style rock’n’roll crooning.
4. Don’t throw it out because it doesn’t make sense: Paul was singing the words “Get back!” in the refrain long before he knew why. Was it a song about Enoch Powell telling Pakistani immigrants to go back? Was it about racism in America? Why did “sweet Loretta Marsh” think she was a woman when she wasn’t? Was the song about transgenders? The Beatles just plugged in words that fit in without worrying about meaning. They understood that diamonds start as coal. It’s the long, slow polishing which makes them brilliant and priceless.
5. Welcome chaos and noise: This is the most luminous lesson in Get Back. World-changing songs, words, ideas are not orderly and neat when they come. They emerge from messy, chaotic, frustrating processes and are born covered with slime, wrinkled and formless, like newborn babies.
But then you play with them till they grow up.
Here, viewed from there. C Y Gopinath, in Bangkok, throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai, the city that raised him. You can reach him at cygopi@gmail.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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