Series / The Beatles: Get Back

The Beatles: Get Back is a 2021 three-part Mini Series directed by Peter Jackson. It is a documentary about the making of what eventually became The Beatles' final album, Let It Be. ^note  Abbey Road was recorded last, but released before Let It Be.

In January 1969, the Beatles assemble for their next project. The idea is to get away from the intricate, complex studio recordings that had informed much of the band's output in recent years, and, well, get back to a more Three Chords and the Truth style of rock 'n roll. The band will rehearse and record fourteen songs that will be played live. They will also play a live show with their new material, which will be their first live performance since they quit touring in 1966. Finally, a film crew will be there to document their new record as they rehearse and record it, as part of a television special.

The project immediately runs into problems. George Harrison isn't very enthusiastic about the whole affair, and he also resents John Lennon and Paul McCartney for relegating him to a secondary role in the band. Lennon is struggling to come up with material, and has become more dependent on his soon-to-be wife Yoko Ono, whose near-constant presence unnerves the others. McCartney is finding himself having to be the boss of the group even as he specifically states that he doesn't want to act like the boss. No one likes the sound stage at Twickenham Studios, a large building with bad acoustics. No one can agree on where to play the live show. (A cruise ship? an orphanage? Primrose Hill in London? An amphitheater in Libya?) And they need to be ready before the month is out, because Ringo Starr is going to shoot a movie. Tensions rise, and eventually Harrison quits the group.

The footage shot at Twickenham and Apple in January 1969 was, after the idea of the TV special was dropped, made into the feature film Let It Be. That movie, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, was theatrically released in 1970. Fifty years later, director Peter Jackson took all the material recorded by Lindsay-Hogg, some 60 hours of film and 150 hours of audio recordings, and reassembled it into a new documentary. The original idea was for Jackson to make a documentary feature film like his World War I documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, but after the COVID-19 Pandemic forced postponement of the feature, Jackson instead assembled a three-part documentary series that in total runs nearly eight hours. The series premiered on Disney+ on (American) Thanksgiving weekend in 2021, with three consecutive daily releases of each part from November 25-27.

---

Tropes:

• Accentuating the Negative: Done at the end of Part 1, in which the camera continuously cuts back and forth between Paul and John talking, laughing and fooling around and George watching in frustration from a corner. When combined with the band visibly spending little time on George's songs, it helps to make his sense of being a third wheel in the creative process more obvious, and contextualises his decision to (temporarily) leave the band.
• Anti-Climax: The last day of recording, Jan. 31, 1969 (the day after the rooftop concert), when the band assembled to record "Two of Us", "The Long and Winding Road", and "Let It Be". In this series these performances are relegated to excerpts as the credits roll.^note In his film, Michael Lindsay-Hogg included complete performances of all three songs, but before the rooftop concert which also formed the climax.
• Blank Stare: At one point Paul and Ringo are the only two in the studio, and it's not very clear who else is coming what with George having quit the band and John being late again. Paul sighs "And then there were two," and then stares off into space as the camera stays on him for a long time.
• Bungling Inventor: Alexis "Magic Alex" Madras had promised to design a new state-of-the-art computer assisted 72-track recording studio at Apple Records, which would have been pretty impressive in the days when the most advanced tape decks had 16 tracks. But the result is only partly assembled when the Beatles get there, with a mass of cables and small speakers cluttering the studio. What he is able to get working is virtually unusable, with such distorted sound quality and background noise that George Martin is finally forced to borrow a portable four-track console from EMI just so they can record anything at all. Magic Alex also shows John a prototype of a new musical instrument that is a convertible rhythm guitar / electric bass with a swiveling neck; the concept has a few small design flaws such as being impossible to tune or play.
• Brits Love Tea: The boys go through countless mugs of tea, often brought in on a laden tray.
  • Indeed, the brown and black striped mugs of tea are so ubiquitous that someone on RedBubble is selling replicas.
• Call-Back: At one point in the first episode John notices a stranger in the corner of the sound stage and says "Who's that little old man?". Paul says "Clean, though." This is a call-back to a Running Gag from the film A Hard Day's Night and the character of Paul's grandfather. (The visitor was a Hare Krishna guru brought in by George.)
• The Cameo: Peter Sellers, who was due to start shooting a film called The Magic Christian with Ringo in a matter of days, drops by Twickenham. After a rather awkward conversation in which Sellers seems to be wondering why no one's doing anything, he leaves.
• Cheerful Child: Linda’s (and later Paul’s) six-year-old daughter Heather shows up to visit with her mother and is clearly delighted to be hanging out with Paul and the rest of the band. The other Beatles all obviously adore her too, and let her dance and play with their instruments and gear. She even gets into a playful argument with John about why one should not eat kittens. Ringo has fun letting her get in on the drumming.
• Cliffhanger: The first episode ends with George blindsiding the others by saying "I think I'll be...I'm leaving the band now." The future of the band is undetermined as the credits roll.
• Cluster F-Bomb: The most R-rated thing ever to be released under the Disney name in terms of language, with each episode containing multiple F-bombs. The entire series is rated TV-14 for a reason.
• Content Warnings: They start every episode, since, unlike most of what is on Disney Plus, this series contains curse words and smoking.
• Code Name: At one point, Michael Lindsay-Hogg decides to give George and Ringo code names (France and Russia, respectively). The reason for this is unclear, and it only serves to generate confusion for everyone when potential locations for the group's live concert are being discussed.
  Michael: One of Russia's points was that he wanted an English audience. I think we've got to get—
  John: Oh, Russia? That'd be great!
  Michael: No, no, no, no! That's Ringo's code name!
• Concert Climax: The rooftop, of course!
• Creative Differences: invoked The band frequently has differing opinions on everything to do with the project, sometimes just friendly rivalry but other times becoming more tense.
• Digital Destruction: The film remastering used an aggressive DVNR setting and applied a sharpening tool to try to cut down on film grain and make the video look "modern." Bear in mind that this is 16MM film stock from 1969 (as George says in the doc itself), so it'd never look as good as a feature film, but when you can see how unnaturally smooth and waxy everyone's skin is and how blurry things around them are in comparison to the original raw film, some people think the episodes look bad. The footage was also shot in 4:3, which required cropping to 16:9. Luckily, it's done selectively so important information isn't lost on the tops or bottoms of the frames.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The band rehearses not just the songs that eventually appeared on the Let It Be album, but a good chunk of what later appeared on Abbey Road ("She Came In Through the Bathroom Window," "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," "Something" and more), as well as songs that appeared on their solo albums, like when George demonstrates his new song "All Things Must Pass".
• Everybody Smokes: The documentary does not shy away from the amount of tobacco consumed by all involved.
• Exploding Calendar: To give a chronology to the series, Jackson uses the very simple device of showing a January 1969 calendar, with days X'd off one at a time before cutting to the next day's session.
• Fanservice: The Beatles Monthly Book magazine that George reads contains a picture of a shirtless Paul in chains. Given the magazine's target audience it's not difficult to imagine why the photograph was included.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Early on in the Twickenham sessions, George makes a comment about what a fantastic keyboardist Billy Preston is. Later, after they've reconvened to Apple, George observes that if they're playing live they need someone else to play piano. Soon after Billy Preston makes a casual visit to the studio and is almost immediately pressed into service as the fifth Beatle, on keyboards.
  • During a Twickenham argument in the first episode, George says out of nowhere "Maybe we should get a divorce." The group keeps bickering, and at the end of the first episode George quits the band.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: John (Choleric), Paul (Sanguine), George (Melancholic) and Ringo (Phlegmatic).
• Growing the Beard: In-Universe (or, rather, in Real Life). George turns up clean-shaven on the first day of the sessions, and proceeds to grow a beard over the course of the month, although by the time of the rooftop concert he's trimmed it down to just a moustache.
• The Ken Burns Effect:
  • Sometimes used with still photos, like a zoom in to the famous photo of a teenaged Lennon singing at the Woolton fair (where he met McCartney), or a zoom in to a photo of Allen Klein, who even then Lennon was pushing as the next manager of the Beatles. (McCartney disagreed, and this was a major factor in the breakup of the band later in 1969.)
  • One of the highlights of the documentary is an earnest, direct conversation between John and Paul where they discuss their tensions with each other and particularly their problems with George. It's earnest and direct because they didn't know they were being recorded on a hidden microphone in the cafeteria. When this conversation is presented in this series, the camera slowly glides around an empty cafeteria table as the voices play on the soundtrack.
• Lead Bassist: Paul is often considered to be one of the quintessential examples, and the reasons are clearly shown here - he's the one largely guiding the group through the process and coming up with the most new material (although he admits that he's "scared of being the boss").
• Limited Wardrobe: Very much averted for Paul, George and Ringo, who are often decked out in an array of colourful vests and turtlenecks, but played straight with John, who is seen wearing the same outfit on most of the days the group worked at Twickenham. He lampshades this himself by claiming that it's for continuity reasons. In actual fact, his heroin addiction meant that he was putting minimal effort into his personal hygiene and appearance during this period (as is also evidenced by his often unwashed hair).
• Meaningful Background Event: The camera shows John, at Twickenham, looking at sketches for the proposed set for the live show along with Dennis O'Dell of Apple. John has the bright idea to make the whole set out of plastic. As the two men natter, some music can be heard off-screen in the background – namely, Paul playing the opening bars of "Let It Be" for the first time on the piano.^note The first time in the documentary, anyway. Paul had been working on "Let It Be" since September 1968 and the sessions for The White Album.
• Metal Scream: Yoko's wailing during the frenzied jam that occurs between the three remaining Beatles after George's exit.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted by the two policemen who hang around the Apple reception area trying to get the band to be quieter: PC Ray Dagg and PC Ray Shayler.
• Precision F-Strike: In a first for a Disney+ Original, the series contains uncensored uses of the word "fuck" throughout its overall runtime because the surviving Beatles (Paul and Ringo) and the deceased Beatles' widows (Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison) forbade Disney from censoring anything that wasn't family-friendly. And since Disney could not legally incorporate Hulu/Star on the US-based version of the service at the time of its premiere, the series was released unrated and instead incorporated Content Warnings for each episode. One use of the word in episode 2 involves the Beatles as they were just starting another run-through of "Get Back" when Glyn Johns interrupts them from the control room. Paul points at Johns and says "Hey! Fuckface!"
  Lennon: We're bloody stars you know.
• Protest Song: After McCartney comes up with the idea for the song "Get Back", it briefly becomes a protest song called "Commonwealth" that was satirising anti-immigrant, incendiary British politician Enoch Powell. Eventually, the group abandons that idea and starts singing about Jo-Jo and Loretta, although there's still an artifact of "Commonwealth" in the lyric "get back to where you once belonged."
• Re-Cut: The entire series is basically an "extended cut" of Michael Lindsay-Hogg's 1970 film, with additional footage being included to extend the run time from an hour and a half to nearly eight hours.
• Revisiting the Roots: The whole "Get Back" project was this, but also, the Beatles literally revisit their roots, combing through some of their earliest compositions for possible new material for the show. Songs like "I Lost My Little Girl" and "Thinking of Linking" are rejected, but the group seizes on one of the first songs Lennon ever wrote, "One After 909". They play it on the roof.
• The Roadie: Mal Evans and Kevin Harrington, who fetch the Beatles tea, cigarettes, and lyrics sheets, and occasionally pound anvils.
• Rockumentary: A rockumentary of the January 1969 Get Back sessions. Peter Jackson used only the original 1969 footage, eschewing a Narrator (instead, titles give the necessary exposition) or Talking Heads.
• Rooftop Concert: The original, and its inclusion in the 1970 film, was the Trope Maker. This series includes the rooftop concert in its entirety.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In Part 1, George Harrison gets fed up and leaves amidst rehearsals. The Beatles scramble to figure out what to do in his absence.
• Shout-Out:
  • Early in the first episode, Paul complains that they're stuck with a four track recorder and they can't get an eight track recorder from EMI, because he knew for a fact that they gave one to The Beach Boys. He's then rather unhelpfully reminded that The Beach Boys are American.
  • John's famous comment after George leaves the band: "If he doesn't come back by Tuesday, we'll get Clapton." ^note Clapton's group, Cream, had split up less than two months earlier
  • John and George talk enthusiastically about a Fleetwood Mac TV special.
  • Several other artists and songs are referenced by the band across the series, including the Animals, the Move and "Reach Out (I'll Be There)" by the Four Tops.
• Signature Instrument: John's stripped-down Epiphone Casino, Paul's Höfner 500/1 bass (the one he uses in the footage is the one he got in Hamburg) and George's cherry-red Gibson Les Paul. Each of these even has a moment: John announces that he's leaving his "favourite guitar" in the studio as a token of his intention to come back tomorrow; Paul points out the set list from their last tour, still taped to his bass; and George's Les Paul falls over at one point.^note Les Pauls are notorious for their tendency to crack at the headstock if dropped, so a Les Paul falling over is a matter of concern.
• Split Screen: Used heavily throughout the rooftop concert, both in split screens that show different views of the band playing, as well as split screens that show the rapidly growing crowd on the street and the people on neighboring rooftops, watching the show.
• Stock Footage: The entire series, really, as Jackson did not shoot any new footage. But even if one doesn't count that, the series starts with a stock footage thumbnail history of the Beatles, which begins with them as Liverpool teenagers and skirts over their career (Beatlemania, "Bigger Than Jesus", the retreat to India with the Maharishi, etc), before the series proper starts with the band arriving at Twickenham on January 3, 1969.
• Vocal Range Exceeded: At one point John complains that a particular vocal line is too high for him.
• Vox Pops: There are quite a few of these of members of the public reacting to the rooftop concert. Most people are enjoying it; some very clearly aren't.
• Warts and All: The Beatles are joking and having a good time, only to then bicker, argue and even cry at some points.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Not every member of the public is absolutely delighted that the most famous band in the world is playing out of view on a rooftop, of all places.
  Young Redheaded Woman: Yeah, so why's it happening on top of the roof?
  Interview: It's to do something out of the ordinary.
  Young Redheaded Woman: [Technically a Smile] All that money they've got.
• Yoko Oh No: Discussed Trope. It's indisputable that the others are uncomfortable with Yoko Ono's constant presence; they have a discussion about her in episode 2. However, Paul insists that Yoko is not that big of a deal and that it would be ridiculous to say that the Beatles broke up because "Yoko sat on an amp." (He also gets in a Yoko Oh No joke at Linda's expense, calling her "Yoko" when she starts offering suggestions on what to do with the TV special.)

---