Get Back by Peter Jackson renders the 81-minute Let it Be amature at best
The treatment of the six-hour, three-part Get Back is far superior to the hiccough that was Let it Be
The music world has known of The Beatles’ movie Let It Be and how it was shelved for the better part of half a century. Comparing the 2023 release of Get Back, we can all agree that Let It Be was shelved for excellent reasons.
Get Back
Peter Jackson, the maker of The Lord of the Rings trilogy and an ardent Beatles fan, gladly took on the task of committing to reviewing the nearly 60 hours of raw film (not tape) footage of the Beatles taken in early 1969. They were rehearsing, workshopping, jamming, and performing what would end up being the Let It Be album and movie.
During that time, they also worked on songs for the Abbey Road album, which they started recording only a few weeks after they finished recording Let It Be. Additionally, solo songs by George Harrison like All Things Must Pass, Paul McCartney’s Another Day and John Lennon’s Gimme Some Truth were being crafted.
Get Back is a fly-on-the-wall experience. For non-Beatle fans, the footage may not be important. For Beatle fans, it is a gold mine. The footage changes history, as it had been long thought that this period was of dissent and arguments and the beginning of the band’s breakup. Not so. The six-hour Get Back movie shows us a different story. This version was of The Beatles having a good time jamming, laughing, joking and helping each other with their songs, lyrics, melody and structure.
The most important contributions from Jackson are twofold: Finding and using storylines and enhancing the film footage and audio with artificial intelligence.
Where Let It Be misses
In fairness, American Michael Lyndsey-Hogg who shot and directed the 60 hours did not have access to the technology that Jackson does today. Also, Lyndsey-Hogg may have been pressured to present a story over a short period of time. This I do not know. But there is no story to Let it Be. The finished product is rushed, hastily cobbled together and uncoordinated.
Lyndsey-Hogg claimed recently that the storyline was about the lead-up to getting the performance on the roof. While he creatively shot in Twickenham Studios and Apple Studios as well as the rooftop performance from seven cameras, there is just no story development whatsoever.
During the rooftop performance, Lyndsey-Hogg deserves credit for adding a camera on a building across the street without permission, hiding a camera in the lobby of Apple Studios and getting excellent footage of the band performing on the roof. Also, the man on the street shooting was groundbreaking. But, he did little else. Scene-to-scene order is random, jarring and done without connection to the previous or subsequent scenes.
Jackson on the other hand developed the primary story from the timeline of having fewer than 30 days to film the band writing, rehearsing, recording, and performing all brand-new songs, live. He carefully crafted a stressful and marching timeline that the viewer could feel palpably. Time was the enemy; the antagonist.
Bill Preston
The introduction of keyboardist Billy Preston is conflicting and completely missing from Let It Be. Some critics argue that George Harrison personally invited Preston to record with the band. However, Jackson presented Preston randomly showing up while in town. The truth is out there, but for entertainment purposes, Jackson brings Preston into the film in a way that adds to the story. Lyndsey-Hogg did nothing. For example, in one scene there is just the four Beatles jamming, and in the next scene, there is this guy on keyboards. He is not identified, introduced, or featured.
Throughout the filming, The Beatles talk about having a fifth member come in and play keyboards. Lennon suggested Nicky Hopkins. This is repeated several times. So, when Preston arrives, everything changes and the affable musician slides into the band as if he had always been there. The Let It Be album was credited as The Beatles with Bill Preston.
That was a missed opportunity, as The Beatles toured with Little Richard before they made it big in the US. Preston was Richard’s teenage keyboardist. The kid would watch The Beatles play and request the song This Boy. When Preston arrives at Apple Studios, the band breaks into a rough version of This Boy — all are enjoying the moment.
Lennon spent considerable time repeating parts of Martin Luther King’s speech, “I Had a Dream.” The speech was freshly broadcasted at the time and not yet a historic moment. But Lennon and McCartney were quite taken with the delivery of the speech, even imitating King at various points. Lennon used some of the speech while jamming with Preston, Harrison and Starr while McCartney was out for lunch with his brother Michael.
The jaw-dropping Get Back moment
Another missed opportunity is the jaw-dropping footage of McCartney, strumming the bass and working out the early melody to Get Back. He just sat there feeling the melody come while Harrison and Ringo Starr watched. The two were sitting on the drum rostrum, emitting teary-eyed early morning yawns, while McCartney was seemingly receiving the song out of thin air, like a lightning bolt, it just came to him. Get Back would become the main hit on the album. It was the ultimate fly-on-the-wall moment.
Lennon and his soon-to-be-wife Yoko Ono were delayed due to a car accident and subsequent hospitalization. George temporarily left the group. Starr was under time pressure as he was to start filming the movie The Magic Christian with Peter Sellers, which became a hit. All missed plot lines in Let it Be.
Magic Alex, a friend who was soon jettisoned from the band’s inner circle created a studio at Apple, his work was a mess and the studio needed to be gutted. Twickenham Studios where the band started rehearsing was cavernous and cold. These elements add to the time pressure. Again completely missed in Let It Be.
Linda Eastman and her daughter Heather (who Paul adopted) were featured in Get Back. There is no Linda in Let It Be. The two got married six weeks later. In Get Back there is considerable footage of her talking, hanging out with Yoko Ono and taking photographs.
The 60 hours of film is a treasure caché, a storyteller’s dream. How Lyndsey-Hogg missed this is beyond belief.
Editorial choices
The revitalized film and audio of Let It Be greatly improve the viewing experience. A recent short interview between Jackson and Lyndsey-Hogg takes place before the start of the revitalized Let It Be movie. Jackson must have been biting his tongue as Lyndsey-Hogg defended his work. During the credits Down by the Riverside, a Lennon-McCartney song that could have been a classic swamp blues piece was played. Deep Beatle fans know the outtake well.
What Jackson left out of Get Back was the Suzy Parker jam, a fun early sixties rocker that never made it onto an album. Also, McCartney singing an opera version of Besame Mucho much to the entertainment of the three others was left off Get Back.
In the Get Back version, after the rooftop performance, The Beatles reconvene in the studio to record Two of Us, The Long and Winding Road and Let It Be, live. The other songs were taken from the rooftop performance and partially from earlier takes in the studio.
During Let It Be, Lennon appears stoned and disinterested. In Get Back, he is often childlike, and funny, performing impromptu comedy from his chair, behind the keyboards and while playing bass and guitar. Starr’s willingness to sit for hours and be ready to play drums was a dedication which illustrates why he never practiced, he did not need to, there was no time in the day for practicing because he was playing for the proverbial 40 hours per week.
It was worth watching the new edition of Let It Be to hear the cleaned-up audio against what looks like fresh film, but it ends there. Unless you need to watch Suzy Parker or Besame Mucho, don’t bother.
In short, Peter Jackson’s Get Back is far superior to Lyndsey-Hogg’s Let It Be.
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