The Beatles Thread

I second all this. We just started watching the first part (which is already becoming tedious) last night, and you can see the enthusiasm slowly get sucked out of the room after the first day as Paul dismisses everybody else's contributions but his own stuff, especially George. Geez, I didn't realize how much George suffered from a lack of confidence and needed Paul's acceptance even eight years after Hamburg. And how much he was out of the creative process between John and Paul. He spends much of the first day trying to guess what chords Paul wants him to play for songs he's never heard.

John was actually excited at first and contributed "Don't Let Me Down" and "Across the Universe" (which might be the best song Lennon ever wrote), but McCartney couldn't keep himself from meddling with them. And you could see behind the glasses that Lennon had reached his "tired of your shit" level at that point. He was actually much more interested in the artistic drawings of the "performance." Same thing with "I Me Mine." Harrison is practically begging Paul to help him improve it, but Paul's more interested in playing stuff he wrote for the Quarrymen in 1956.

The amazing thing is watching Paul pull songs like "Get Back" and "Let It Be" out of thin air, and yet still churn out "granny music" songs like "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" at the same time. And you realize how much Brian Epstein kept the four of them from flying off in all directions.

They're trying to come up with 14 new songs and a live performance in two weeks, sitting in a huge warehouse in January, and all the while, Michael's throwing out ridiculous suggestions, like playing in Tunisia, or an orphanage, or a children's hospital. "You're the greatest band in the world. You need to put on a great show." And it all winds up on a rooftop in London, with the live album eventually disintegrating into "Let It Be." And the Hare Krishnas!

 

Some interesting takes on here. A couple of thoughts ...

I didn't think Paul was as dismissive as others on here and that's fine. But maybe I missed it through the British and/or 1960s politeness throughout the doc, including the person-on-the-street interviews during the rooftop concert that seem so weird compared to how the world works now.

To the comment about the length and the goof-around scenes that could have been outtakes ...

* I didn't mind the length, but I had COVID over Thanksgiving weekend, so it was some good isolation viewing.

* After listening to Mark Maron's podcast with Peter Jackson, Jackson was stunned by what he saw in the footage, especially when it came to how the four interacted with each other. I didn't see the movie "Let It Be," but from what I understand it shows the beginning of the end of the band, and people thought it was getting nasty between them. Jackson thought there would be so much worse behavior in the archives, stuff that couldn't or shouldn't be shown at the time, and he found that not to be true at all. So I think he wanted to include a lot of footage of them goofing, enjoying each other's company and playing all kinds of music together. (Jackson said McCartney also expected there to be worse footage as well, which shows you how memory isn't always reliable.)

Another comment on Paul, at the time he's got more songs running through his head than anyone and feels a need to get them out, and there's a big deadline due to Ringo's movie commitment. Obviously George is next with the songs he wants to get out but clearly doesn't have Paul's confidence. (John, on the other hand, might have songs but doesn't feel much urgency.) The scenes of Paul working out "Let it Be" with no one but the cameras paying attention and everyone else just doing other stuff is wild. If it were fiction, they all would have stopped what they were doing at the same time and realized the genius was at work. Instead, the day was just going on around him. Like another commenter on here, I found a new appreciation for Paul's talents after watching this.

Somebody should have told Paul to take a little pressure off of himself and point out that George has brought in some really good songs. They could meet their deadline with those. Watching The Beatles do "All Things Must Pass" was quite a moment.

Looking at things through at lens 50 years later, it's easy to say, just do a big concert at a soccer stadium or a world tour or whatever. But in 1969, they truly don't know what a Beatles special event even looks like. Is it a tour? A single concert in an exotic location? A TV special? Film/cinema? The art world is changing at the time, and they're all aware of that and part of that, probably wondering how they fit into that going forward. Put this through your 2022 lens: According to Wikipedia, the Beatles' last concert in 1966 in San Francisco was an 11-song set that lasted about a half hour. 25,000 people were there and 7,000 tickets went unsold.

 

The Stones stayed together and toured, and their box office was blown away by Led Zep in the 1970s.

Could the Beatles (which hadn't toured since 1966) have done better if they'd reunited? Absolutely ... IF they had decided to tour.

 

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