I was born two years to the month before the Beatles made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, 1964—this appearance was also my brother’s first birthday. I was crazy about the band at an early age, most likely due to the Beatles tv cartoon series. The first album I ever owned (aside from kiddie records) was "The Early Beatles"—we still own that album, which I’ve posted here in all its taped up glory. I recall seeing and hearing their first true American album, "Meet the Beatles" at the house of a family friend.At that young age, I was hardly a consumer of pop culture or entertainment news, so it was purely through their album covers that I learned of their transition from the mop tops next door to the voices of the psychedelic and hippie movements to which I was fairly oblivious given my suburban upbringing—after all, I was only 5 years old during the Summer of Love. I recall an uncle who was staying with us coming home one day with the Sgt. Pepper album as a gift—their new look puzzled me; later, I encountered the Abbey Road album and the Beatles in full "hippie" mode at an aunt’s apartment through her roommate; and I have a vivid memory of seeing the "Let It Be" album in a department store we frequented. If memory serves, "The Early Beatles," "Sgt. Pepper" and, later, "Let It Be," were the first Beatles albums I owned (shared with my brother of course) until the Red and Blue compilation albums came along when I was 11. By the time I was in my late teens (but after they already had broken up), we own most of their albums and I later bought replaced them all on CD when they were released. Catching the films A Hard Day's Night and Help! on tv was an obsession and when we first moved to California, my first trip to a revival theater was a double bill of the two films in Monterey. When A Hard Days' Night went through one of its first restorations and released theatrically when it was in college, I sat through two showings of it by myself in a theater in L.A. during the middle of the day.
In addition, one of my favorite Christmas gifts of all time was receiving the 8-cassette VHS Beatles Anthology documentary series from my brother (later upgraded to DVD), which I’ve seen multiple times.
So I was very excited by the recent Peter Jackson documentary, culled from the nearly 60 hours of footage taken for what was eventually released as the "Let It Be" album, particularly since it offered a completely different narrative of the sessions that over time had been colored in a negative light by the film that was released just months after the Beatles’ breakup. Over time, even the Beatles themselves bought into the narrative that had been created by the film (which has not been available for quite some time).
Many people have offered their reactions and commentaries to the film so I won’t go into any further depth in the series, aside from come of my own observations and comments:
- Although they came into the studio at the outset with some songs ready to be completed, it nevertheless still seems kinda nuts that they went into the studio with the goal of writing and completing 10 or so new songs, booking a venue and performing them live in concert in the span of three or so weeks. There was no interest in resting on their laurels and performing any of their “classic” hits from their back catalog.
- With the hindsight of age, they still looked like kids, being around 26-28 years old during filming! Even producer George Martin looks young, who was in his early 40s at the time (again, showing my age).
- Speaking of kids, it's clear that the amazing process we're witnessing as they (particularly Lennon and McCartney) throw out suggestions to each other in the form of lyrics, chords and music arrangement is the same they've been doing since they were teens—Lennon and McCartney first met when they were respectively 16 and 15 years old, and Harrison was even younger.
It’s an easy rapport and collaborative process they've developed from more than 10 years of songwriting together, beginning as teens. This rapport also translates into the harmonies and vocals they easily slip into.
- By the same token, for guys just a few years into adulthood and who up to then have only known live as a Beatle, you can understand why they were perhaps ready to move on. You particularly see this when Harrison mentions that he's considering releasing his own album since his usual 1 to 2 song allotment per album (which he seemingly accepts without question) is no longer enough to accommodate the backlog of songs he''s written.
Along the same lines, you can understand McCartney's desire to front his own band—he seems to know exactly what he wants and, though he appears very conscious of coming off as "bossy" and acting as the "frontman," being in the Beatles requires a level of diplomacy and delicacy to achieve that. (His taking charge was partly out of necessity due to the leadership vacuum created by the death of manager Brian Epstein, which they explicitly acknowledge in the documentary, and Lennon's own disengagement.)
- The Beatles were hilarious—I genuinely howled at some bits. A favorite is the scene where they discuss what charity to donate the proceeds of their concert to—Harrison interjects, "Well they say charity starts at home, why don't we do it at Paul's place?"
- This silliness often extended into their music, such as Lennon and McCartney goofily singing "Two of Us" through clenched teeth. Though they obviously took their songwriting seriously, it's clear that they didn't consider either their songs or those of others as so precious or serious that they couldn't make fun of them. They were known (especially Lennon) for being goofy on stage and you can see them often channeling their inner lounge lizards when performing. (I don't believe it's included in the documentary, but a terrific and hilarious rendition of “Besame Mucho” exists from these sessions.)
- So it’s a treat to see them spontaneously break out into numbers and covers of their own songs and others as diverse as Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, turn of the century standards, and even the theme song to the film, The Third Man, reflecting a vast song catalog at their fingertips likely dating to their Hamburg days, when they were required to perform up to an incredible EIGHT HOURS or more a day! (When the Beatles returned from Hamburg, fans and rival bands in Liverpool apparently were shocked by how much they had improved as musicians.)
- Original Let It Be director Michael Lindsay-Hogg has caught a lot of grief for coming off a bit intrusive, presumptuous and, yes, annoying. These included some of his ideas for the concert (at an ancient amphitheater in Libya after a long cruise or a children's hospital, but not where kids are like, "dying.") He also had an annoying habit of calling people by their initials (Ringo Starr= "R.S." and constantly smoking a cigar, perhaps trying to channel Orson Welles, who he suspected may be his biological father. That said, the footage that includes him was likely never meant for the final cut, as he just had cameras running full tilt through much of the sessions.
But I give Lindsay-Hogg full credit for the foresight of setting up 10 cameras for the concert, which included five on the rooftop, one on another rooftop across the street, three cameras at street level, and a hidden camera in Apple’s main lobby to capture all the action and footage he did. And kudos to Jackson for maximizing the use of that footage by the use of split screens so that viewers could see what was happening simultaneously throughout the rooftop concert!
- Finally, watching the police bobbies and people on the street was sometimes like watching Monty Python characters come to life—their portrayals don't seem as much of an exaggeration as I thought!
Anyway, it's an amazing documentary. Jackson deserves great credit for restoring the footage and putting them together, as does Lindsay-Hogg in recording the historic sessions.
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