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There's good news and bad news.
The bad news is that the long-anticipated documentary film from Peter Jackson--The Beatles: Get Back--which was scheduled to premiere this September, has been rescheduled by Disney for August of 2021. This due to the COVID-19 pandemic that is currently plaguing every corner of the little blue planet we call home.
But the good news so greatly outweighs the bad that it will require this announcement and one or two follow-up articles to detail it all.
Don't let me down.
The video you watched at the top of this page is a clip taken from the last public performance by the Beatles. It was filmed in January of 1969 on a cold, overcast day (hence the fur coats borrowed from two significant others) on the rooftop of their newly-built Saville Row studios in London. Until now, this and a small handful of songs from the final act of Michael Lindsay-Hogg's documentary film Let It Be are all we have been able to see of the director's film for the several decades since it was allowed to go out of print.
This because the magical mystery tour that is the Beatles legacy had long since taken a sharp, oblique turn that is hard to understand and harder to explain. Which is especially puzzling considering that on March 16, 1971 the Fab Four's Let It Be album--five of whose tracks form the film's final reel--was awarded a Grammy for the Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture.
It's even more mysterious considering that a month later, on April 15th, who should show up to accept the Liverpudlians' Academy Award for the Best Original Song Score, but the television broadcast's musical director--coming up out of the orchestra pit for thirty seconds so that someone would take it--who then rushed back to work. No question, Quincy Jones was a good last-minute choice. But, really?
What was immediately discernible to alert fans and other observers was that the apparent schisms in the band, particularly the one between Lennon and McCartney, had left us with the worst possible ending to the story of the most beloved musical organization in the last 50 years. In the wake of Lennon's bizarrely angry, badly-conducted-and-edited interview with Jann Wenner and published in Rolling Stone two months earlier, Wenner had left both us and the boyhood friends--the most successful songwriting team of the 20th Century--in a confused state.
Yes, yes, yes... we know all about the terrible "truth" or "truths" that came spilling out of the cauldron of bile that filled our favorite tabloids. The real mystery is how people like Jann Wenner sleep at night.
The video you watched at the top of this page is a clip taken from the last public performance by the Beatles. It was filmed in January of 1969 on a cold, overcast day (hence the fur coats borrowed from two significant others) on the rooftop of their newly-built Saville Row studios in London. Until now, this and a small handful of songs from the final act of Michael Lindsay-Hogg's documentary film Let It Be are all we have been able to see of the director's film for the several decades since it was allowed to go out of print.
This because the magical mystery tour that is the Beatles legacy had long since taken a sharp, oblique turn that is hard to understand and harder to explain. Which is especially puzzling considering that on March 16, 1971 the Fab Four's Let It Be album--five of whose tracks form the film's final reel--was awarded a Grammy for the Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture.
It's even more mysterious considering that a month later, on April 15th, who should show up to accept the Liverpudlians' Academy Award for the Best Original Song Score, but the television broadcast's musical director--coming up out of the orchestra pit for thirty seconds so that someone would take it--who then rushed back to work. No question, Quincy Jones was a good last-minute choice. But, really?
What was immediately discernible to alert fans and other observers was that the apparent schisms in the band, particularly the one between Lennon and McCartney, had left us with the worst possible ending to the story of the most beloved musical organization in the last 50 years. In the wake of Lennon's bizarrely angry, badly-conducted-and-edited interview with Jann Wenner and published in Rolling Stone two months earlier, Wenner had left both us and the boyhood friends--the most successful songwriting team of the 20th Century--in a confused state.
Yes, yes, yes... we know all about the terrible "truth" or "truths" that came spilling out of the cauldron of bile that filled our favorite tabloids. The real mystery is how people like Jann Wenner sleep at night.
But by August of next year, all of that will be an asterisk attached to a minor footnote--a steaming garbage skow floating down the Hudson or out to sea (San Francisco Bay will smell sweeter).
The film was cut/edited from director Michael Lindsay-Hogg's 55 hours of original 1969 footage and 140 hours of audio, nearly all of which has never been seen or heard by anyone other than Peter Jackson, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr. We know record producer Giles Martin (George's prodigal and actual son) listened carefully to every minute of the behemoth vault of Beatles (White Album) and Abbey Road recording tapes, so it is likely he did the same here. Mr. Martin, I am sure, has quite a CD planned for the occasion--he has the entirety of the Fab Four's rooftop concert (which will be part of the film) for doing one grand remaining remaster.
Look forward to it. Anticipate it. Historical revisionism will take several cannonades across the bow. And the band we've known for all these years will get back.
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