They were brothers. This, more than anything else, is what Peter Jackson’s long-awaited documentary series, The Beatles: Get Back, put on the spotlight. There was a rare bond between them, old referents (Hamburg, always), insider jokes.
My parents were 20 when the Beatles recorded Let it be, their latest album, which takes shape before our eyes in Get back. The music of the Fab Four was the soundtrack of my childhood. Back home, we were more Lennon (and even Harrison) than McCartney, but both Beatles and Stones. Steel Wheels was one of the first concerts I saw, at the Olympic Stadium, with my parents and my twin brother.
The Beatles were also brothers. They each had their own ambitions which were not necessarily compatible. George hoped to have a voice and record his own songs, John had only Yoko and wanted a new impresario, Paul wanted to shake the chips and end the cycle of studio albums, and Ringo begged to be Ringo. and to rediscover its joy of living.
They loved, more than anything, making music together. It is obvious. Revisiting the repertoire of their adolescence in Liverpool, being laughed at with pastiches of their naive early successes, singing Dylan, grooving on R & B, having fun on a rooftop, at lunchtime, in the heart from London.
It’s a privilege to discover their dynamics, interactions and group psychology in the nearly eight-hour series from the filmmaker of the Lord of the Rings, which has just landed on the digital platform Disney +.
Paul the self-proclaimed conductor, John the disillusioned iconoclast, George chomping at the bit and Ringo following orders.
They composed their first songs at the age of 15-16. At the time the footage of Get back, taken from the film scraps of Let it be by Michael Lyndsay-Hogg, they were only ten years older. The current no longer seemed to flow between their electric guitars.
In the documentary series (as in Let it be), Paul criticizes George for his way of conducting his guitar solos and of conjugating the verbs of I Me Mine. Harrison, who can no longer play the second violins against the Lennon-McCartney tandem, decides to leave the group on January 10, 1969 at noon, in good shape. “Place an ad in [le magazine] NME to replace me, ”he said as he left the studio, his guitar in his hand.
“If he does not come back by Tuesday, we will hire Eric Clapton”, decrees John Lennon, who is not unaware that George has complexes with regard to his friend guitar hero (otherwise secretly in love with Harrison’s wife, the inspiration for the song Layla, Pattie Boyd, who will eventually leave the second for the first).
Michael Lyndsay-Hogg’s film, released a few weeks after the band broke up, had the unusual episode of George slamming the door. In a crisis meeting at Ringo’s, George then fell out with Yoko, who never left John with one sole, even during the recordings. Lennon could have hooked it up with his Rickenbacker while she was doing her crossword puzzles, they were so in sync. She was the extension of Lennon, who hoped for no less.
“It would be an incredibly funny thing 50 years from now [si on disait que les Beatles] separated because Yoko was sitting on an amp, ”said Paul McCartney the next day, who could not have predicted the future better.
The most popular rock group in history would disband 15 months later, for all kinds of reasons. Legend has it that a woman sowed discord among the Fab Four.
The Peter Jackson documentary, co-produced by McCartney, Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison (George’s widow), sets the record straight. Yes, there were tensions in the group. Certainly, the permanent presence of Yoko probably did not help matters. But it is much more the death of the impresario Brian Epstein in 1967, the impact of his absence and the dispute over the choice of his successor that caused the breakup of the Beatles.
That, and of course the will – not to say the necessity – of each one to go and see elsewhere if he was there. During the month that the recording sessions lasted for Let it be, in January 1969, the Beatles seemed to anticipate the end of their adventure. Like a couple who met in their teens but who remain lucid about their future as they approach their twenties.
At the time of filming, while he was composing Something – the most beautiful love song ever written, according to Frank Sinatra – and All Things Must Pass, on which the Beatles look up, George Harrison is only 25 years old. Paul McCartney, one year his senior, composes the plot of Get back on the guitar. With the help of John Lennon, he made a protest song against white nationalists who want to send foreigners home. Lennon offers a guitar-voice recording ofAcross the Universe and sings an embryonic version of Jealous guy, which will not be retained by the group.
It is an incredibly prosperous and abundant period, during which memorable pieces will be composed both for Let It Be, Abbey Road and the respective solo albums of Paul, John and George. It is fascinating to witness the creative process that led to these rock classics, from the hesitant opening notes to songs you know by heart.
“Do you realize that they composed their entire repertoire before they were 30,” I pointed out to Sonny this week. When he was 10, we visited the Beatles Museum in Liverpool, on a father-son trip that we vowed to repeat for his 18th birthday.
The Beatles were four brothers. They had their differences, they had their disagreements, they needed to distance themselves, to trace their own path. But they loved each other with a deep and unwavering love. It is obvious when we see them, united, smiling, accomplices, together creating songs which, 50 years later, have not aged a bit.
The Beatles: Get Back is featured on Disney +