If it is necessary to say thank you, in this Thanksgiving American, thank you for the documentary series The Beatles: Get Back which is being deployed this weekend on the Disney + platform. For eight hours, the fifth Beatle is us. We sit with them and we witness the creation of the albums Let it be and Abbey Road, in addition to attending the concert on the roof. What an unexpected privilege.
We are in January 1969, a few months before the end of their incredible adventure. In less than 10 years, these four hot guys have changed the face of music. The side A like the side B. With as much success as experiments. Of Love me do To Helter Skelter Passing by Yesterday and Tomorrow Never Knows, they never stopped exploring at high speed. Going everywhere in their brains. And, rare in the history of celebrity, the public, rather than being resistant to the multiple transformations of its idols, followed them in each of them. So much so that their work is a living organism in its own right. Who still lives. After them. Fifty years after them. Five hundred years after them. Five thousand years after them.
In January 1969, the four Beatles could be four big swollen heads. Inflated with fame, money, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. Like so many showbiz legends. But they are anything but that. They’re four guys making music together. Fresh minds, open hearts, ego just big enough to be good for them, and just small enough to be good for others.
For eight hours, we don’t see them traveling the world, receiving honors, living 100 miles an hour, being big stars spoiled. We see them working. Quite simply to work. Compose, repeat, throw, start again, compose, repeat, throw, start again, compose, repeat, repeat, repeat …
This documentary is an ode to teamwork. Whether you are a rock band, an office of civil servants, a peewee hockey team, an accounting firm, a cabinet, an NPO, a staff restaurant, a corps de ballet, a revolutionary cell, a pétanque club, a union or the Employers’ Council, you have to look Get back. It will be more rewarding than all the motivator talks and all the team building retreats.
To see the Beatles work is to see a band work. Sometimes round, sometimes square. Sometimes not at all. A group cannot always be in harmony. Even he can only be in harmony if he has known how to manage his conflicts. To sound good, you have to agree. To agree, it takes a disagreement. From disagreement comes correctness.
A group should not be made up of like-minded people. A group should be made up of different people. Each adding its difference to that of the others. Each one making the other bigger, more different.
All the genius of the largest group in history lies in the complementarity of its members. John the strong head, the provocateur. Paul the gifted, the designer. George the spiritual, the seeker. And Ringo the rock, the unifier.
It wasn’t roles, it was their nature. We are fulfilling a role. Nature fills us. Who was the boss ? Probably John, the founder. The most rock’n roll of the four. But the Beatles weren’t John’s band. It was the group of four. This is the rule of any association. If your goal is to become a boss, surround yourself with followers. If your goal is to go far, surround yourself with people who go far. Who will follow you sometimes and who will open the way for you, often.
If the work of The Beatles is still unmatched, it is above all because it is the work of four human beings. A stimulated group is playing with the power play all the time. Nothing is stronger than a set allowing the blossoming of all its talents.
A group can also be quite the opposite. It can suffocate. It can limit. It’s like everything. It’s like the sun. We wouldn’t exist without him. We won’t exist anymore if we don’t know how to be with him.
John, Paul, George and Ringo knew how to use the group to become better. Solo, they would all have succeeded. Together they achieved something more wonderful than them. This is the raison d’être of a group. I know, they broke up. But always having the others in them. We do not separate from the past.
The director of the documentary, Peter Jackson, had the intelligence to let the Beatles live on screen. This is not a montage TikTok. To grasp a creative process, to tame the different personalities, to have the impression of being there, it took time. We have it. Time is the accomplice of everything, here below.
You have eight beautiful hours ahead of you.
I warn you, after seeing Get back, you’ll want to be part of a group. Or want to give even more to the group you’re already part of.
Let it be
Let it be
Let it Beatles.