‘Back’ talk

Every so often a Beatles moment comes along, as if to remind us of their significance and place atop rock and pop music. For young people in the 1960s and ’70s, these truths were self-evident. For successive generations, discovering The Beatles has occupied an aha moment in one’s musical education. But the further away from the band’s breakup we get — now a full half-century ago — the less relevant The Beatles may seem. It is at such points The Beatles return to reassert their primacy. The last Beatles moment came in 1995, when Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr gathered for the “Anthology” project, which included the three on the unreleased John Lennon track, “Free as a Bird.” The multimedia project also featured a televised documentary, a three-volume set of double albums and a book. Now comes “Get Back,” director Peter Jackson’s exhaustive restoration of footage from Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s “Let It Be,” a film largely regarded as a chronicle of the band’s breakup. But The Beatles were still more than a year away from that moment in 1969, when the film was made. As the new version recounts, The Beatles were still The Beatles, planning a televised concert and writing vital, soon-to-be classics for a new album and the forthcoming “Abbey Road,” made after “Let It Be” but released first. Like “Anthology,” “Get Back” comes with a wealth of companion offerings and projects, including a coffee table book, a special deluxe reissue of the album, as well as McCartney’s two-volume set of reflections and commentary on his songwriting oeuvre, “The Lyrics,” all perfect gifts for Beatles completists.