‘Get Back’ series dispels, and confirms, some Beatle myths

NEW YORK (AP) — For 50 years, the fixed narrative had the Beatles’ “Let it Be” recording session as a miserable experience with a band where members were sick of each other, sick of their work and in the process of breaking up.

The nearly 8-hour, Peter Jackson-produced documentary culled from film and recording outtakes of those sessions instead reveal a self-aware band with a rare connection and work ethic that still knew how to have fun — yet was also in the process of breaking up.

The “Get Back” series unspools over three days starting Thanksgiving on Disney+.

Produced by a Beatlemaniac for fellow Beatlemaniacs, it can be an exhausting experience for those not in the club. But the club is pretty big. Beyond the treats it offers fans, “Get Back” is a fly-on-thewall look at the creative process of a band still popular a half-century after it ceased existence.

Jackson, the Academy Award-winning maker of the “Lord of the Rings” series, was discussing another project with the Beatles when he inquired about what happened to all the outtakes of director Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 “Let it Be” film.

Nearly 60 hours of film taken over three weeks existed, mostly unseen, and the band had been considering what to do with it. Jackson took that material, as well as 150 hours of audio recordings, and spent four years building a story.

He approached with the fear that it might be a depressing slog.

Lindsay-Hogg’s film is viewed as a chronicle of the band’s demise — unfairly, in Jackson’s view — because it was released shortly after the break-up was announced. Individual Beatles reinforced the notion with negative comments about the experience, where they had given themselves a tight deadline to write and record new material in preparation of a live show, with cameras following it all.