‘Get Back’: The genesis of Beatles genius
When I was younger, so much younger than today, I grew up with the Beatles.
I would have been about five when the album “Let It Be” came out. For my mom, a housewife at the time, I was her main daytime companion for a year, with my older brother and sister in full-time primary school.
She took me to see the movie “Let It Be” at our local Varsity cinema. I was a bit frightened by John and George, more of a Paul and Ringo kid.
While the Beatles are baked into my brain, I wouldn’t consider myself an ardent fan, compared with others who’ve memorized every detail about the band. But I know and love their music, without hesitation, they are the greatest band in history.
I consumed Peter Jackson’s epic documentary “Get Back” voraciously. The nine hours flew by, and, even in our attention-deficit-disordered world, I can’t understand the post-release whinging from some that it was too long.
Too long? Too long are the 50 years that we’ve gone with nary a new piece of footage of the group. Too long is the endless revisionist history about the band. Too long is the winding road of those who’ve since passed: Lennon, Harrison, Linda McCartney, Billy Preston, George Martin …
Relative to five decades of nothing, nine hours of brilliant, unfettered, new footage is everything.
I can’t imagine a more fantastic view of the art and skill of professional songwriting than “Get Back.” What struck me most was the work these geniuses put into their craft. Anyone who believes that a fourminute song takes a minute to make will be disabused of the notion.
Each Beatles song is carefully massaged, manipulated, and mastered over intense working sessions — many hard days’ nights working like a dog.
If there’s a scene in “Get Back” that resonated with me most, it’s when John, George, and Ringo are off to the left of the rehearsal space discussing some relatively mundane topic. Not in the shot, one can hear the first few chords of the song “Let It Be” being tested by McCartney. The discussion group on the left isn’t paying attention. They don’t jolt upright, twist around and shout, “What’s THAT, Paul?!” No, they continue talking because this is the familiar everyday work of songwriting.
Despite it being a genesis-type incident of music creation, it’s one of many quiet but spellbindingly profound, spiritually satisfying moments in “Get Back.”
Every time a songwriter humblebrags that their No. 1 hit took “20 minutes to write,” they do themselves and their fellow music creators a disservice.
The essence of the work might well have been scribbled out in minutes, but it ignores the years of learning, practice, and preparation that took them to that point — the hours, days, eight-day weeks and months of tweaking, arranging, playing, recording, and mastering that made the song great.
The Beatles had no airs and graces that I could detect. Despite being on top of the world, they sat down with their instruments and they worked. They debated, cajoled, kidded, prodded, tweaked and collaborated. They didn’t have preconceptions of greatness. There’s never an indication in “Get Back” that they presumed they were about to create anything great.
We can thank the Beatles for many things, and we can thank “Get Back” for putting the craft, and art, and hard work of songwriting into real context. It’s a gift. The genesis of genius.