DON’T WHAT REALLY HAPPE LET IT BE!
The man who film almost everything loved each other, h
ON A CHILLY Thursday afternoon in January 1969,The Beatles performed publicly for the final time, clambering onto the roof of Apple HQ at 3 Savile Row in central London for an unannounced appearance still remembered to this day. It was a landmark moment for fans and brought the West End to a standstill.
But 10 minutes beforehand, film director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the man charged with capturing this historic event for posterity, still wasn’t sure it was actually going to happen.
“We were going to do it the previous day, but the clouds were too low,” he recalls. “Then it was Thursday. Around midday we met in a little room under the roof, where the ladder went up to the outside.
“The idea of doing the concert wasn’t secure yet. Paul was very much in favour, as I was.
“The rest just weren’t sure. Ringo said, ‘It’s cold up there’ – and it was. George said, ‘What’s the point?’
“This is 12.20pm. We wanted to be up there for 12.30pm to catch the lunchtime crowd. There was silence. John and Yoko hadn’t said anything yet. Then after a little bit, John said, ‘Oh **** it, let’s do it!’”
The 42-minute concert provided an unforgettable conclusion to Lindsay-Hogg’s flyon-the-wall documentary Let It Be, filmed throughout January 1969 and released in May 1970, a month after the official break-up of the band.
Now, more than half a century later, his footage forms the basis for one of the most eagerly anticipated entertainment film projects of 2021. In 2018, Apple asked Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films, to revisit all 55 hours of Lindsay-Hogg’s archive material, most of which has never been seen.
In November, the results will finally be unveiled. Jackson has constructed three twohour films, titled Get Back, which promise to challenge the received wisdom about The Beatles during this period. Lindsay-Hogg, for one, “couldn’t be happier”, saying: “I didn’t want to do it again, I’d done it 50 years ago!”
Filmed in Twickenham studios and at Apple, the original Let It Be documentary is generally regarded as a portrait of a band falling apart. It captured growing tensions within the group, including arguments between George Harrison and Paul McCartney, and the divisive perma-presence of John Lennon’s future wife Yoko Ono. Despite all this, Lindsay-Hogg claims the sessions were much more harmonious than is generally believed.
“There was a lot of creativity, a lot of good times, jokes and repartee, and a lot of music,” he insists.
“The original movie was always viewed as the break-up movie – which it wasn’t.We had finished editing by summer 1969 and The Beatles went on to make the Abbey Road album. But it has always been viewed through the lens of sadness.”
The son of actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, Lindsay-Hogg is an American-born Brit who became a key figure in Swinging London’s music scene. He directed episodes of Ready Steady Go! and made videos for The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, including clips for Paperback Writer and Hey Jude.
It was while filming the latter that The Beatles had the idea to make a twopart “television special”, the first showing preparations for a live performance, the second the concert itself. The band had stopped touring in August 1966, and hadn’t performed since. A concert would be a global event, but they struggled to settle on an appropriate location. Suggestions ranged from returning to The Cavern – “too small” – to using The Roundhouse in north London.
“I wanted it to be a big rather than a small occasion,” says Lindsay-Hogg. “I’d heard about an amphitheatre on the coast ofTunisia.That got a little bit of attention for a while. John thought it would be great if they hired a boat and continued rehearsing as the boat went from England to Tunisia.”
ADECISION about the venue was still to be made when the band began rehearsing and filming at Twickenham on January 2, 1969. “It wasn’t really a musical place but they could play anywhere,” says Lindsay-Hogg.
Within days, however, the mood had become strained.
The most famous scene in the original film, shot at a surreptitious distance by the director, is George and Paul having a disagreement over Harrison’s guitar part. It became heated.
Shortly afterwards, a week into the sessions, a disillusioned Harrison departed.
“George quit,” says Lindsay-Hogg. “Mainly his argument was, ‘I don’t want to appear live any more. I want to make a record and make it as good as we can.’
“There were issues and he left. Nobody quite knew what was going to happen next. The three others would come to Twickenham, and sit around and talk.”
But after four days, the call came saying that the band should meet in the studio in the basement of the Savile Row HQ of Apple, the band’s company. The director recalls they were told: “George will come back, but only if we don’t stay in Twickenham.”
At this point, the idea of a television special culminating in a showpiece concert was junked. Nevertheless, when the band reconvened at Apple to record songs for what became Let It Be, the cameras kept rolling.
“At Savile Row, everything was fine,” says Lindsay-Hogg. “If you look at that part of Let It Be, the mood is good. It was the only time The Beatles allowed rehearsals to be filmed. They recognised, or Paul did, that it had archi
val value. I knew there was a lot of really interesting footage and I was thinking we needed some kind of ending.”
Over lunch, Lindsay-Hogg suggested concluding the filming with a live performance on the roof of the Apple offices.
“I said, ‘We didn’t do the Cavern, we didn’t do Tunisia, but why don’t we do it here?’ Everyone went on with their lunch, and afterwards we went up on the roof and started to look at it.”
As the days passed, The Beatles remained non-committal. “Paul said, ‘We’ll do the music, you do what you have to do, and we’ll keep thinking about it.’”
But in the end, the world was gifted one final remarkable Beatles show. Lindsay-Hogg believes their mood during the rooftop concert reflected the true bond between them all.
“It was a terrific occasion; a release,” he says. “You can see them all having a wonderful time, engaging and smiling with each other. They were doing what they did best, which was playing rock and roll music.”
Had Let It Be appeared during 1969, while The Beatles remained a going concern with one more classic album,Abbey Road, up their sleeve, it may have been received rather differently. Instead, its release was delayed as it went through various edits, at the suggestion of both the band and the distributors.
“They wanted more music and a little less talking,” says Lindsay-Hogg. “We had to cut half an hour.”
Harrison’s temporary exit was omitted from the final edit, as was much of the interaction between John and Yoko. “Some stuff I wanted was cut out, but more or less I think the movie holds up.”
By the time Let It Be premiered in New York on May 13, 1970, Paul McCartney had officially announced his departure from the band, and the film felt like a requiem.
“It was like the death of the Indian chief,” says Lindsay-Hogg. “People were looking through the bones to find any kind of evidence to see why it happened.”
LET IT BE became Exhibit A, with particular focus on the bickering sequence between Paul and George. The director feels its significance has been overstated. “It became a prime piece of evidence as opposed to a very small piece of evidence. The fact that they would have small disagreements on musical matters wasn’t surprising at all.
“They had been working together since they were teenagers. It’s quite possible for people to have artistic arguments and still be friends.”
Peter Jackson’s deep dive into LindsayHogg’s footage promises something more celebratory.
“I’ve seen some of it, and having talked to Peter about his intentions, I’m looking forward to seeing things that I know exist that were cut out of the original picture,” he says.
“It’s exciting because there was lots of fascinating material which I had to [leave out] to make our running time. Peter has got a bigger canvas and, being the artist he is, will use every inch of it.”
He smiles. “What he can’t fail to notice is that the four of them loved each other.”
Get Back airs on Disney+ on November 25, 26 and 27