San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
The long, winding road to genius
Genius is a strange and wondrous thing.
It can be spontaneous, emerging when you least expect it, like a flower bursting through the cracks in a sidewalk.
Or it can be a process, long and laborious, a journey in search of a destination.
Sometimes, it is both.
We see the dual nature of genius in “The Beatles: Get Back,” the docuseries that debuted on Disney+ on Thanksgiving Day.
Morphing from director to prospector, Peter Jackson dug his way through hundreds of hours of footage before emerging with eight hours of gold that show the Beatles on the verge of their breakup.
Remarkably cogent considering all the footage was shot more than 50 years ago, the film shows the Beatles rehearsing and recording during the famous “Get Back” sessions, which led to the album “Let it Be.”
We have seen snippets before, images that sparked misunderstandings about the sessions.
“Get Back” corrects the record.
Variety called it a “great, maybe the greatest, movie or series about rock ’n’ roll.”
We see discord, conflicts about a note here, a note there, with George annoyed by Paul the perfectionist. It gets so toxic there is talk about replacing George with Eric Clapton, but it is only talk. Clapton was a virtuoso, a musician who excelled as a solo artist, and the Beatles were, well, the Beatles, the greatest ensemble in rock ’n’ roll history, their chemistry exceeding the talent of any individual member.
For all the disagreements, there is more joy than turmoil. Paul is a perfectionist, but his ear is attuned to great music, and his heart is attuned to making it. Soaring melodies and pounding rhythms — those are his goals, and in pursuing them, he is more diplomat than tyrant.
Where does the diplomacy lead? There are endless stops and starts in their rehearsals, almost every song fading into a chorus of giggles. They are not dour, surly artists, creating music in a state of tension and oppressiveness; they are men acting like children, every note tinged with wonder and enthusiasm.
When the sessions begin, they have no songs to fill them. They have to come up with 12 compositions before Twickenham, the dark, cavernous warehouse where they set up shop, reverts to a movie studio in two weeks. It seems like a Herculean task.
They are up to the challenge. There is no tension or anxiety. They act as if the deadline were two years, not two weeks, and the result is extraordinary. Lyrics, melodies, rhythms seem to emerge out of nowhere, as if their instruments had morphed into player pianos, the music wafting from thin air.
We hear snippets of songs that never made it onto the final product, “Let it Be,” throwaways that would be masterpieces for almost any other band. Your first thought is “missed opportunities,” but then you hear other snippets that led to fully realized songs on “Abbey Road,” their last and perhaps greatest album.
During the sessions, the Beatles invite another musical genius into the studio, Billy Preston.
They call him the “fifth Beatle,” and it is no hyperbole. He adds, besides his masterful keyboard playing, a buoyancy that characterized the group in its infancy.
When “Let it Be” arrives, it is an epiphany, as if all the rehearsals had never occurred. There is no preamble to genius. It just happens, strange and wondrous.
The Beatles were a gift, their music an eternal blessing, no matter how it was created. You do not have to visit a foundry to see how the iron was made, but if you do, the process seems more mysterious and magical. The painstaking steps, disparate elements, all melding into a solid whole. This is what Jackson, the Oscarwinning director of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, has given us, and we are all the richer for it.
“I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves,” John says at the end of the rooftop concert capping the “Get Back” sessions, “and I hope we’ve passed the audition.”
They did.