The first Beatles album I bought, was a copy of Let it Be from the cut bin of a long gone record store in the Arvada Plaza in 1972. It was not my start with the Beatles; like most of us present at that time, I heard their music on the radio from I Want to Hold Your Hand on. In the years that followed, I bought most of their albums and listened to them at length. I'm certainly not unique in that aspect. I've watched their movies and TV appearances with one exception: Let it Be, which, by the time I wanted to watch it, had been given the kibosh by McCartney, who hated it.
If you've read the many missives on the show, you'll note how many people were surprised that the Beatles got along. It has been taken as gospel that by then they were at each others throats and it's why they broke up. Mostly, though, other than when George left for a short time, they seem to be on good terms. And it's apparent they had a very good time playing together. But the gloom is there for anyone looking; it's just parsed out by the better time they had working through the songs. For those fans and Beatleheads cheered by the affability shown, it's proof of...
The fact that, reduced to four guys who grew up together playing music, it's a way to see them for how they were when just the music was on the table. Everywhere else, when they were "THE BEATLES," it's obvious how heavy it wore on them. The whole Let it Be project was a way for them to get back to their roots, before they skyrocketed to fame, before everything became bigger and more important and significant.
The irony, for those looking, is how hard that had become, and why they inevitably broke up. They broke up because being "THE BEATLES" was unsustainable. If you pay attention, all the big issues within the group come up: Who should manage? Should they play live, do concerts, or are then just an album band? And if just an album band, should it be like it was when they were fab, something Let it Be tried to recreate, or like the White Album, where everyone works on this and that, playing on their track, but not necessarily together?
It also answers the one big question everyone who harbored a hope they'd get back together had: Just think of all the great music they could have made? Within the show, you hear them playing snippets of songs that later turned up on their solo records, which means that we've heard all the songs that might have been on a Beatles record. Maybe not exactly as we heard them, but then again if you listen closely to Abbey Road, their last actual album, you hear all of the subsequent song stylings that turn up on their solo records. There's nothing we would have missed.
The ugly truth is the music business is hard. Watch any documentary on successful bands, and that always emerges. To project upon them the idea that should always be the 20yo mop-tops from Liverpool is fantasy. As Lennon himself said: "The Beatles were what the Beatles were... The Beatles gave everything they've got to give and more, and it exists on record. There's no need for the Beatles—for what people think are the Beatles (emphasis mine)—the four guys that used to be that group can never be that group again... "
This isn't to say I didn't enjoy the show; I enjoyed every minute of it. It showed their talent, their work ethic, their knowledge of music, and their legacy as a cover band learning the ropes and using it to inform their music later on. It showed their joy at making music together.
As a note to that, I highly recommend listening to Let it Be... Naked, Paul's realization of what the album was meant to be. It's the five of them, Billy Preston being the fifth, playing together, straight up. No Phil Spector ornamentation. Like all of their work, it's a very good album. And having watched Get Back, it rings true from first note to the last.
*Musician Magazine 3
©2022 David William Pearce
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