Rent The Beatles: Get Back (2021)

The Beatles slowly grind to a halt - The Beatles: Get Back review by Dr Waerdnotte

Firstly, Whilst watching this and the other DVDs, I got the impression that, like Mick Jagger (My Life As A Rolling Stone), McCartney, Starkey and Ono had taken this opportunity to take control of their own narrative, and present a more balanced reading of the last days of the Beatles. Both McCartney and Ono come out of this looking a lot better than contemporary readings of their role in the demise of The Beatles would have us believe.

In this re-telling of the Beatles Let it Be project Jackson has created a sprawling opus which for me first and foremost reflects the often tedious hours spent noodling around, drinking tea and having mundane conversations, all of which would generally be edited out of a music documentary. However, with Get Back, Jackson gives a warts and all edit that for me is often tedious and occasionally enlightening. What did I take from this? Well, it has been well documented that from as far back as Revolver, McCartney had been trying to keep the band together and here you see the other three's boredom writ large. Lennon, Harrison and Starr don't hide how tedious they find the process. Harrison leaves the band and rejoins, Starr is obviously more interested in his burgeoning movie career (Peter Sellers cameo is hilarious), and Lennon swings from classroom clown to classroom bully. Most of the songs on the album are third rate, particularly when you consider what their contemporaries were producing.

The positives are, it looks good, you see how good a song writer McCartney is, Lennon's guitar playing is a lot better than I thought after listening to Anthology, Glyn Johns had a fantastic wardrobe and it's incredible to see how smoking was such an integral part of so many people's lives.

The negatives? So much of this is tedious to watch and not very interesting. I would love to see an edited version of Peter Jackson's Beatles: Get Back. Edited down to 2 hours yet presenting a different version of Lindsay-Hogg's Let It Be. It has to be remembered both the film and the accompanying album were pretty much junked by the Beatles. They showed no interest in it's release and for many years it was seen as one of the many reasons the Beatles split. Sub-standard music and a movie made to show the worst side of the Beatles and their entourage.

Does this redefine the end of the Beatles narrative? Yes. But sitting through so many hours of footage just to learn that McCartney and Ono weren't really the reason the Beatles split for me was not worth the time.