The big thanksgiving TV event this year was Peter Jackson (i.e., Lord of the Rings)'s remaster of all the footage shot in January 1969 of the Beatles recording the songs that would end up on Let it Be. This footage was shot by Michael Lindsay-Hogg (who may or may not be the bastard son of Orson Welles - he certainly looks the part, and shares a fondness for cigars and self-importance) who features prominently in the footage and has become something of a cartoon villain on Twitter. Jackson, whose films have nosedived in quality since LotR, had a moment of respectability a year or so ago with They Shall Not Grow Old, which took film footage from World War One and restored it (and colorized it) using artificial intelligence, and he's used the same process here. It's largely inoffensive, although "Smooth Ringo" - a few stills of uncanny-valley looking Ringo, was briefly a meme. He also was able to clean up some audio that had not been heard before, most notoriously a conversation that John and Paul had in the canteen, that the odious Lindsay-Hogg bugged with a mike in some flowers on the table, where they're discussing what to do about George, who at that moment in time had quit the group. This audio was pretty much inaudible back in 1969, and it's only using modern technology that we are able to hear the conversation (and feel a bit dirty about it). Anyway, apparently there were 60 hours of film (and much more of just audio) that Jackson has turned into about 7 hours worth of footage (with a promised total of 18 hours to leak out eventually). We watched the 7 hours, spread out over three nights, and I have some notes.
- Lindsay-Hogg. He really is insufferable. From the horrible mid-Atlantic accent, to his constant hectoring the Beatles to finish the film by playing a gig in a Roman amphitheater in Libya (watched by candle-holding "Arabs") or even a children's hospital ("not too sick") or orphanage (!), to his insisting to Linda (then Eastman, later McCartney) that he was a bigger Beatles fan than she was, the general consensus is that the lads were saints not to have murdered him. As it was they constantly tried to get round him bugging their conversations, and he just as constantly tried to find ways to record their most private thoughts. And of course, his finished product, the original 90 minute film called Get Back was responsible for the long-held view that these sessions were complete misery and essentially the moment the Beatles fell apart. Not so, as the extended footage reveals. However, it must also be said that he got some damn good footage. And pretty much came up with the final idea of the concert on the roof.
- Yoko. She, of course, is supposed to have broken up the Beatles. The footage pretty much undermines that, as well. Nobody seems to mind her, and she's not the only hanger-on (a couple of Hare Krishna "friends" of George hang around for a while, creepy and silent, and Linda's daughter is far more intrusive on the day she comes in - albeit a lot cuter). But God, John and her are annoying. The couple that has to demonstrate to the world just how deeply and passionately they are in love. Plus, every time the band is just jamming, usually when one of their number is missing, she's on the mike just shrieking. I mean, once would've been enough, but it's lots of times. And it's horrible. But what do I know of performance art?
- George. As mentioned, George quits at the end of the first episode, which is the most stressful and ill-tempered one, mainly because it's in a huge drafty hangar in Twickenham that's owned by the film studio (where Ringo will start filming The Magic Christian - also featuring Peter Sellers, who visits briefly, amid a lot of awkward silence - the (absurd) reason why the Beatles have to rush to finish recording in under a month). It doesn't help that John seems stoned and is certainly unhelpful and quiet for this part of the documentary. It's here that we see outward bad blood between George and Paul, although I have to say that John has even less respect for George's contributions. George is famously sitting on a pile of great songs because the other two songwriters only ever allowed him a maximum of two songs per batch-of-14-that-typically-make-up-an-album. The ones we get to see here include "I Me Mine" (which comes with a charming little story about how he came up with it while watching the BBC the night before), "For You Blue," "Old Brown Shoe," and a few that would later show up on Abbey Road, including an early version of Something, with the lyric "she moves me like a pomegranate". Towards the end of the third part George essentially says that he's thinking of recording all the songs on his own album, even if he later comes back to the Beatles, to which John murmurs noncommittal noises. This, of course, was his massive triple album All Things Must Pass. If the Beatles have a family dynamic where Paul is the mother hen (bossy, but the only reason anything gets done), John is the Cool Dad, George is definitely the sulky teen. He's also the nattiest dressed (second is Ringo, with John and Paul lagging well behind), and he has a soft spot for Ringo. (Ringo comes in one morning and is tinkering with the piano and George says "I see you've learned A-minor," and then proceeds to help Ringo work out this new song "Octopus's Garden" he's messing around with. George also has to help John out on the guitar a fair amount, but despite that is apparently content to let John have the guitar solo on "Get Back".
- Paul. Paul is clearly sensitive about accusations that he's always bossing everybody around, but as he points out, since "Mr. Epstein" (bizarrely, nobody calls him Brian) died, they've lacked a parental figure to rebel against, and have been somewhat rudderless, but at the same time either has a really specific vision of how the song must go, and directs everybody else down to the minute detail, or throws his hands up and gives up on the song. But he's also responsible for the most transcendent scenes in the whole documentary: one where, while waiting for John to roll in (late as usual), he just strums away on a bass and in under a minute, "Get Back" just emerges (while George and Ringo sit listening and yawning), and another where some production designer is running the latest post-amphitheater/pre-rooftop plan for the show to end the sessions by John, while in the background you hear Paul noodling around on the piano and this time "Let it Be" starts to take shape. Paul also seems totally cool with Yoko, and is very sweet (as mentioned) with Linda's young daughter (whom he would later adopt). He also gets positively teary-eyed at one point when George is still "out" of the Beatles (famously he leaves and says "see you around the clubs" as he goes) and it looks like John may follow. "And then there were two," Paul says, with a definite wobbly lip.
- Allen Klein. THIS is the REAL reason the Beatles broke up, and we get to see it start to happen. We never see the man himself (an American who managed to take over (disastrously) the Rolling Stones' affairs and set his sights on the Beatles. John (who has been hanging out with the Stones) comes in one day and waxes lyrical about Klein. I mean, he almost literally sings his praises. "He knows us better than we know us!" he tells George. Ringo later calls him a con man, but follows it up with "it'll be nice to have one on our side for once". John is like a religious convert and is absolutely dead set on having Klein take over their money. Famously, however, Paul talks to his in-laws - the Eastmans, of inventers-of-Kodak fame, and they warn him off, which enrages John and ends up in Paul suing the rest of the Beatles to get their affairs out of Klein's clutches. One thing we do see is Glyn Johns, the recording engineer (and another clothes horse) who has worked on all the Stones' albums, apparently try gently to warn the Beatles off Klein. "He's weird, though, isn't he?" "One thing he does is that he'll ask you a question, and then if he doesn't like your answer, he'll just change the subject right in the middle of it. I didn't like that, to be honest."
- Clothes. As mentioned, George and Ringo are the true fashionistas, successively modeling swank suits and amazing shirts, along with (in George's case) some truly outrageous boots. John and George also seem to favor gigantic fur coats, but under that John seems to go for comfort, dressing more-or-less like a mime, in comfortable-looking form-fitting outfits that show off how scarily skinny he is. (They all are - George has no arse whatsoever - but John particularly so.) Paul likes knitwear in various bright colors, but also undershirt-waistcoat combinations that somebody (George Martin, I think) liken to a Victorian miner. He also has a fave pair of shoes that he wears the whole time with little mirrors in them. He's wearing them in the concert on the roof.
- Food and drink. It's sweet how English they are: endless cups of tea (John insists on the non-posh type, and is heard demanding "a whole pot this time"), and endless slices of toast, with (as per George's explicit request) marmalade. They also have wine and beer thrown in there throughout the day. And they break for lunch (and seem very keen to do so). So it's sort of remarkable they keep their figures. Perhaps the endless stream of "ciggies" have something to do with it. Just watching this documentary is enough to make your clothes smell.
- Billy Preston. He comes in once they move to the Savile Row studio, when they realize that they'll need a "man who just plays the piano" (as John puts it - or words to that effect) because they'll be playing the songs live for the first time in years, and not just recording their parts separately and stitching them together in the studio. He seems practically mute (and perpetually smiling), but they all love him and have known him since their Hamburg days, when they met him playing with Little Richard. He truly is a wizard on the keys and seems to improvise all the amazing keyboard parts you hear in the songs on the spur of the moment. Paul doesn't need to give him any directions.
- Mal Evans. He is their somewhat buffoonish dogsbody, with a very unfortunate pageboy haircut. (He's the one who has to get marmalade, or an anvil (for "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" - one of the many Abbey Road songs that they work on - but on the plus side, he gets to play it in the song). He plays very gamely but somewhat ineptly with Linda's daughter, and is always on hand to note down lyrics in his surprisingly pretty handwriting. He also shows his worth when he (along with the excellent receptionist) successfully stalls the (admittedly useless) coppers who come to shut down the concert after "at least 30 noise complaints in a few minutes" for what seems like an hour. He met a sad end in the 70s, after the Beatles split and his multiple-but-minor talents no longer had an outlet. They should've treated him better, but they do seem to regard him with a mixture of affection and contempt. He's not like "Shake" in A Hard Day's Night.
- Having their backs to the wall solves a lot. As Paul says, "we're always best with our backs to the wall," and as the days tick down to their deadline, they get more and more serious and workmanlike (although with multiple lapses into jams of their old tunes in new and silly versions) as the days pass. The bickering drops away and these songs we know so well all take shape in front of us. Even the day after the concert on the roof they meet one more time to nail down about 6 more songs to get in the can. Why didn't the album they were planning get released then and there? Why did only some of the songs they worked on get used on Abbey Road, and the rest left for Phil Spector to lard-up with strings after they had split up? This documentary doesn't tell us. But it's nice to see them all getting along, in a way the original documentary definitely didn't show. It leaves a good taste in the mouth, even if you know Alan Klein is lurking in the wings...
- The Telly. This was filmed for the TV, obviously (and there's a debate about whether it could be converted into a feature film - Paul doesn't think you can blow up 16mm film to a feature, but George says you can), but what's also rather charming is how much TV the Beatles watch. As mentioned, George gets the idea for I, Me, Mine from a TV programme, but John also mentions seeing Fleetwood Mac (the 1969 bluesy version) on the TV and is very impressed (they're better than Canned Heat in his view), and Tony Hancock gets a mention (it must have been a retrospective, because he committed suicide in 1968). Obviously the lads don't actually spend too much time "down the clubs" any more.
No comments:
Post a Comment