I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

lied = liked, lol

boy Lennon is absolutely glassy eyed in a lot of this, what was he fucking with drug-wise at this point?

Heroin

ah makes sense

He wakes up considerably in the second episode. Maybe he was on junk afterward, but it's only noticeable in Episode 1.

As a lover of avant-garde free jazz/screaming therapy (having played on Sean/Yoko’s lp) this statement is shade free, but PJack KNOW he wrong for that Jim Halpert/The Office zoom reaction shot of 4 yr old Heather Eastman looking at Yoko screaming on the mic #TheBeatlesGetBack pic.twitter.com/oNrVjZP16l

— Certified ?uestover (@questlove) November 28, 2021

He seemed quite underweight. Michael Lindsay-Hogg had done the Paperback Writer/Rain videos back when Lennon was in a whole different place weight-wise, so I wonder what he thought about it

My god Heather was so cool

xp sorry working with phone here

heather ruled, and the way literally everyone from john to glyn to mal interacted with her was v heartwarming

i loved when she was playing drums with ringo

also combing pauls hair was <3

He seemed quite underweight. Michael Lindsay-Hogg had done the Paperback Writer/Rain videos back when Lennon was in a whole different place weight-wise, so I wonder what he thought about it

MLH had done The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus — which included John and Yoko’s band The Dirty Mac with violinist Ivry Gitlis, Keith Richards, Mitch Mitchell, and Eric Clapton — about two weeks before the Get Back sessions. So he was probably well aware of John’s state at that time. The Circus is also the reason John says, “And now, The Rolling Stones” about 50 times in episode 2 (MLH needed John to do a filmed intro to the Stones’ set).

I kinda feel bad for MLH never realizing his fantasy of Africa and the sea and candlelight and 2000 Arabs watching

Oh, did he mention that?

somehow what this discussion has all led to on my end is finally watching Let It Be. halfway through, really not quite what i expected after all these years --- on the surface, not really a downer documentary of a band on the skids who hate each other, just a kind of muddy, blah portrait of a band with no direction. and yet the more i think about the malfunctioning creative process on display, the more it DOES feel like some murky misunderstanding of The Mystery of Picasso. where that film is suffused with the joyful meditation that creative play can be, here Ringo is the only one who really seems to be capable of finding music-making to be untroubled, un-put-on, un-snarky *fun* for more than thirty seconds or so at a time. it is indeed pretty bleak if i let myself focus on that aspect!

i know it's churlish and misses the point entirely but i wish any of their previous eight albums had gotten this treatment instead of this one
― When Young Sheldon began to rap (forksclovetofu)

I'm not able to watch this yet, I will when I can. But I feel the same way, or at least would rather it were Rubber Soul/Revolver/Pepper/White Album. I have seen Let It Be, the short one.

SO WHAT ARE WE THINKING FOR THE CONCERT THEN

(10 minutes later)

I KNOW WE’RE ALL FAVORING LIBYA BUT WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS

(10 minutes later)

I MEAN WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT LIBYA REALLY IS PERFECT

I mean, give or take a few months, it could have been quite the show!

https://i.imgur.com/SP3Opja.png

lol

LMAO, good catch pplains

The tweets on this have been highly entertaining:

One of the craziest Beatles subplots is how they're the most successful band on earth, yet they're always under the gun. "We need to get this album done by Thursday." Or what? Label's gonna dump you & go all-in on Herman's Hermits? "We have 40 minutes to record these 27 songs."

— HarryHew (@harryhew) November 27, 2021

(and sort of related)

I think it was better when tv was free and music cost money

— Damon K (@dada_drummer) November 27, 2021

i definitely marvelled at the rarified air they were in: band has broken up, but the remaining lads show up for “filming” & sit around glumly, cameras continue “filming” said glumness, all on a stupidly MASSIVE soundstage and still/continually zero idea of what theyre doing or the end result

i mean i am glad to reap the benefits but logistically speaking it was all sheer madness

I'm telling you all, it's the newest trend. Everyone's buying ... sheet music.

turns out dick james was not unfairly caricatured in rocketman, he sounds remarkablysimilar lol

Gotta admit, I would've never recognized Dick James on sight had I never seen The Rutles.

https://i.imgur.com/XIct1wP.jpg

Jaws was later the subject of the eponymous blockbuster film directed by Steven Spielberg. In the film, Jaws dies, but he still keeps all the money.

That's an extremely specific number of Arabs, by the way

I mean, like, 1,543 Arabs isn't quite enough. I'm sure we can all agree on that. But 2,625 Arabs? Well, let's not go crazy.

the best part of this is how george states in plain english several times that he doesnt want to play on the roof, but when hes up there and the cops show up and mal switches off his amp, george angrily switches it back on because fuck cops

Ok, finished last night. Part Three with the full rooftop concert is something else. You get much more of a sense of the occasion with the build up and the whole set. And man they really played those songs great up there, which I'd kind of forgotten. Only downer to me is not getting the full takes of Two of Us, Let it Be and Long and winding Road that were filmed the next day; I like the fits and starts over the credits but it would be nice to see those takes get released with the cleaned up film (maybe blu ray)

yeah like i do not need the shots of the cops while they're playing. do it between numbers or whatever

just finished this and its all kind of a blur, i could be mistaken but aside from the rooftop concert, are there full start-to-finish takes of any songs? i have few real complaints about this, but top of my list is that for an 8-hour doc that never leaves the recording studio it seems like we hardly get to see them play any one given song for more than 30 seconds at a time (rooftop excepted, ofc)

I can't remember but I think there are a handful, but yeah, less than you'd expect. In a sense I think that is ok, mainly because this is a visual documentary of a process and not just a performance doc.

Yeah, the original film becomes more valuable just to have complete performances (especially for the quiet studio numbers that you mentioned - two of them are on the 1+ Blu-ray set, but "Two of Us" isn't).

For anyone wanting a postscript to the film, here’s a Radio 1 special made to promote the film’s release in 1970: https://www.mixcloud.com/charliemouse/beatles-let-it-be-radio-1-special-23-may-1970/

That 1+ blu ray never got the attention it deserved, that's basically a very good compilation of all existing beatles videos which I still see people asking for not realizing it already exists. I think all or most of them are also on apple music.

Yeah, it's pretty great. The only down side is that the films/videos for their records feature brand-new mixes - I wish they included alternate tracks with the original/vintage mono and stereo mixes, but at least they're available on record, just not paired with the newly-restored films.

Come to think of it, they ought to upgrade the Anthology - now that all the archival clips have been restored, they just have to do the same with the interviews, or at least re-scan them in HD or 4K. Luckily they were filmed on actual film rather than videotape - Scorsese's Harrison doc pulled a lot of its Harrison interviews from that stash (not the same sections but from the same reels of negative) and the HD transfers there look excellent.

can't wait to see Paul's camping trip and boat expedition restored to their full glory and detail!

The boat expedition is the best part - I just wish it had a better ending than Brando's ramblings.

I remember my high school Beatle buddy and I imagining an alternate ending where he crashes into a pier mid-monologue.

Just watched The Compleat Beatles again (for the first time in over 30 years) and I was struck by how little those filmmakers had to work with visually. “Tomorrow Never Knows”? OK, here’s the Revolver cover…spinning. “Mr. Kite”? Here’s a shot of a VU meter! One thing I always wondered about, though, was how their recollection of the Maharishi changed. In Compleat, there’s news conference footage from ‘68 of John and Paul both saying they’d made a mistake in following him; in Anthology, Paul says how great the whole experience was, and how he really got into meditation, and there’s nary a negative word. So was the Maharishi the fraud John wrote “Sexy Sadie” about or not?

He liked the Indian food cuz it was veggie.

i was trying to make the point that last dance had the benefit of contemporary recollections of these legendary moments that both contextualised and enriched what you're seeing as well as giving the filmmakers something to work with in terms of a story, and i would have loved that here. i mean it is what it is, but i would have liked a higher ambition from the filmmakers

completely disagree, the filmmakers could have been even more hands off afaic, just give me the raw footage.

their level of fame and the ubiqity of their songs make this a very different kind of film than it would be if it were any other band. i mean whether you're a megafan and know all the chronology or you just know 'let it be' and 'get back' as pop standards, this stuff needs no introduction. i don't think the beatles are even the subject of the film really, the main thing it's about is how the footage affords unfettered, direct access to watch history being made and the experience of what it feels like to be able to tune in and out (by most accounts, it's not always thrilling or even engaging).

this format also very successfully (imo) sets up comparisons between legend/myth and history/reality (of the moment, and probably also by extension in general) that wouldn't really work if you had talking heads forcing a particular reading down your throat.

have you seen either series?

"unfettered, direct access to watch history being made" come come now - this is not, and never has been on offer

look i think it's cool they tried this way, it's fine, it's a choice, and it's clear some people love it, but the editing contortions are too much for me, and i am not nearly enough of a fan to sit through it all. ultimately i don't think they had the visual footage to justify this treatment. just make it shorter. and good for you that you don't need any context but i do, and i missed it. HOWEVER this thread has provided a good 'second screen' experience lol so job done i guess?

^^ he's got a feeling

still thinking about it all

the hidden microphone/flowerpot convo was another highlight for me, maybe just bc it’s a little bit of verite, away from the cameras

Just started this. I like it, it's also nice just to have on in the background. But there are some weird ass sloppy editing choices being made. And even just one hour into it I can tell it would be better shorter. Probably would be better as, well, like the Lewisohn book, with different editions. Like, here's the long movie, but here's a version that's twice as long, if you want it.

It's amazing that a band this kind of aimless and burnt out, as depicted in this, could immediately turn around and make Abbey Road. The whole artificial, distracting context of these sessions, from the hare krishna to Yoko to the cameras and the soundstage to the rushed deadlines, they're just needlessly kneecapping themselves.

What no one's discussed enough: George Martin's virtual absence. It's no accident that, besides the band's relief it was all about to end, Abbey Road emerged so polished and coherent because he produced them for the first time since 1967.