Longtime fans and the new generation of music listeners have the incredible opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process of one of the world’s greatest bands, The Beatles. In a new film project, the band members will be seen and heard creating ideas for a new album. The footage promises to show each of the four members unfiltered, and as “they truly are”.
The footage has been locked in a vault since the late sixties (and its contents have only been used by one other filmmaker in 1970). Director Peter Jackson has edited 57 hours of exclusive footage into a three-part documentary series that shows the band having jam sessions and experimenting with the process of making new music.
“This is the Beatles as you’ve never seen them before. As human beings,” said Jackson, a prominent film director who is a big fan of the band.
It is interesting to note the timing of the footage. It was originally shot over 22 days in January 1969, only months before they decided not to move forward as a band anymore. There are many legendary stories about why the band decided to separate artistically, but the director of the film suggests that the comradery and respect that the bandmates had for each other in the footage would suggest other reasons why they may have disassembled as a band. Of course, Jackson did not give away the supposed answer to this question because he wants everyone to tune in and discover information about the band that viewers and music critics alike may have never seen or heard before.
As many of the theories suggest that the band members decided that they didn’t want to be around each other anymore, within the footage Jackson found that “these four guys who are friends, who have a deep respect for each other.”
“Instead of shouting at each other and blaming each other and kind of going crazy, they just knuckle down, be professional, have a sense of humor and get on with it. And they end up with the triumph of the rooftop,” Jackson added
The Beatles: Get Back, the three-part documentary series, will be available to stream on Disney Plus on Thursday (Nov. 25), Friday and Saturday.
The band members knew that their creative sessions were being recorded. They set out to develop 14 new songs for a new album and to make decisions regarding what songs they would like to play at a Jan. 30 concert on the rooftop of the Apple Corps headquarters in London. It was the band’s first live performance in three years, and it ended up being their last live performance together.
Some of the footage is also in an earlier documentary entitled Let It Be, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg; it released in the summer of 1970.
Jackson got to work with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the two living members of the band, getting their opinion about the editing of the footage. They both liked the direction the documentary takes and did not think it was necessary to change anything.
