I’ll ask in this thread: anybody ever heard of George Martin learning guitar so he could write rock&roll songs? I probably read it in one of the GB vid comments. Sounds preposterous to me, but who knows? He was in a good position to market songs.
I actually have a copy. In good condition. Hmmm.
Awesome, Stephe96!
I wasn’t planning on watching this. I read a ton about the Beatles back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when I first started paying attention to popular music, and watched whatever was available at the time—there was a bunch of stuff on TV around 20 year anniversaries, in particular 1987 or so. There was also the biopic Backbeat (which to my delight included some full frontal female nudity).
And I listened to the Beatles’ albums and compilations until I was sick of them, after the original U.K. versions were re-releases in 1987-88. I listened to them so much around that time that I rarely ever choose to listen to Beatles songs any more because I can’t really experience a lot of it as music any more, oddly enough, except as cover versions. (There are still a handful of Beatles songs I would put on my favorite songs lists—Something, Here Comes the Sun, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Hey Bulldog.
I have the original albums on LP and CD, I have a couple of George Harrison and John Lennon albums. I have a lot of McCartney albums up to the early 1990s. I have seen Hard Day’s Night, Help, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, Let It Be, and Gove Mu Regards to Broad Street each once and The Rutles many times. I probably still have the various mix cassettes I made for myself.
So I figured I was full up on Beatles knowledge. But my little circle was watching the Peter Jackson documentary and chatting about it so I gave in and took a gander. I’ve been watching it in pieces and I’d say I’ve probably seen it twice through, except for the rooftop concert at the end, which I’ve watched only once.
So I have some thoughts:
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It is fascinating to me to think about how young they were: 25 to 28 years old. These were kids! But they seemed to goddamned experienced and skilled and pretty damn grown up with budding families.
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They really had been THE BEATLES as we think of them for a very short time. Ringo had joined in August 1962. “Love Me Do” hit No. 1 in the U.S. in 1964. By January 1969—five years later—they had released ten albums of enormous breadth.
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They worked hard, five days a week, eight hours a day in the studio, and they worked those songs to get them right. They each played multiple instruments well and they sang together very well.
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Paul gets too much guff for being a taskmaster. He was just trying to get the songs right. In that first episode George was being petulant and childish by reacting to Paul’s attempt to arrange a song. Paul pointed out very astutely that he was forced to be in the position to lead because no one else would. Seeing the end coming, he had his own projects going. The amount that Paul could work is just amazing.
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I can still understand how George got to that position. He had played third fiddle for many years and his skills as a songwriter were blooming. Also he was having major relationship issues. His marriage was about to blow up and he was about to start seeing Ringo’s wife.
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Billy Preston was amazing.
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Michael Lindsay-Hogg has a very strange accent. I really felt for him trying to pull something out of this train wreck. But he just was not in tune with what the Beatles wanted. His hidden cameras and microphones were amazing however.
Awesome observations, Acsenray, but this one particularly agree with. Billy provided a breath of fresh air when things were getting tense, and Billy’s professionalism and creativity provided a nice contrast. He was just 22 and so eager! I can see why John wanted to hire him on the spot. They should have showed him more on the rooftop concert.
Can’t really add much, other than I had never realised how very attractive and charismatic Linda was.
Yeah, the difference between the noodling they’re doing until Preston shows up and the way the songs take off after he gets there is astonishing. This should be called “BILLY PRESTON INVENTS THE BEATLES”
I enjoyed the documentary quite a bit, but one thing that definitely came across was how much John seemed to hate Let It Be, right from the get go. Paul wants to play it over and over and refine it, and John is rolling his eyes - he’s quite a dick about it the whole time (even during the recording sequence during the credits). And for me, who loves that song, I just can’t comprehend it: Let It Be has such a killer melody and chorus, I can’t understand why he loathed it so much; it’s not like they’ve played it to death on tour for 10 years or something.
And I’ll be the umpteenth person to note that Billy Preston was amazing. He seemed like such an incredible musician just to jump in and be so good at those songs so quickly, but also just a bouyant presence in the room.
I know someone else talked about this in the thread but …
Can you imagine being in London on other business so you decide to drop in and say hi to old friends from Hamburg and by the end of the day you’re a Beatle?
No. No, I can’t.
Robin Gibb when Barry asks him a question!
Innnteresting!
I think he thought it was Paul trying to do gospel; in later interviews, he’d compare it to “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” He liked Paul’s straightforward love ballads, but I think he heard something a little sanctimonious and preachy in “Let It Be.”
It WAS Paul doing gospel, but he did it well. The song was written with Aretha Franklin in mind. She initially hesitated to record it because of the “Mother Mary” lyric, but she did so a short time later after the Beatles version had been a big hit.
Today they announced that the planned Feb. 8 DVD and Blu-ray releases are postponed because they need to fix an “audio glitch”. Which implies that yes, they will be available outside of Disney+
A LITTLE !?!?
I love that song, but those two adjectives are wholly appropriate.
So, if I wanted to do that (I’m watching, inspired by this thread, and made it through half of Ep. 1, but would love to fast forward to When Stuff Happens), is that around the middle of Part 2? Beginning of 3?
I’ll quote myself from when I watched it the first time:
If you’re only halfway through Part 1, you absolutely must watch it through the end of that episode, which will make you want to watch at least the beginning of Part 2. The nuggets make the all of the first part of Part 2 worth watching, but if you’re pressed for time you may want to skip ahead 30 minutes or so after you watch the beginning.
Good advice. Thanks!
I felt some of it was a bit slow the first time I saw it, but I’m glad I saw all of it. I’ve since watched it again and really appreciated all of it again. I’m not the only one!