Peter Jackson in Wellington, New Zealand, 2013.
Photo: Getty Images, Hagen Hopkins. All rights reserved.
Peter Jackson said he almost certainly “would have freaked out” if he had directed Let It Be. The Beatles documentary was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg in 1969 and released a year later. In 2019, Jackson got the chance to see more than fifty hours of footage from back then. He then decided to re-edit it. Many of the recordings from that time had not previously been accessible to the public. The result was The Beatles: Get Back, an eight-hour ode to the making of the Let It Be album.
The Beatles: Get Back follows the former mushroom heads during the two-week songwriting and rehearsal sessions for their latest album, Let It Be, and captures the Fab Four’s friendship as well as their inner tensions and conflicts. The documentary concludes with the legendary Beatles Rooftop Concert.
“It seemed like Lindsay-Hogg was constantly tending a bag of fleas.”
Jackson describes the viewing of the footage from that time as “incredible”. However, he would not have liked to have been the director of that film, as he was in one Q&A says: “It seemed like Lindsay-Hogg had to constantly tend a bag of fleas and I thought so many times I would have freaked out.” Adds the filmmaker, “I mean, as much as I love The Beatles, I sure would have gotten loud and angry more often because they drove me crazy.”
Still, Jackson particularly enjoyed watching Lindsay-Hogg work: “Some of my favorite parts of the outtakes were the ones with Michael [Lindsay-Hogg]because I don’t play in a band myself – I love the Beatles and I enjoy watching them – but in the end Michael was the one I identified with the most”.
“But is it really interesting to watch the Beatles for almost eight hours rehearsing through half-finished songs, eating canapés, drinking tea, avoiding conflict, cracking jokes and letting chance or first instinct drift?” , asks ROLLING STONE editor Maik Brüggemeyer in his review. “Definitely! […] ‘Get Back’ is an extremely entertaining chamber play about art and control, friendship and betrayal.”