Beatles News

Yoko Ono didn’t break up the Beatles — so say some Beatles fans after watching a new documentary about the legendary band.

“Get Back,” a three-part documentary series directed by Peter Jackson and airing on Disney+, follows John, Paul, George and Ringo as they make their last album together, 1970’s Let It Be.
Many fans watching the documentary felt the footage shown in the series proves that Yoko Ono was not a meddling, corrosive influence on the Beatles, as she is often characterized, but rather more of a benign presence.

Source: etcanada.com

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JOHN LENNON held a meeting with Paul McCartney in 1969 where he spoke about what he didn't like about The Beatles and his regrets from the band's career.

The Beatles' latest documentary, Get Back, hit Disney Plus over the past week and showed off a new side to the Fab Four. Part two of the three-part series included a scene that showed John Lennon pulling Paul McCartney aside to air some grievances he had. They met at a cafeteria away from prying eyes - and cameras - to sort out their problems, and to discuss George Harrison's growing frustrations with the band's songwriting process.

Source: Callum Crumlish/express.co.uk

"The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present" by Paul McCartney (Liveright) is a massive, 960-page memoir and career overview by the Beatle, spanning 154 of his most important songs and the stories of their composition, as well as his life, partnerships, and the people who inspired him.

In the excerpt below, McCartney writes about his Old English sheepdog, Martha, which was an inspiration for his 1968 song "Martha My Dear," from The Beatles' "White Album."

Source: cbsnews.com

The Beatles‘ rooftop concert is one of the most famous concerts in the history of classic rock. During an interview, Paul McCartney revealed the concert was designed to anger a certain type of listener. Notably, The Beatles played “Don’t Let Me Down” during the concert. The song garnered a different reaction at the concert than it did on the pop charts.

The Beatles' Paul McCartney holding a guitar
The Guardian reports several businessmen were in the vicinity of The Beatles when they performed their rooftop concert. One of these businessmen said The Beatles’ concert disrupted his work. Paul compared this man to a character in A Hard Days’ Night who got upset at the Fab Four and commented that he fought in World War II for “your lot.” Ringo Starr retorted “I bet you’re sorry you won!”

Source: cheatsheet.com

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Paul McCartney sits in a chair, bass guitar propped on his knees, and plucks out a riff — nothing fancy, not yet, though he can tell he might be onto something. (His years in the world’s biggest rock band have sharpened his instincts.) Slowly — though not so slowly! — a vocal cadence begins to take shape, then a melody, then a lyric about getting back to where you once belonged. McCartney looks over at George Harrison, his band mate in the Beatles, who’s lounging across from him inside a cold London studio in January 1969, and lets his eyes sparkle ever so slightly: He’s just created “Get Back,” which will go on to become a rock classic still beloved by fans half a century later.

Source: Mikael Wood, Randall Roberts, Gustavo Arellano/latimes.com

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What exactly happened between George Harrison and the other Beatles that triggered him to quit the band? Peter Jackson's Get Back explores this.

Why did George Harrison leave The Beatles and how is this explored in the new Peter Jackson documentary series The Beatles: Get Back? The Disney+ series premiered on November 25, 2021, and it was a huge hit worldwide. Peter Jackson used old footage shot during the making of The Beatles' 1970 album, Let It Be. This was their last album, and it was recorded during the months leading to their definitive breakup. However, Jackson wanted to reuse the Beatles footage (originally shot by Michael Lindsay-Hogg for his film Let It Be) to create a more upbeat interpretation of The Beatles' last months.

Source: Marta Zabo/screenrant.com

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The Beatles took over the world in their heyday. It seemed as though everyone was obsessed with The Beatles, maybe even more so than John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. In one 1967 interview, George Harrison said the band, to him, was “just a hobby.”It didn’t take too long for Harrison to grow accustomed to the life of the rich and famous. And not too long after that, he grew tired of it. In early interviews, one could hear his excitement about his life, or read it on the page. But as time went on, he became jaded. When Harrison was interviewed by Melody Maker in 1967, he said the band hardly worked for their success anymore. Everything came easy.

Source:cheatsheet.com

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In light of the recent release of Peter Jackson’s new Disney+ docuseries, The Beatles: Get Back, we’re looking back at some of the great movies and documentaries that came before it highlighting the Fab Four.

Directed by Broadway veteran Julie Taymor (The Lion King), this 2007 rock musical fantasia employs 33 of the Beatles’ most indelible songs to take audiences on a magical mystery tour through the turbulent 1960s. Most of the cult favorite’s character names come from Beatles lyrics: Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), an upper-class suburban transplant in New York, falls into a star-crossed love affair with Jude (Jim Sturgess), a former Liverpool ship welder. Her brother Max (Joe Anderson) is a rebellious college student who is later drafted. The boundary-breaking film boasts a feast of ecstatic, hallucinatory music sequences, including an Uncle Sam poster coming to animated life, bleeding strawberries—and even Army recruits carrying the Statue of Liberty across a Vietnamese jungle in their underwear.

Source: Christopher Wallenberg/tvinsider.com

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They Shall Not Grow Old was the title Peter Jackson gave to the first documentary he made, and he could have named his latest exactly the same way. Instead it is called Get Back, and while the earlier film restored archive footage of the young British men who fought the first world war, this new one – nearly eight hours long and making its debut in three parts this weekend – does the same for the young British men who conquered the world by more peaceful means; four of them to be precise, known for ever as the Beatles.

Obsessives across the globe have had their anoraks zipped up in readiness for a while, eager to study the differences between the ninth and 13th take of Don’t Let Me Down, but the resonance of these films is not confined to muso aficionados alone. On the contrary, they have something to say to anyone interested in Britain and how it’s changed – and in the universal themes of friendship, creativity, regret, loss and time.

Source: Jonathan Freedland/theguardian.com

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Peter Jackson’s Beatles series Get Back is a feast for one particular kind of fan

Eight hours of restored, previously unseen archival footage gives obsessives a wealth of new revelations
Peter Jackson’s eight-hour Disney Plus docuseries The Beatles: Get Back, an extended behind-the-scenes accounting of the recording of Let It Be, features one particular scene that foreshadows The Beatles’ dissolution. It’s January 1969, and the group is desperately trying to flesh out their new song “Two of Us.” They’re under immense pressure. For this project, they’ve tasked themselves with writing and arranging 14 new songs to be recorded live, for a studio audience, in two weeks’ time. Cameras are there to capture their effort. They also capture John Lennon and Paul McCartney ganging up on poor George Harrison, squeezing out any sonic space for his guitar. Harrison quits the band, throwing the future of the inchoate album into jeopardy.

Source: Robert Daniels/polygon.com

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