FEATURE:
Get Back to Where You Once Belonged…
The Beatles’ Get Back: The Long Wait Until August 2021
___________
THIS year has brought many a treat…
in the form of music books and compilations. In fact, I just published a feature regarding the great boxsets, remastered and reissued albums that are coming our way. It seems like, by the week, there is a new compilation or album being released that whets the appetite! One of the biggest treats of 2020 was going to be the release of the new Beatles documentary film, The Beatles: Get Back. It is a project that, because of COVID-19, has been delayed. There is an accompanying book that is coming out in August next year. Rolling Stone explain more:
“The Beatles: Get Back — Peter Jackson’s eagerly awaited documentary about the making of what came to be the Let It Be album and movie — has been pushed back to August 2021. To help soften the blow, the Beatles have announced the publication of a new companion book to the film.
To be published on August 31, 2021 — four days after the scheduled release of the movie — the 240-page hardcover book will include “hundreds of previously unpublished images” from the 1969 recording sessions that begat Let It Be. Some of the photos were taken from the film, while others were snapped by Linda McCartney and Ethan A. Russell. An entire section of the book will be devoted to images from the band’s famed rooftop concert during that period.
Credited to the Beatles, the Get Back book will also include freshly transcribed comments from the band, taken from the hundreds of hours of tape from those sessions. The comments, according to publisher Callaway Arts & Entertainment, will “reveal the truth behind the Let It Be sessions.”
Originally called Get Back — a nod to the band’s attempt at setting aside the experimentation of their later records in favor of a live-in-the-studio approach similar to that of their first recordings — Let It Be began as a series of filmed recording sessions over three weeks at Twickenham Film Studios. Later, work switched over to their new Apple Studios. Unhappy with the results at the time, the band shelved the project and instead went to work on Abbey Road. By the time the Let It Be movie and album were finally rolled out in May 1970, the Beatles were no more, and the tense atmosphere captured in moments of the original film became their epitaph.
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the original movie and album, Jackson was handed 55 hours of unseen footage from the sessions, which he approached with a degree of trepidation. “As a long-time Beatles fan, I really wasn’t looking forward to it,” he told Rolling Stone in the magazine’s recent cover story. “I thought, ‘If what we’ve seen is the stuff they allowed people to see, what are the other 55 hours going to be?’ I thought, ‘I should be excited, but I just dread what I’m about to see.’ ”
Originally scheduled for theatrical release this month, The Beatles: Get Back was postponed to next summer as a result of Covid-19. In what will likely be the next phase of the rollout, the Let It Be movie — long reviled by the Beatles — will also be reissued, but details have not yet been announced”.
It is a bit frustrating that a film that was due about now is being pushed back until next year. Although we are in a period where cinemas are open but might face closure, I do wonder whether the decision to push back the film was a mistake. We could all do with a boost right now, and it is fifty years since The Beatles’ Let It Be was released. Maybe it would have to be streamed on Netflix or another service, or it could be on Amazon Prime. Whilst it would not be the same as seeing the film on the big screen, millions of people would be interested, and there would be a way for the filmmakers to make enough profit, and I think more people would see the film from their homes than would otherwise have gone to the cinema. I suppose it is best to be cautious, but we have to wait another year to see a project that has been talked about for a very long time now!
PHOTO CREDIT: The Beatles
2020 is one of the first years for a while when we have not seen a Beatles album reissued, or some form of anniversary release. Looking into 2021, and we are getting a book to enjoy, but I also wonder whether delaying this or making people wait nearly a year is a bit hasty. I suppose you have to coordinate the book with the film, lest there be spoilers – can you have spoilers if it is a documentary?! -, but I think the book is not going to reveal too much that we didn’t already know. The biggest asset is the film, so the book would have been an appreciated starter so that Beatles fans could have something out in 2020, then we wouldn’t have to wait too long until the filmic companion to the book arrives! Things will be better next year, but there are no firm guarantees as to whether life will be properly back to normal by August; it makes me wonder whether there will be another delay and the film/book will be pushed back to later in 2021 or 2022. This year has been interesting and eventful, and whilst we have had some great music and stuff to digest, many are asking why we could not get the film and book now! Next year is the fifty-fifth anniversary of Revolver, so I would imagine there is going to be something released concerning that album, perhaps.
In any case, it is exciting that there is a book-and-film package arriving next year, so there is that to look forward to. One big reason why Beatles fans are looking ahead to The Beatles: Get Back, is that there has always been this perception that the band were at loggerheads during the recording of Let It Be, and it was a very tense and relentlessly grim time for them. There were times of tension and fatigue, but it seems like the film will at least reframe the perceived impression of the band around that time – it won’t erase the clear friction there was at times, but we get a clearer picture of a band who were still connected and having fun. The Rolling Stone article tells us more:
“In his introduction to the book, British playwright and novelist Hanif Kurdish echoes Jackson’s claims that, despite the legendary friction at the time of the sessions, “this was a productive time for them, when they created some of their best work. And it is here that we have the privilege of witnessing their early drafts, the mistakes, the drift and digressions, the boredom, the excitement, joyous jamming and sudden breakthroughs that led to the work we now know and admire”.
Over fifty years since the release of The Beatles’ final-released album, Let It Be, and there is still so much fascination around the icons! Maybe the album is not one of their best, but that period is really fascinating and there are many questions people will want answered. Were the band really on the verge of splitting, or did they want to continue? Are there going to be more laughs and moments of togetherness as opposed to fallout? Are there going to be some big secrets revealed that have been hidden until now? Although we have a long time to wait until the answers are revealed, by the time the book and film arrives, the demand will be…
VAST and incredibly intense.