How much Beatles is too much? Our experts gorge on the new docuseries ‘Get Back’
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 bandmate 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.
The scene in “The Beatles: Get Back,” director Peter Jackson’s nearly eight-hour docuseries, is just one of many that can make you feel like you’re in the room with McCartney, Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr as they write and record tunes that will end up on the group’s final two studio albums, “Abbey Road” and “Let It Be,” and rehearse for the famous rooftop concert that served as the Beatles’ last public performance.
Painstakingly assembled by the Oscar-winning “Lord of the Rings” auteur from dozens of hours of fly-on-the-wall footage originally shot by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg for his 1970 film “Let It Be,” “Get Back” — which just premiered in three parts
