In the past week or so, I’ve watched various movies and documentaries about famous people, comedians, dancers, singers and musicians from Eric Clapton, John Lennon, Jerry Lewis to Linda Ronstadt and John Belushi. I also learned about a songwriter, singer and dancer from Australia named Peter Allen. He was mentored by Judy Garland, married Liza Minelli and worked with Olivia Newton John and others.
Mostly the films showed the people’s early lives and how they evolved into becoming superstars and celebrities. Talent, persistence, luck and opportunities galore.
I was a big fan of LINDA RONSTADT back in the 1970’s and played her album Heart Like a Wheel over and over again and saw her in concert in LA. Her repertoire and voice was amazing. Now she cannot sing due to having Parkinson’s. But she sang everything from Rock to Gilbert and Sullivan, opera and country and western and Mexican mariachi band songs.
Some say the heart is just like a wheel…when it’s bended it cannot be mended…
When Will I Be Loved
She sang with Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton and Bonnie Raitt, did not know that.
You’re no good, you’re no good, baby you’re no good
from Greg Olear’s Get Back the film by Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings and a few other movies)… (have not seen the documentary yet myself)
(Note: I had an English penpal who told me about the Beatles when I was about 13. I did not know who they were at that time. She told me about the Ed Sullivan show so I watched it and became an instant Beatles fan. Paul was my favorite, the cute one. And the songs, I want to hold your hand and She loves you yeah yeah yeah, were great. Of course, I bought their first album and played it over and over and over again. And then throughout my teen years, I listened to all of their songs. I remember when Sergeant Peppers came out that summer was amazing. And the other albums. I also went to see their movies and sang those songs, Yellow Submarine, Hard Day’s Night, etc.
(When the Beatles broke up, it was awful. Did not know how we were going to survive without John, Paul, George and Ringo. And then they were off doing their own songs and John and Yoko doing their Peace-ins in bed. Paul and Linda and Wings. In the early 80’s when we found out that John had been killed was terrible. I was staying with a friend who was living in Santa Monica and into Swami Muktananda, an Indian guru. We had gone to see him and although I liked him, I could not imagine worshipping a person like she did. Anyway, we were crying, so sad about John. Made me think of the song, Abraham, Martin and John (Bobby and John Lennon). Anybody here see my old friend Abraham, can you tell me where he’s gone. He freed a lot of people but it seems the good they die young, I just looked around and he’s gone… John F. Kennedy, was murdered on my 14th birthday… so here is a tribute to all of them).
…John, Paul, George, and Ringo—a few months removed from almost breaking up during the recording of the White Album—are lured back together with a novel concept: at the end of January, the Beatles will do a live TV special, during which they will make a recording of the songs they will have written during that month. That recording will be issued as an album. Lindsay-Hogg will then release a documentary about the process.
When you stop and think about what such an ambitious project would entail—not only writing the new songs, but working through the arrangements, and then figuring out how to make a live show around them that doesn’t suck—it makes NaNoWriMo seem like a page of haiku. But these are the Beatles, and if anyone can pull this off, it’s the boys from Liverpool.
Spoiler alert: they don’t pull it off. Not in the way the producers want, at least. Lindsay-Hogg gets his footage, but with no clear story arc, he doesn’t know what to do with it. And so the film sits in cannisters for 50 years, until Peter Jackson, best known for making The Lord of the Rings trilogy, produces an even better film cycle of three long installments.
Get Back is expertly done. Jackson is obviously painstaking and detail-oriented when it comes to source material that fanatical fans will fight to the death over, and boy does he knock this out of the park. He resists the temptation to make it shorter, or more punchy. He limits explanations and digressions that pull us away from the goings-on. And it looks amazing. Lindsay-Hogg, too, nailed the assignment. How he managed to get all that footage, I have no idea—aside from the occasional mic hanging overhead, his crew is inobtrusive. But if he really is the son of Orson Welles, he does his father proud.
My first takeaway from Get Back is that I can’t believe this exists. Hours and hours of tape of Paul being a maestro, John being a goofball, George being resentful, and Ringo being chill.
…So many of the people in the film are now dead, including John and George, but here they are resurrected, returned to us. What a gift this is to behold!
…In Get Back, they are all younger, but I’m accustomed to seeing Paul at the piano, George at the guitar, Ringo behind the kit.
…Together, they operate like a machine—until George demands a trade, Paul is too bossy, John fools around too much, and Ringo starts to feel unappreciated.
After the White Album, the Beatles are a band in decline. For all its ballyhoo, Abbey Road is objectively not as good as Sgt. Pepper; even John Lennon thinks the second-side medley is meh. “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” are far and away the best tracks on the album—and both are George Harrison compositions. So in Get Back, what we are watching is a lion in winter. Only it doesn’t feel that way in the moment. They jam, they get some crap out of their system, and then, as Ringo and George literally yawn, we watch Paul McCartney give birth to “Get Back.”
From the reaction of the others, this magic seems to be a common occurrence. Paul bangs around a bit, and then, boom, something amazing pours out of him. (Remember: this is a guy who woke up one morning with the melody from “Yesterday” fully formed in his brain). The others know it when they see it, and as soon as they recognize what’s happening, they hop to. Ringo is often derided as lesser than, but he brings an intangible quality to the band that another, more John Bonham-y drummer would not have offered. He’s always present, always watching, always eager to help. It’s impossible to watch Get Back and not love Ringo. Yoko Ono and Linda Eastman love him, too.
…They were together as a foursome for ten years, and in that single decade produced the greatest song catalog in the history of popular music. That catalog is enough of a contribution to our culture, but this film is one last gift long lost in the pile of wrapping paper under the Christmas tree—when, in a bleak autumn of a pestilential year, we can all, for seven-and-a-half hours at least, get back to where we once belonged.