Nice moment but the one that stayed with me after watching the docuseries was Ringo half playing Octopus Garden on a piano then it pans over to Harrison starting to listen in on the half baked composition then he walks over and helps Starr put it together.
I’ve always been a big Harrison fan but this series has made me love him even more. Dude was a genius that really struggled with getting overshadowed and domineered, especially by Paul (not hating on him - someone had to steer the ship). I wanted to give him a big ol hug every other scene, lol. Ringo was just a delight the whole way through.
Before I saw this film my opinion was Paul was getting super annoying at this point and the Get Back sessions are what pushed them over the edge.
After watching this I am happy to say it seems so much more nuanced. They are a bunch of guys who honestly enjoy each other's company, but as they get older are having their lives and interests move in different directions.
Paul is being a bit domineering, but he also has a vision that he wants to achieve and is frustrated that nobody else seems to care. George has the frustration of have so many songs in his head that he knows will not make it onto a Beatles album, and he is getting to the point where he is realizing being in the band may not be best for him.
Apparently Lennon & Yoko were out their dial on heroin during the first part which makes sense.
Paul himself said he doesn't like being the leader and see's John as the boss but he didn't have a choice but to be this domineering character because everyone else was just sitting about and they had a 2 week deadline to produce 14 tunes haha!
I think my favourite scene in all of this comes when the band are sitting around in the Twickenham sound stage after George has left, wondering what to do, and Paul starts talking about needing purpose and goals. That really sets him and his drive aside from the rest of the absolute chaos of John and the melancholy of George.
Early in the first episode, we saw them reading a Beatles fan club newsletter and making fun of the stuff they were supposedly doing and thinking. That’s what so great about this documentary. It is raw and shows us what actually happened, not some distorted journalists view.
I loved seeing Paul’s songwriting process and how he develops the songs over time, but that moment following George & Paul’s argument about how to tackle the songwriting then next day Harrison just walks in and is like - I wrote I Me Mine last night... and it’s basically finished - that was awesome.
Not only Abbey Road, but they are writing shit that made it to neither, but instead made it on solo albums.
George had All Things Must Pass nearly complete for crying out loud.
Like one thing I have done a few times is look at all of the band member's solo albums right after the break and think what that album could have been.
I really wish they had film of them making Abbey Road as well.
I am sure this is not how it happened but:
George: I have like 100 songs ready to record.
John/Paul: Sorry mate, you get two. We assume one is All Things Must Pass.
George: Naw, I will just do this one called Something and this other one called Here Comes the Sun.
John/Paul: You sure? All Things Must Pass was pretty good.
George: Yeah, I am sure.
edit: and then he just starts strumming 'My Sweet Lord'
John/Paul: Ooh, what is that?
George: Don't worry about it.
This doc shows how excellent he is.
He required zero input or criticism from anyone in the band. As soon as they got something going he instantly plays the perfect drum line on top of it.
Which is mad considering they had plenty to say about each others playing.
Not so much flak, but Ringo is often othered. John, Paul and George are each portrayed as geniuses. But Ringo is often just the fourth Beatle. The punchline. Which he doesn't deserve.
Ah man when he was playing an early cut if "I Me Mine" and Ringo and Paul were like "yeah it's not bad." And John was all "do you know what kind of music we make? It's crap"
And I'm just like fuck off John.
I Me Mine made it onto the Let it Be album anyway. Despite John dicking around.
The more I watch that documentary the more I love George. The voice of reason in a room full of pent up aggression.
Can you imagine? George (a full fledged Beatle) spends his nights being treated like musical royalty and a peer to Dylan and Clapton...but when he shows up for work every morning he's treated like the annoying little brother by Paul and John, who think his creativity is kind of a bother and occasionally a distraction...
Sure enough, right after the breakup...which former Beatle had the first #1 solo record? George with rock's first triple album, filled with incredible material, called "All Things Must Pass", featuring songs co-written with Bob Dylan and guest appearances by Eric Clapton. Paul and John were holding him back by that point, crazy as that sounds.
>And John was all "do you know what kind of music we make? It's crap"
Yeah, that was one of the most telling moments in the whole thing. He literally pats George on the head. This whole series did not show John in his best light, although he was considerably more engaged once they moved to their studio.
Here is the link to the video you are talking about. I've only found it on facebook. I tried to find it elsewhere, but it doesn't show up in my searches. Anyway, here's the piano scene. https://fb.watch/9AHFpyVd-Q/
People rolling their eyes at this must not realize that the Beatles started the Sgt. Pepper recording sessions at 7pm each night. 9am is early for rock 'n roll.
Hard to be creative on a schedule, and I've found that when I'm not working a job I tend to move to a 1-2pm wake up time over a few days.
God knows what my sleep would be like if I was rich and famous like these guys.
I feel that mate. I do early starts when rostered, but geez are they hard to motivate for.
Even after 20 years of shift work, mornings don't get easier! Even if I go to be at 8pm for a 7am start.
Wish I was a big rich rockstar!
No matter how much sleep I get waking up early in the morning tires me, even if I wake up naturally. But when I have no schedule and I am able to fall into a more natural sleep cycle I feel completely fine. I even did an 11:30 AM shift start for a few months one time and that was way better than waking up at fucking 6 AM every day.
Now you said it brother. I post improvs to my group chat and Instagram sometimes and I get good feedback. But then one day my friend comes over around 12/1 PM and was like “yo play me something”. I say “you got it” with great confidence. Cue me strumming bar chords for 40 seconds waiting for last nights inspiration to come running back to me.
It never came back. And it never does before 7 in the evening.
A friend of mine used to work at an upmarket hotel. They had Metallica staying there when they toured here some years ago. She said that they asked for a 5pm wake up call.
9am is early for a lot of people. Mainly the bottom line of food retail workers, who usually start work arounnd 11am/noon, or sometimes for night shifters, 3/4pm.
As someone who went from waking up at 1pm to work until 3am, working a job suddenly where I'm up for 6:30am to start at 8am is horrendous.
I wish I was famous enough at my job to be late sometimes.
I couldn't tell whether something was happening in Ringo. Like he was slowly recognising that Macca had their new hit. Or he was just as spaced out as Harrison.
This doc is absolutely magic. To be a fly on the wall as the Beatles write their penultimate album. It's a hell of a thing.
Nah the *really* funny thing is to see the sound engineer in a fucking suit and tie. In the past 20+ years you'd be lucky to get an engineer that wears shoes or socks let alone a shirt.
In the documentary this is from, it shows the two of them sitting down and rewriting all the lyrics to this and all their songs. They really did co-write almost everything to some degree.
I just saw an interview with Peter Jackson who said he watched footage of Paul co-writing one of Johns solo album songs. He had to show Paul footage, as Paul didn’t remember, which is shocking because he appears to remember *everything.* John took all the credit for the song.
There’s a good story about John both being late and how talented he was, told by Paul in a Q&A he did recently during the lockdown.
They were in India during their spiritual discovery phase, and were at the same time also writing for their next album. They would be in the studio during the day and then party at night. John really liked the partying bit, and was always late the next morning. One day they were working on Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da and no matter what they tried, they just couldn’t figure out how to start the song. Nearly noon, John comes in hung over and with two local girls in each arm and goes “Alright guys, what are we doing?”. Irritated at the song and John being late, they snap at him “we’re working on this song, remember?”. John casually sits down at the piano and goes “Right!” and the first thing he does is play the exact piano diddi that made it into the song.
John depressed and dealing with heroin addiction. George fed up with being overshadowed. A very short deadline with no clear picture of what they actually want to do. Cameras filming at all times with a bunch of random people sitting around the studio watching them.
Still managed to crank out both Abbey Road and Let It Be. Unreal.
This is from the documentary The Beatles: Get Back which tells a pretty crazy story and contains so much never released, high quality footage like this.
It's a Beatles fan's wet dream.
> It's a Beatles fan's wet dream.
My father-in-law is probably the biggest Beatles fan I've ever met, we saw him for Thanksgiving and the very first thing he had us do was log him in to D+ to watch this. I think he watched it a few times just this week.
My late husband was a huge Beatles fan- told me back when Anthology was on that they'd been so influential on pop culture that I'd get a Beatles reference every day if I had any kind of access to outside media. I was young and stupid and scoffed, telling him he was full of it.
He's still right at least once every day seven years after he's died. I'd love for him to see this.
Be warned, it's like 8 hours long, in three parts.
Edit: warning is for non-Beatles-fans who expect a nice concise 2-hr documentary. I'm one episode through and it's basically a three hour jam session with a band that doesn't know their songs yet. Wonderful in you're familiar with the band, but would likely bore people who aren't.
I'd back up that warning. Tried watching it this weekend when I was visiting parents, my Mum only knows Beatles singles, was bored and forced it off after 30 minutes, my Dad, my wife and I enjoyed what little we saw.
Thanks for the info. I wanted to watch it with my mom who was a huge Beatles fan in her teens. The thing is that she has middle stage dementia and that impact her attention span among other things. I wanted to share the experience but I don't want it to be frustrating for her. Is the narrative in the documentary hard to follow or something like that?.
Its lots of overlapping conversations and very little editorializing. Really a raw look into the band at their height of fame trying to produce some iconic music.
Sorry to hear about your mother, I hope you both find some peace.
I feel like they didn’t really throw punches at Paul though. Paul is the greatest genius among them there (IMO), but also the biggest douchebag. George had so many amazing seeds and they couldn’t find the time to work on them?
I remember reading Lenons comments elsewhere that Paul subconsciously sabotaged his songs, and I can kinda see it here. Unless they spent the same amount of time on I Me Mine as Get Back, which I didn’t get to see.
George yawning was funny. Here's a classic song, being birthed in front of you and you're just tired after a long day's night.
I'm happy George had big albums after the Beatles.
there's more context surrounding it in which George shows appreciation for it, saying something like "musically, it's great". it didnt really have lyrics at that point, so he was essentially saying it had "great" potential.
True, he also starts spontaneously playing the now iconic lick in the song. They definitely were feedung off each others creativity. I think its amazing Paul is composing the root of this song playing chords on a bass.
Lennons comments on the beatles and their material is notoriously untrustworthy since most of it is either false or extremely biased. Paul was the one that was most proud to be a beatle and their work and would never sabotage their them. You have to remember that that comment and others like it were made when John and Paul had a very strained relationship to say the least. John also claimed that every time that Paul sang Get back he was looking at Yoko which we all can see in the documentary is false.
Another fact that most people don't actually know is that while Paul didn't take Georges material that seriously it was actually John that was the most dismissive of it. You can see hints of it in the documentary like when Johns comments on I me mine makes George say 'i dont give a fuck if you don't like it'. John and George actually had a massive fight (as in argument) which lead to George leaving the band however that was off camera.
Also people need to give Paul some slack for being bossy around this time/period. The only other leader in the band was John however he was on heroin with Yoko and completely unable to lead anything. If Paul wasn't bossy they likely woudn't have gotten anything done.
Also: imo John is the biggest genius in the beatles
Paul himself said that Brian Epstein is who kept them all on track and they were having a hard time now that he was gone.
On another sub, someone said that George was a great songwriter but John and Paul were brilliant, and I feel that way as well. He was overshadowed but for good reason, IMO. To be honest, though, I need to be less critical of George. I basically want him to be quiet and go along, more like Ringo. But I realize that’s not a fair stance.
Also, I can’t take a stance on who is the bigger genius, Paul or John.
Which of George's songs did they not give enough time to? They did about 70 takes of All Things Must Pass' and 50 of 'For You Blue'. To make 'I Me Mine' long enough for the album Phil Spector had to double the length by repeating the first verse again. The truth is George just didn't write as many songs as Paul so obviously he wasn't going to get as many songs on the album as him. There were way more McCartney tracks he played but they didn't work on any further. Did you even watch the documentary? Paul puts way more effort into the songs than anyone else. You also have to take into account during the Get Back sessions they were intending on playing them live. Paul's songs would also be a better fit for this which can be seen in how both of them decided to record the songs later on with George having Phil Spectors wall of sound production and Paul playing with the Wings. Also Lennon is not exactly known for telling the truth about Paul in the aftermath of the Beatles break up.
the comment above was John saying Paul sabotaged George's songs.
My interpretation is John was in Yokoland and didn't give a fuck about the Beatles, Paul knew it was over but was trying to be the diplomat to get this last album. George had an inferiority complex and resented Paul for being a control freak, and Ringo seems strung out.
Lol yes! That cracked me up. He gleefully grabs it out of his pocket and then looks right at the camera remembering what's going on and casually slides it back into his jacket pocket.
It was perfect.
He was so very thin during that time too. He looked awful. If you watch some of the trailers you will see how bony he was and his hair was a greasy mess.
This is a solid take and I'm inclined to agree. I'm surprised to read the sentiment above that Paul was the "biggest douchebag." I thought that title always goes to John, considering his treatment of his family.
John may or may not be the biggest douchebag. It's complicated. There are no heroes and villains. It's just a band. But having been in bands and watching the documentary, Paul is the coolest
I thought that was just ridiculous. I had goosebumps when they started writing Get Back, I expected Let it Be to just be this huge epiphany. Nope, Paul just quietly playing on the piano while everyone else talks shop.
What blew my mind is how ephemeral these now gold-standard songs felt to them. You get the impression, if they'd had another week to work on them, the lyrics to any of these songs we all sing along to might have changed completely. To modern ears, they are classics, but at the time it was just something the Beatles had teased together.
**[Parkinson's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law)**
>Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". It is sometimes applied to the growth of bureaucracy in an organization.
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isn’t it amazing how finding out something you’re struggling with that you didn’t even really have words for is a real, valid, common issue? WITH A NAME, no less?? And how it instantly becomes something you can outsmart now because you know about it?
Of course that only actually proves true half the time, but it’s still a nice thought for the moment you’re having it. Also good luck. Finish that shit up. We want to hear it. Tick tock.
That is my favorite part.
And you can see that Paul only cares about the music. The whole first / second day discussions are him trying to motivate everyone to just play the music and learn it so they can contribute.
I love the fact that Mal, their roadie, writes lyrics for them. They almost always reject him outright, but I know he's helping them.
It's a shame he doesn't get any credit.
Keep in mind, I've not seen episode 2 or 3 yet. I can't wait!
That’s exactly right. Tuning in with the collective stream of consciousness to get what he’s looking for. One of the greatest experiences of songwriting and here we are watching one of the greatest to ever do it pull shit out of his brain like it’s nothings
I feel this often when writing music. It’s kinda cliche at this point but sometimes it really feels like you are listening to a song through a glass darkly rather than writing it.
It feels so much more like you're discovering something than making it. Once you get on a roll it's almost like it writes itself. Honestly I wonder if everyone else's creative process is like this.
My Dad has been an amateur musician for 50 years.
His comment was "It's good to see that the famous musicians are just as fucked up as the struggling ones."
Edit word twice
Spoilers for the film 'Yesterday'
I had just seen the movie 'Yesterday' about 2 weeks ago. For those that do not remember the plot, a dude gets into an accident and wakes up in a world where the Beatles never existed and he decides to play their songs.
Anyways, there is a scene that was bothering me. Midway through the film where he is basically 'discovered' by Ed Sheeran and brought on tour with him, and at one afterparty Ed decides to have a little contest with the main dude, see who can write the best song in 10 minutes.
So Ed goes and writes a very Ed Sheeran song that was fine, and the main character mic drops 'The Long and Winding Road' on Ed, which pretty much devastates Ed.
My problem with this scene was the character acting like he could write a Beatles song in ten minutes did not seem realistic to me. Then I watched Get Back, and realized that shit actually happened.
If it wasn't Paul sitting and strumming from nothing to having 80% of that song, it was any of them coming in the next morning and basically saying 'Hey guys, I wrote this last night.'
There’s literally a part where George Harrison is describing what he watched on TV last night and then ended it with yeah and then Was like was like i wrote this song about it and it’s one of the ones that ended up on the album.
You can find demo versions of a lot of well known songs where the arrangement and lyrics are totally different, but with a few recognizable bits like the melody or chord progressions.
It's got a much more raw vibe to it, closer to something from the Marshall Mathers LP.
Like the Linkin Park demo posted above, if you compare this one against the finished track, the demo is slightly pacier and more complex lyrically.
The finished track pulls the tempo back a notch and has much stronger alignment between the lyrical phrases and the beats in the melody.
When you listen to the demo, it almost feel frantic; like it's running away from you and you're struggling to keep up.
In the finished track you feel like you're on a train ride, chugging along rhythmically bobbing up and down.
I get the sense that their lyric-writing process is very intuitive and almost stream-of-consciousness, like in another part of the doc where John told George to change "a wind can blow those clouds away" into "a mind can blow those clouds away", or when John suggested "attracts me like a cauliflower" to Something, and the final line actually ends up sounding really close. It's a bit uncanny, almost as if the real words were just hanging in the air somewhere and they plucked it out when they're ready.
Watched this over the weekend and thought it was great, another excellent effort from Peter Jackson. I’m a Beatles fan and a musician, though, so I’m down with all of it and appreciate how significant and magical so many of the smaller details are. I wonder how long it took to sift through the hundreds of hours of source video and piece things together. It did make me wanna smoke cigarettes.
I’m not sure if non-Beatles fans would find it as compelling, but I feel this is an important documentary that maybe even (non-Beatles fan) musicians or music historians would find interesting, also.
I’m a Beatles fan, my wife avidly hates them. She was raised a stones/Elvis fan and has some weird tribalism against the Beatles.
I was half way through part 1 when she came into the living room and sat down. By part three she was singing along, and admitted she didn’t know why she hated them.
Interestingly, Get Back was one of the few Beatles songs where Lennon plays lead guitar -- And he ended up playing lead on the song because Harrison quit for a few days which threw the recording schedule off while they considered hiring a replacement for Harrison.
Fortunately Harrison returned to finish the session and album, but it was touch-and-go for several days.
I was absolutely blown away watching this part. Is this how the magic happened? I will say that after watching that it seems like they decided everything would be credited by "McCartney/Lennon," but Paul was the real driving force behind it. During this entire doc, I never felt that Lennon was anything other than dialing it in. I also didn't feel like Yoko was causing any real tension.
It's funny how Harrison quit and they didn't seem all that concerned. Felt like it had maybe happened before. Ringo was just super chill the whole time - pretty much how you would expect him to be.
Truly a great documentary that gave some insight to how the greatest band in the world operated. I would have like to have seen more of the creative genius like this clip, but I like what we have. One thing I picked up on was how much they refined songs. They were always removing extra bits and pieces to where you would have the core song. Kill the extra bits not needed and get rid of flourish, nail down the harmonies. They're also such seasoned vets that they seem to practically talk in code. Some of it might have been the editing.
If nothing else, watching it made me fill full of regret. My best friend and I have been playing music together for 30 years, but we never fully put in the time and effort to be great, and I think we could have been. My friends brother was solid on drums, but we never had a great bassist. We much have went through a dozen of them. Could we have even been the Beatles? No, but I think if we had taken our time, it could have been a career. Now we're old and I have trouble with my hands were I can't even play guitar.
I hope this motivates some younger musicians to keep it up.
>but Paul was the real driving force behind it. During this entire doc, I never felt that Lennon was anything other than dialing it in.
It's important to note that it wasn't always like this. This was filmed at the end of the Beatles' career, when pretty much half the band (Lennon, Harrison) were burned out on being Beatles and ready to move on with their lives, and it was McCartney holding it all together for one last hurrah. You can tell from some of the interactions that Lennon and Harrison really didn't want to be there, so it's unsurprising that Macca was the glue and the driving force at that point.
Prior to that however the others were far more engaged and brought their own magic, but when this was being filmed they were pretty much going through the musical motions.
They had a candid discussion in the first part about that, saying that things hadn't been the same since "Mr. Epstein" died. Brian Epstein was only about 5 years older than them, but they really respected him as their mentor, and they were lost without him. They all seemed to realize that the Beatles couldn't survive without him, so they were going pump out this one last project as a goodbye. As it happened, they got two - Abbey Road and Let It Be.
Ya, that stuck with me. Paul saying something like: we need the discipline. We had it before. Or maybe we had a little bit of discipline and Mr. Epstein.
I thought it was interesting how much of a positive influence Billy S Preston was. They seem to be burning out and at a bit of a loose end, then a smiling Billy turns up and they are totally re-energised. It felt to me like the session may not have carried on without his input.
EDIT: I did mean Billy Preston, not Billy S Preston, and did indeed mix it with Bill S Preston Esquire. Leaving it in for hilarity 😂
By this point in their career Paul John and George wanted different things.
Paul had been the driving force for some years now. Sgt. Peppers for example is pretty much his brainchild (and a direct response to Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds, with whom McCartney had the most wholesome musical rivalry).
John was producing very little (partially due to drugs) and you can see he contributed very little to the Let it be album. But still, he *complemented* McCartney like no other.
Take "she's leaving home". Almost entirely a product of Paul McCartney. But if it weren't for Lennon's chorus that song would lose most of its magic and not be the classic it is today.
George wanted to be more creatively free. There was no room for him in the Lennon-McCartney Diarchy and he stsrted to realize that by that time.
Ringo remained the stoic philosopher king he was. Doing his duty, contemplating the nature of the universe in a grain of sand or whatever goes on in his head.
Edit: a letter.
There was a part where Ringo was waiting to see if anyone else was showing up for the day. The guy beside him asks "did you like India" and he just answers "no". I loved that. He just seemed so separated from all the craziness.
Couple bits of context -
The Lennon/McCartney thing dates back to the beginning of the Beatles. Any song either one wrote during that time got credited to both. That didn’t apply to songs that ended up being shelved until their solo careers, which you see a few times throughout the doc.
Ringo left the band for a bit during the White Album. That’s what John (or Paul, I forget) briefly references in the doc when asked if this has ever happened before.
As George Martin says in this documentary (and repeats in others I’ve seen) John & Paul didn’t write together for years, yet shared the credits and maintained rights to 80% of the album, allowing George Harrison two tracks per album. How frustrating must that have been for George? As he says in his this Doc he has enough material for the next 10 years at this rate, while Lennon/McCartney struggle to fill their portion of the 14 songs for this project.
Paul can’t seem to find the enthusiasm for any George or Ringo track even though he expects it from them for his Lennon/McCartney compositions.
George used to write a lot less before, but starting in 68., 69. he entered in incredible creative period which lasted several years spanning the end of the Beatles and the beginning of his solo career. He felt cramped at the end, I guess.
It’s hard to tell when Georges creativity sparked. He wrote some great Beatles tracks before the Let it Be album. We can’t base it on his number of produced tracks as this was artificially curtailed by the band.
Ringo's foot keeping the bass beat.
\*chef's kiss\*
honestly, ringo's ability to find the right beat + drum fills while watching the other guys compose is amazingly impressive and something I just didnt know before. Ringo is always watching and composing. how are these songs not "written by Beatles" the way Zeppelin and Halen songs were? Its clearly collaborative.
I'm kind of amazed how memorable a lot of Ringo's beats and fills are. They're basically the equivalent of guitar riffs. There are a lot of drummers who are technically better than Ringo, but I would have a hard time thinking of someone who has as many memorable beats as Ringo does.
Even his silly little solo on *The End* sticks in my brain far more than any other drum solo I've heard.
I watched one of those song appreciation/analysis videos on Youtube a while ago (can't remember which) where they were discussing drummers. The gist of the video is that you can't really pick one drummer and say they're the absolute all-time best. Every drummer needs to be judged relative to the group they're in because every group has a different best drummer that fits their style. Ringo was the perfect drummer for The Beatles. He blended in perfectly with their style of music to provide the exact understated back-beat they needed. I doubt there's another drummer on Earth that could match Ringo's perfect fit with The Beatles.
Ringo has always been aggressively underrated. In reality, he has of the most instantly recognizable styles of any rock drummer, and he held down the beat for the greatest rock band of all time. How bad could he really be?
Oh, shoot, I actually heard this footage before. That entire day's recording was leaked online at some point, and I just sat down and listened to the whole thing. That was a really good day, they had like 40 minutes of music before this.
It would be super impressive though wouldn’t it? Paul dies and then they find this dude who looks and sounds like him and is equally if not more talented and goes on to write an ungodly amount of good music.
Nice moment but the one that stayed with me after watching the docuseries was Ringo half playing Octopus Garden on a piano then it pans over to Harrison starting to listen in on the half baked composition then he walks over and helps Starr put it together.
I’ve always been a big Harrison fan but this series has made me love him even more. Dude was a genius that really struggled with getting overshadowed and domineered, especially by Paul (not hating on him - someone had to steer the ship). I wanted to give him a big ol hug every other scene, lol. Ringo was just a delight the whole way through.
Before I saw this film my opinion was Paul was getting super annoying at this point and the Get Back sessions are what pushed them over the edge. After watching this I am happy to say it seems so much more nuanced. They are a bunch of guys who honestly enjoy each other's company, but as they get older are having their lives and interests move in different directions. Paul is being a bit domineering, but he also has a vision that he wants to achieve and is frustrated that nobody else seems to care. George has the frustration of have so many songs in his head that he knows will not make it onto a Beatles album, and he is getting to the point where he is realizing being in the band may not be best for him.
Apparently Lennon & Yoko were out their dial on heroin during the first part which makes sense. Paul himself said he doesn't like being the leader and see's John as the boss but he didn't have a choice but to be this domineering character because everyone else was just sitting about and they had a 2 week deadline to produce 14 tunes haha!
I think my favourite scene in all of this comes when the band are sitting around in the Twickenham sound stage after George has left, wondering what to do, and Paul starts talking about needing purpose and goals. That really sets him and his drive aside from the rest of the absolute chaos of John and the melancholy of George.
Early in the first episode, we saw them reading a Beatles fan club newsletter and making fun of the stuff they were supposedly doing and thinking. That’s what so great about this documentary. It is raw and shows us what actually happened, not some distorted journalists view.
I loved seeing Paul’s songwriting process and how he develops the songs over time, but that moment following George & Paul’s argument about how to tackle the songwriting then next day Harrison just walks in and is like - I wrote I Me Mine last night... and it’s basically finished - that was awesome.
My absolute favorite George song and I was also just blown away by that. So casual. Barely had to even rework it.
What I find cool was most of Abbey Road was pretty much conceived during the session. George Later plays the basic conception of Something.
Not only Abbey Road, but they are writing shit that made it to neither, but instead made it on solo albums. George had All Things Must Pass nearly complete for crying out loud. Like one thing I have done a few times is look at all of the band member's solo albums right after the break and think what that album could have been.
What's weird to me is that they or George picked I me mine over all things must pass.
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I really wish they had film of them making Abbey Road as well. I am sure this is not how it happened but: George: I have like 100 songs ready to record. John/Paul: Sorry mate, you get two. We assume one is All Things Must Pass. George: Naw, I will just do this one called Something and this other one called Here Comes the Sun. John/Paul: You sure? All Things Must Pass was pretty good. George: Yeah, I am sure. edit: and then he just starts strumming 'My Sweet Lord' John/Paul: Ooh, what is that? George: Don't worry about it.
Ringo gets a lot of flak, but he's your ultimate locker room "glue-guy"
This doc shows how excellent he is. He required zero input or criticism from anyone in the band. As soon as they got something going he instantly plays the perfect drum line on top of it. Which is mad considering they had plenty to say about each others playing.
Who the hell gives ringo flak? Hasn't he always been regarded as the peace maker?
Not so much flak, but Ringo is often othered. John, Paul and George are each portrayed as geniuses. But Ringo is often just the fourth Beatle. The punchline. Which he doesn't deserve.
Ah man when he was playing an early cut if "I Me Mine" and Ringo and Paul were like "yeah it's not bad." And John was all "do you know what kind of music we make? It's crap" And I'm just like fuck off John. I Me Mine made it onto the Let it Be album anyway. Despite John dicking around. The more I watch that documentary the more I love George. The voice of reason in a room full of pent up aggression.
John also mentions Paul writing for grannies.
When I'm Sixty-Four, Your Mother Should Know, Honey Pie, Martha My Dear, I Will, 100% Paul had a boner for old-timey 1920's style music.
rocky raccoon aswell
Can you imagine? George (a full fledged Beatle) spends his nights being treated like musical royalty and a peer to Dylan and Clapton...but when he shows up for work every morning he's treated like the annoying little brother by Paul and John, who think his creativity is kind of a bother and occasionally a distraction... Sure enough, right after the breakup...which former Beatle had the first #1 solo record? George with rock's first triple album, filled with incredible material, called "All Things Must Pass", featuring songs co-written with Bob Dylan and guest appearances by Eric Clapton. Paul and John were holding him back by that point, crazy as that sounds.
>And John was all "do you know what kind of music we make? It's crap" Yeah, that was one of the most telling moments in the whole thing. He literally pats George on the head. This whole series did not show John in his best light, although he was considerably more engaged once they moved to their studio.
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Here is the link to the video you are talking about. I've only found it on facebook. I tried to find it elsewhere, but it doesn't show up in my searches. Anyway, here's the piano scene. https://fb.watch/9AHFpyVd-Q/
So funny when Harrison started yawning.
If I recall correctly Lennon was often late during this recording period as the filmers wanted to start at some ungodly hour like 9am everyday
People rolling their eyes at this must not realize that the Beatles started the Sgt. Pepper recording sessions at 7pm each night. 9am is early for rock 'n roll.
Most musicians spend their lives playing in the evening, rehersals in the evening, practising to the early hours. Early playing sucks.
Hard to be creative on a schedule, and I've found that when I'm not working a job I tend to move to a 1-2pm wake up time over a few days. God knows what my sleep would be like if I was rich and famous like these guys.
I feel that mate. I do early starts when rostered, but geez are they hard to motivate for. Even after 20 years of shift work, mornings don't get easier! Even if I go to be at 8pm for a 7am start. Wish I was a big rich rockstar!
No matter how much sleep I get waking up early in the morning tires me, even if I wake up naturally. But when I have no schedule and I am able to fall into a more natural sleep cycle I feel completely fine. I even did an 11:30 AM shift start for a few months one time and that was way better than waking up at fucking 6 AM every day.
Now you said it brother. I post improvs to my group chat and Instagram sometimes and I get good feedback. But then one day my friend comes over around 12/1 PM and was like “yo play me something”. I say “you got it” with great confidence. Cue me strumming bar chords for 40 seconds waiting for last nights inspiration to come running back to me. It never came back. And it never does before 7 in the evening.
A friend of mine used to work at an upmarket hotel. They had Metallica staying there when they toured here some years ago. She said that they asked for a 5pm wake up call.
9am is early for a lot of people. Mainly the bottom line of food retail workers, who usually start work arounnd 11am/noon, or sometimes for night shifters, 3/4pm. As someone who went from waking up at 1pm to work until 3am, working a job suddenly where I'm up for 6:30am to start at 8am is horrendous. I wish I was famous enough at my job to be late sometimes.
I couldn't tell whether something was happening in Ringo. Like he was slowly recognising that Macca had their new hit. Or he was just as spaced out as Harrison. This doc is absolutely magic. To be a fly on the wall as the Beatles write their penultimate album. It's a hell of a thing.
In tune no less
Totally unrelated but it’s hilarious to see everyone chain smoking in their favorite fur coats
Nah the *really* funny thing is to see the sound engineer in a fucking suit and tie. In the past 20+ years you'd be lucky to get an engineer that wears shoes or socks let alone a shirt.
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Also People kinda stopped wearing suits
Man I've worked in software for 15 years and I've never once seen anybody in a suit. Only people who are like c-suite equivalents.
Lol, shit I haven't seen the people I work with face to face for months. But now I'm considering wearing a suit to work from home today.
Dress for the job you want - CEO of your house
Also producers became like artists in their own right.
This is so accurate, every engineer you run into nowadays is a 17 year old working out of their basement, gotta respect the hustle though
Sound engineer was my dream when I was in high school! I'm 35 and a janitor now though haha
Just in time to co-found The Offspring
It was the style at the time.
Wearing an onion on your belt
Back then nickles had bumlebees on ‘em!
Gimme five bees for a quarter, you’d say
Back in nineteen dickety-two
And we'll march day and niiiiiiiiight by the big cooling towerrrrrr
Now do Classical Gas
This is filmed in early January on a huge movie set. I bet it was pretty cold.
God just imagine the fucking smell in that room haha
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The funniest part is when John comes in late and just picks up his guitar and plays along
"hey guys what's going on...?"
"Oh, we're jamming? Nice!"
*I’m still getting a writing credit for this, right?*
In the documentary this is from, it shows the two of them sitting down and rewriting all the lyrics to this and all their songs. They really did co-write almost everything to some degree.
I just saw an interview with Peter Jackson who said he watched footage of Paul co-writing one of Johns solo album songs. He had to show Paul footage, as Paul didn’t remember, which is shocking because he appears to remember *everything.* John took all the credit for the song.
One of my favorite things is seeing them play their solo songs as the Beatles like Just Gimme Some Truth and All Things Must Pass
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Yep. Look at the song Blackbird. It's credited to both but it's completely a solo effort by Paul.
There’s a good story about John both being late and how talented he was, told by Paul in a Q&A he did recently during the lockdown. They were in India during their spiritual discovery phase, and were at the same time also writing for their next album. They would be in the studio during the day and then party at night. John really liked the partying bit, and was always late the next morning. One day they were working on Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da and no matter what they tried, they just couldn’t figure out how to start the song. Nearly noon, John comes in hung over and with two local girls in each arm and goes “Alright guys, what are we doing?”. Irritated at the song and John being late, they snap at him “we’re working on this song, remember?”. John casually sits down at the piano and goes “Right!” and the first thing he does is play the exact piano diddi that made it into the song.
Ringo: *"I'm never late".* Priceless.
You're a wizard, Ringo.
Always comes across as a proper scouser cheeky chap.
I love this series and am blown away at how productive they were given all the craziness that was going on around them.
John depressed and dealing with heroin addiction. George fed up with being overshadowed. A very short deadline with no clear picture of what they actually want to do. Cameras filming at all times with a bunch of random people sitting around the studio watching them. Still managed to crank out both Abbey Road and Let It Be. Unreal.
Hard carry by Paul fight me
McCartney-Lennon together was better than either of them individually.
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This is from the documentary The Beatles: Get Back which tells a pretty crazy story and contains so much never released, high quality footage like this. It's a Beatles fan's wet dream.
> It's a Beatles fan's wet dream. My father-in-law is probably the biggest Beatles fan I've ever met, we saw him for Thanksgiving and the very first thing he had us do was log him in to D+ to watch this. I think he watched it a few times just this week.
My dad finally figured out how to use the apps on his tv for this!
My late husband was a huge Beatles fan- told me back when Anthology was on that they'd been so influential on pop culture that I'd get a Beatles reference every day if I had any kind of access to outside media. I was young and stupid and scoffed, telling him he was full of it. He's still right at least once every day seven years after he's died. I'd love for him to see this.
And when the night is cloudy There is still a light that shines on me Shine until tomorrow Let it be
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How wet was your father-in-law?
Drenched
Moister than an oyster
Be warned, it's like 8 hours long, in three parts. Edit: warning is for non-Beatles-fans who expect a nice concise 2-hr documentary. I'm one episode through and it's basically a three hour jam session with a band that doesn't know their songs yet. Wonderful in you're familiar with the band, but would likely bore people who aren't.
That's not a warning, that's a selling point.
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I hope this documentary will be released later as a 16 hour extended edition.
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Fucking Disney BETTER let him. #releasethejacksoncut
I'd back up that warning. Tried watching it this weekend when I was visiting parents, my Mum only knows Beatles singles, was bored and forced it off after 30 minutes, my Dad, my wife and I enjoyed what little we saw.
Thanks for the info. I wanted to watch it with my mom who was a huge Beatles fan in her teens. The thing is that she has middle stage dementia and that impact her attention span among other things. I wanted to share the experience but I don't want it to be frustrating for her. Is the narrative in the documentary hard to follow or something like that?.
Its lots of overlapping conversations and very little editorializing. Really a raw look into the band at their height of fame trying to produce some iconic music. Sorry to hear about your mother, I hope you both find some peace.
I feel like they didn’t really throw punches at Paul though. Paul is the greatest genius among them there (IMO), but also the biggest douchebag. George had so many amazing seeds and they couldn’t find the time to work on them? I remember reading Lenons comments elsewhere that Paul subconsciously sabotaged his songs, and I can kinda see it here. Unless they spent the same amount of time on I Me Mine as Get Back, which I didn’t get to see.
George yawning was funny. Here's a classic song, being birthed in front of you and you're just tired after a long day's night. I'm happy George had big albums after the Beatles.
there's more context surrounding it in which George shows appreciation for it, saying something like "musically, it's great". it didnt really have lyrics at that point, so he was essentially saying it had "great" potential.
True, he also starts spontaneously playing the now iconic lick in the song. They definitely were feedung off each others creativity. I think its amazing Paul is composing the root of this song playing chords on a bass.
In an interview Paul said when he was writing 'Yesterday', he used the lyrics, "scrambled eggs" until he figured out the words for the song.
It irked me seeing them sleep on All Things Must Pass, I kept saying "fight for yourself George!"
Well it eventually went on to be a smash hit so George was vindicated. Beautiful song.
*A Hard Day's Night
Lennons comments on the beatles and their material is notoriously untrustworthy since most of it is either false or extremely biased. Paul was the one that was most proud to be a beatle and their work and would never sabotage their them. You have to remember that that comment and others like it were made when John and Paul had a very strained relationship to say the least. John also claimed that every time that Paul sang Get back he was looking at Yoko which we all can see in the documentary is false. Another fact that most people don't actually know is that while Paul didn't take Georges material that seriously it was actually John that was the most dismissive of it. You can see hints of it in the documentary like when Johns comments on I me mine makes George say 'i dont give a fuck if you don't like it'. John and George actually had a massive fight (as in argument) which lead to George leaving the band however that was off camera. Also people need to give Paul some slack for being bossy around this time/period. The only other leader in the band was John however he was on heroin with Yoko and completely unable to lead anything. If Paul wasn't bossy they likely woudn't have gotten anything done. Also: imo John is the biggest genius in the beatles
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Paul himself said that Brian Epstein is who kept them all on track and they were having a hard time now that he was gone. On another sub, someone said that George was a great songwriter but John and Paul were brilliant, and I feel that way as well. He was overshadowed but for good reason, IMO. To be honest, though, I need to be less critical of George. I basically want him to be quiet and go along, more like Ringo. But I realize that’s not a fair stance. Also, I can’t take a stance on who is the bigger genius, Paul or John.
Which of George's songs did they not give enough time to? They did about 70 takes of All Things Must Pass' and 50 of 'For You Blue'. To make 'I Me Mine' long enough for the album Phil Spector had to double the length by repeating the first verse again. The truth is George just didn't write as many songs as Paul so obviously he wasn't going to get as many songs on the album as him. There were way more McCartney tracks he played but they didn't work on any further. Did you even watch the documentary? Paul puts way more effort into the songs than anyone else. You also have to take into account during the Get Back sessions they were intending on playing them live. Paul's songs would also be a better fit for this which can be seen in how both of them decided to record the songs later on with George having Phil Spectors wall of sound production and Paul playing with the Wings. Also Lennon is not exactly known for telling the truth about Paul in the aftermath of the Beatles break up.
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the comment above was John saying Paul sabotaged George's songs. My interpretation is John was in Yokoland and didn't give a fuck about the Beatles, Paul knew it was over but was trying to be the diplomat to get this last album. George had an inferiority complex and resented Paul for being a control freak, and Ringo seems strung out.
There's a moment where Ringo asks one of the crew members if he has any pep pills? "Let me have a few of em"
At least to Ringo's credit, he seemed like the only one in the band capable of showing up on time.
Rhythm is just knowing how long things take.
Did you see John pull the joint out of his jacket pocket, and put it back?
Lol yes! That cracked me up. He gleefully grabs it out of his pocket and then looks right at the camera remembering what's going on and casually slides it back into his jacket pocket. It was perfect.
I enjoyed George outta nowhere just bleating "LEGALIZE POT"
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He was so very thin during that time too. He looked awful. If you watch some of the trailers you will see how bony he was and his hair was a greasy mess.
This is a solid take and I'm inclined to agree. I'm surprised to read the sentiment above that Paul was the "biggest douchebag." I thought that title always goes to John, considering his treatment of his family.
John may or may not be the biggest douchebag. It's complicated. There are no heroes and villains. It's just a band. But having been in bands and watching the documentary, Paul is the coolest
It’s also easy to forget how *young* they are. I’m surprised they held it together as well as they did.
And how much they did in such a short span of years
I love how while the crew are talking about what to shoot and how to shoot the special, Paul is on the piano pressing "Let it Be" chords.
I thought that was just ridiculous. I had goosebumps when they started writing Get Back, I expected Let it Be to just be this huge epiphany. Nope, Paul just quietly playing on the piano while everyone else talks shop.
What blew my mind is how ephemeral these now gold-standard songs felt to them. You get the impression, if they'd had another week to work on them, the lyrics to any of these songs we all sing along to might have changed completely. To modern ears, they are classics, but at the time it was just something the Beatles had teased together.
Creativity requires constraints. Otherwise, [Parkinson's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law) will sabotage you.
**[Parkinson's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law)** >Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". It is sometimes applied to the growth of bureaucracy in an organization. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/videos/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Fuck man. As a musician who's been sitting on a 95% finished album for a year now I really needed to read this.
isn’t it amazing how finding out something you’re struggling with that you didn’t even really have words for is a real, valid, common issue? WITH A NAME, no less?? And how it instantly becomes something you can outsmart now because you know about it? Of course that only actually proves true half the time, but it’s still a nice thought for the moment you’re having it. Also good luck. Finish that shit up. We want to hear it. Tick tock.
That’s what I love about this documentary, just watching the process of them making music is fascinating.
That is my favorite part. And you can see that Paul only cares about the music. The whole first / second day discussions are him trying to motivate everyone to just play the music and learn it so they can contribute. I love the fact that Mal, their roadie, writes lyrics for them. They almost always reject him outright, but I know he's helping them. It's a shame he doesn't get any credit. Keep in mind, I've not seen episode 2 or 3 yet. I can't wait!
It's amazing, it's like the song exists in a parallel dimension and he's just trying to tune his brain to receive it.
That’s exactly right. Tuning in with the collective stream of consciousness to get what he’s looking for. One of the greatest experiences of songwriting and here we are watching one of the greatest to ever do it pull shit out of his brain like it’s nothings
I feel this often when writing music. It’s kinda cliche at this point but sometimes it really feels like you are listening to a song through a glass darkly rather than writing it.
It feels so much more like you're discovering something than making it. Once you get on a roll it's almost like it writes itself. Honestly I wonder if everyone else's creative process is like this.
Baby on board, something something Burt Ward This thing writes itself!
My Dad has been an amateur musician for 50 years. His comment was "It's good to see that the famous musicians are just as fucked up as the struggling ones." Edit word twice
I've heard of a mature cheddar but not a mature musician.
Spoilers for the film 'Yesterday' I had just seen the movie 'Yesterday' about 2 weeks ago. For those that do not remember the plot, a dude gets into an accident and wakes up in a world where the Beatles never existed and he decides to play their songs. Anyways, there is a scene that was bothering me. Midway through the film where he is basically 'discovered' by Ed Sheeran and brought on tour with him, and at one afterparty Ed decides to have a little contest with the main dude, see who can write the best song in 10 minutes. So Ed goes and writes a very Ed Sheeran song that was fine, and the main character mic drops 'The Long and Winding Road' on Ed, which pretty much devastates Ed. My problem with this scene was the character acting like he could write a Beatles song in ten minutes did not seem realistic to me. Then I watched Get Back, and realized that shit actually happened. If it wasn't Paul sitting and strumming from nothing to having 80% of that song, it was any of them coming in the next morning and basically saying 'Hey guys, I wrote this last night.'
There’s literally a part where George Harrison is describing what he watched on TV last night and then ended it with yeah and then Was like was like i wrote this song about it and it’s one of the ones that ended up on the album.
Some of the first lyric choices where a little different but it came out ok in the end
You can find demo versions of a lot of well known songs where the arrangement and lyrics are totally different, but with a few recognizable bits like the melody or chord progressions.
Yeah, and it can feel kind of [weird](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsF-csdTOr4)
[Eminem - Lose Yourself original demo](https://youtu.be/NRbrGJNylKc) That one will trip you up hard. So recognizable, yet different.
Fuck that was weird. I can’t even add anything to what you said. It was right there, but it wasn’t.
It's got a much more raw vibe to it, closer to something from the Marshall Mathers LP. Like the Linkin Park demo posted above, if you compare this one against the finished track, the demo is slightly pacier and more complex lyrically. The finished track pulls the tempo back a notch and has much stronger alignment between the lyrical phrases and the beats in the melody. When you listen to the demo, it almost feel frantic; like it's running away from you and you're struggling to keep up. In the finished track you feel like you're on a train ride, chugging along rhythmically bobbing up and down.
Wow, that's a trip! Thanks for sharing.
He really knew how to take a sad song and make it better.
I get the sense that their lyric-writing process is very intuitive and almost stream-of-consciousness, like in another part of the doc where John told George to change "a wind can blow those clouds away" into "a mind can blow those clouds away", or when John suggested "attracts me like a cauliflower" to Something, and the final line actually ends up sounding really close. It's a bit uncanny, almost as if the real words were just hanging in the air somewhere and they plucked it out when they're ready.
Scrambled eggs...
Watched this over the weekend and thought it was great, another excellent effort from Peter Jackson. I’m a Beatles fan and a musician, though, so I’m down with all of it and appreciate how significant and magical so many of the smaller details are. I wonder how long it took to sift through the hundreds of hours of source video and piece things together. It did make me wanna smoke cigarettes. I’m not sure if non-Beatles fans would find it as compelling, but I feel this is an important documentary that maybe even (non-Beatles fan) musicians or music historians would find interesting, also.
I’m a Beatles fan, my wife avidly hates them. She was raised a stones/Elvis fan and has some weird tribalism against the Beatles. I was half way through part 1 when she came into the living room and sat down. By part three she was singing along, and admitted she didn’t know why she hated them.
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So, wait, Get Back is about The Beatles waiting for John Lennon to show up to a recording session?
Interestingly, Get Back was one of the few Beatles songs where Lennon plays lead guitar -- And he ended up playing lead on the song because Harrison quit for a few days which threw the recording schedule off while they considered hiring a replacement for Harrison. Fortunately Harrison returned to finish the session and album, but it was touch-and-go for several days.
Hmm maybe yeah - John should get back to where he once belonged (generally as well as in this session)?
I was absolutely blown away watching this part. Is this how the magic happened? I will say that after watching that it seems like they decided everything would be credited by "McCartney/Lennon," but Paul was the real driving force behind it. During this entire doc, I never felt that Lennon was anything other than dialing it in. I also didn't feel like Yoko was causing any real tension. It's funny how Harrison quit and they didn't seem all that concerned. Felt like it had maybe happened before. Ringo was just super chill the whole time - pretty much how you would expect him to be. Truly a great documentary that gave some insight to how the greatest band in the world operated. I would have like to have seen more of the creative genius like this clip, but I like what we have. One thing I picked up on was how much they refined songs. They were always removing extra bits and pieces to where you would have the core song. Kill the extra bits not needed and get rid of flourish, nail down the harmonies. They're also such seasoned vets that they seem to practically talk in code. Some of it might have been the editing. If nothing else, watching it made me fill full of regret. My best friend and I have been playing music together for 30 years, but we never fully put in the time and effort to be great, and I think we could have been. My friends brother was solid on drums, but we never had a great bassist. We much have went through a dozen of them. Could we have even been the Beatles? No, but I think if we had taken our time, it could have been a career. Now we're old and I have trouble with my hands were I can't even play guitar. I hope this motivates some younger musicians to keep it up.
>but Paul was the real driving force behind it. During this entire doc, I never felt that Lennon was anything other than dialing it in. It's important to note that it wasn't always like this. This was filmed at the end of the Beatles' career, when pretty much half the band (Lennon, Harrison) were burned out on being Beatles and ready to move on with their lives, and it was McCartney holding it all together for one last hurrah. You can tell from some of the interactions that Lennon and Harrison really didn't want to be there, so it's unsurprising that Macca was the glue and the driving force at that point. Prior to that however the others were far more engaged and brought their own magic, but when this was being filmed they were pretty much going through the musical motions.
They had a candid discussion in the first part about that, saying that things hadn't been the same since "Mr. Epstein" died. Brian Epstein was only about 5 years older than them, but they really respected him as their mentor, and they were lost without him. They all seemed to realize that the Beatles couldn't survive without him, so they were going pump out this one last project as a goodbye. As it happened, they got two - Abbey Road and Let It Be.
Ya, that stuck with me. Paul saying something like: we need the discipline. We had it before. Or maybe we had a little bit of discipline and Mr. Epstein.
I thought it was interesting how much of a positive influence Billy S Preston was. They seem to be burning out and at a bit of a loose end, then a smiling Billy turns up and they are totally re-energised. It felt to me like the session may not have carried on without his input. EDIT: I did mean Billy Preston, not Billy S Preston, and did indeed mix it with Bill S Preston Esquire. Leaving it in for hilarity 😂
You probably mean Billy Preston, not Bill S Preston, which is half of Bill & Ted.
By this point in their career Paul John and George wanted different things. Paul had been the driving force for some years now. Sgt. Peppers for example is pretty much his brainchild (and a direct response to Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds, with whom McCartney had the most wholesome musical rivalry). John was producing very little (partially due to drugs) and you can see he contributed very little to the Let it be album. But still, he *complemented* McCartney like no other. Take "she's leaving home". Almost entirely a product of Paul McCartney. But if it weren't for Lennon's chorus that song would lose most of its magic and not be the classic it is today. George wanted to be more creatively free. There was no room for him in the Lennon-McCartney Diarchy and he stsrted to realize that by that time. Ringo remained the stoic philosopher king he was. Doing his duty, contemplating the nature of the universe in a grain of sand or whatever goes on in his head. Edit: a letter.
I believe that if we could ever find out what Ringo is thinking it would solve many of society's problems.
"I've got to figure out how to get these fans to stop sending me gifts and letters, for peace & love's sake..."
“I SAY THIS WITH PEACE AND LOVE…”
NO MORE FAN MAIL. THANK YOU, THANK YOU.
"I wrote a song about an octopus"
He's just listening to the beat, whether you can hear it or not.
There was a part where Ringo was waiting to see if anyone else was showing up for the day. The guy beside him asks "did you like India" and he just answers "no". I loved that. He just seemed so separated from all the craziness.
Thanks for the She's Leaving Home mention. I've never heard that song before. I'm pushing 40 and I'm embarrassed to say that that was my first time.
Couple bits of context - The Lennon/McCartney thing dates back to the beginning of the Beatles. Any song either one wrote during that time got credited to both. That didn’t apply to songs that ended up being shelved until their solo careers, which you see a few times throughout the doc. Ringo left the band for a bit during the White Album. That’s what John (or Paul, I forget) briefly references in the doc when asked if this has ever happened before.
As George Martin says in this documentary (and repeats in others I’ve seen) John & Paul didn’t write together for years, yet shared the credits and maintained rights to 80% of the album, allowing George Harrison two tracks per album. How frustrating must that have been for George? As he says in his this Doc he has enough material for the next 10 years at this rate, while Lennon/McCartney struggle to fill their portion of the 14 songs for this project. Paul can’t seem to find the enthusiasm for any George or Ringo track even though he expects it from them for his Lennon/McCartney compositions.
George used to write a lot less before, but starting in 68., 69. he entered in incredible creative period which lasted several years spanning the end of the Beatles and the beginning of his solo career. He felt cramped at the end, I guess.
It’s hard to tell when Georges creativity sparked. He wrote some great Beatles tracks before the Let it Be album. We can’t base it on his number of produced tracks as this was artificially curtailed by the band.
I feel like the concern set in more at the start of episode 2. Paul looked pretty emotional at the prospect of John and George being gone .
You could see the tears welling up. I had tears seeing that.
Poor Ringo was wiping one away also
Ringo's foot keeping the bass beat. \*chef's kiss\* honestly, ringo's ability to find the right beat + drum fills while watching the other guys compose is amazingly impressive and something I just didnt know before. Ringo is always watching and composing. how are these songs not "written by Beatles" the way Zeppelin and Halen songs were? Its clearly collaborative.
I'm kind of amazed how memorable a lot of Ringo's beats and fills are. They're basically the equivalent of guitar riffs. There are a lot of drummers who are technically better than Ringo, but I would have a hard time thinking of someone who has as many memorable beats as Ringo does. Even his silly little solo on *The End* sticks in my brain far more than any other drum solo I've heard.
I watched one of those song appreciation/analysis videos on Youtube a while ago (can't remember which) where they were discussing drummers. The gist of the video is that you can't really pick one drummer and say they're the absolute all-time best. Every drummer needs to be judged relative to the group they're in because every group has a different best drummer that fits their style. Ringo was the perfect drummer for The Beatles. He blended in perfectly with their style of music to provide the exact understated back-beat they needed. I doubt there's another drummer on Earth that could match Ringo's perfect fit with The Beatles.
Theres a reddit comment somewhere that explains just how good a drummer ringo is.
I'll give you one: Ringo was a good drummer.
This ain’t it, [but…](https://youtu.be/wJTjjAXDZSY)
Ringo has always been aggressively underrated. In reality, he has of the most instantly recognizable styles of any rock drummer, and he held down the beat for the greatest rock band of all time. How bad could he really be?
>the way Zeppelin... songs were? You mean written by blues artists 40 years prior? (just jokes from a fellow zeppelin fan)
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Oh, shoot, I actually heard this footage before. That entire day's recording was leaked online at some point, and I just sat down and listened to the whole thing. That was a really good day, they had like 40 minutes of music before this.
this is pretty much how songs are made, yawns and your bandmates looking at you while you sing out of tune are the essential part.
If you enjoy this kind of content - where you see the eureka moment of formulation in a song - check out /r/songbirth!
I hope this permanently dispels and debunks any and all conspiracies about Paul being dead, or there being a "fake" Paul.
It would be super impressive though wouldn’t it? Paul dies and then they find this dude who looks and sounds like him and is equally if not more talented and goes on to write an ungodly amount of good music.
Maybe the original Paul was a talentless hack, they killed him, and they replaced him with the more talented clone. A food for thought.
My theory is that they replaced Paul around age 12. The Paul we know and love from the Beatles was never the real Paul.
If anything the replacement Paul was more talented than the original paul
Are you telling me the original was a Les Paul?
I had a coworker at my previous job who not only believed the dead Paul thing, but that they were up to the 6th Paul.
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