Let It Be was also constrained by the amount that Lindsay-Hogg was able to include Yoko Ono in the documentary, since The Beatles management asked him to scale back the footage where she’s shown sitting beside Lennon. RELATED: 'The Beatles: Get Back': Disney Reportedly Wanted to Remove Swearing From the Documentary
Due to modern advances in sound-editing technology, Peter Jackson was able to include this conversation in Get Back, which helps paint a much clearer picture of the band’s dynamics during this fraught episode. It's hard to believe The Beatles would have let this recorded conversation make it into Let It Be, but on top of that, Michael Lindsay-Hogg said in a recent interview, "when I played back the audio, all I got was the clatter of cutlery and plates and voices". However, the documentarians were able to capture a meeting between John Lennon and Paul McCartney that happened in Twickenham’s commissary by placing a microphone in a flower pot, unbeknownst to Lennon and McCartney. One reason that director Michael Lindsay-Hogg was not able to include more of this saga in the original documentary is because when Let It Be was being assembled, The Beatles were in the midst of actually breaking up a year later, and since they were also the film’s producers, Lindsay-Hogg was under pressure to not show what he referred to as their "dirty laundry" onscreen.Īnother reason this saga was removed was logistical, as most of the drama surrounding Harrison’s departure happens off-screen. The biggest subtraction from Let It Be is that George Harrison’s departure from the band is not depicted or addressed in the earlier documentary, though it does include a famously exasperated exchange between Harrison and Paul McCartney where the two have a disagreement about how over-controlling McCartney is being. The Beatles then play triumphantly on the roof while unsuspecting Londoners are shown on the street below confused by what they’re hearing before the cops arrive to shut down the performance.īoth Let It Be and Get Back more or less show this same sequence of events unfolding, though Get Back’s far longer running time allows for a lot more nuance in how this notorious period in The Beatles’ history unfolded. Since they didn’t have enough time or money to coordinate their plans for a live performance at the Roundhouse in London or a Roman amphitheater in Libya, they came up with the idea of playing on the roof of the Apple building. After this, they reconvened to The Beatles’ Apple Records studios, which made for a better environment musically, especially when keyboardist Billy Preston was brought in to give the band’s sound a new dimension. This led to George Harrison quitting the band, though a meeting was held a few days later and the rest of the Beatles were able to convince Harrison to rejoin the group. However, as both documentaries show, this plan quickly starts to unravel, as Twickenham Studios, where the band was to write and rehearse these new songs, turned out to not be conducive to The Beatles’ endless creativity. Just like Get Back, Let It Be chronicles The Beatles writing and recording new music over the course of a tight three-week schedule in January 1969 before rehearsing and then performing their new songs for their first live performance in three years. First, because the film has been near impossible to see over the years due to a lack of release on home video or streaming, but also because Peter Jackson has made it clear that he didn’t make Get Back with the intent of erasing Let It Be from existence, and in fact, it may lead to the 1970 doc soon seeing the light of day. But despite the availability of the more comprehensive Get Back now, Let It Be still remains an alluring piece of Beatle history. One huge reason that Get Back is so illuminating is it doesn’t have any of the constraints which were placed on the original Let It Be film, which was released shortly after The Beatles broke up and had a more compact 80-minute runtime. While it’s completely understandable that more casual fans of The Beatles could find the documentary cumbersome, for more dedicated Beatlemaniacs (like yours truly), it’s a fascinating look into how this most legendary of rock groups operated. One of the most unexpected streaming surprises of 2021 (especially for Beatles fans) has been The Beatles: Get Back, the 8-hour docuseries that chronicles the sometimes fraught, sometimes inspiring making of the Let It Be documentary and album.