lystn

Which is your favorite Beatle(s’ documentary about making their last released album, one that ultimately documented simmering tensions that would lead to the band’s breakup within a year)? The Beatles originally planned on following up their White Album recording sessions by getting back to their roots, recording without studio trickery or overdubs, and film the proceedings from January/February 1969 for a TV special. It didn’t end up that way. The footage didn’t show until well after the band’s breakup, in 1970’s 80-minute Let It Be, directed Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Out of print for decades, a long-promised restoration plan for that film morphed into the recently released three-part Get Back, directed by Peter Jackson, and clocking at 468 minutes — but without ever releasing the original film. Beatle lovers Ted Haycraft and Aaron Smith are on this episode as we discuss:

- When the second volume Mark Lewisohn’s mammoth All These Years three-volume Beatle biography might see the light of day;
- misremembering all that Let It Be did not include of such a dramatic session;
- whether or not Jackson and WETA’s restoration work on the footage was overcooked;
- or did Let It Be just need a subtitle track?

Also:

- Why Get Back is such a treasure for completists even if it’s only played as background noise;
- how its Thanksgiving release relitigates all questions of the Beatles’ 50-year-old breakup;
- (should they have made more an effort to integrate Harrison’s eventual All Things Must Pass songs he offered?) (did Yoko Ono hang around way too close to Lennon during rehearsals?) (does she deserve to carry that weight she — still — gets from Beatles fans?);
- and where these films stand on all-time behind-the-scenes music docs.

Let It Be is not commercially available, though versions can be found online. The new three-part documentary Get Back, made from the same footage (restored and given VFX sweetener), is now streaming on Disney+.