The Beatles: Get Back really was a labour of Love, Love, Love

The lack of ego and sheer 'ordinariness' of The Beatles in Peter Jackson's extraordinary series will warm your heart

A still from The Beatles: Get Back.

Let it Be was a divisive project. The original concept was that The Beatles would set up in Twickenham Film studios in January 1969 to write and record a new set of songs. Cameras would film their every move until after only three weeks they would perform these as a live TV concert.

It was, even for them, a ridiculously ambitious plan. As the days wore on it became apparent it wasn’t going to happen. Tensions mounted and eventually the band opted for the famous rooftop performance instead.

Chastened, perhaps, by this experience the Beatles took a break before reconvening back in Abbey Road Studios, to record one more masterpiece. With George Martin back at the helm, normal service was resumed. Abbey Road is many people’s favourite Beatles album.

It was only at this point that it all unravelled. Wildly different views of how their business concerns should be managed, the intrusion of new relationships and differing artist visions became their undoing. John, in particular, wanted out.

This is where Let it Be entered Beatles folklore. The film of those early January recording sessions hit cinemas in 1970 just as news broke of their demise. It was slammed by critics and unloved by fans but it was impossible to look at its images of the Beatles bickering and not conclude, wrongly, that this is why they split.

This may explain why the footage has remained untouched ever since, like the wedding album of a failed marriage. Who would honestly want to revisit all that?

Even Peter Jackson was initially reluctant. He was fearful he would make a “miserable film” and insisted that before he could commit he had to see all 57 hours. He need not have worried. What he discovered on film is wonderful.

Jackson was flabbergasted first by the sheer extent of the recordings. There is nothing else like this in recorded music. One of the greatest bands of all time, captured ‘at work’, writing and recording, face to face, recorded on film and exhaustively on audio tape.

Paul McCartney and his daughter Mary McCartney at a recent screening of The Beatles: Get Back at Cineworld Leicester Square in London.

Jackson has fun with the audio. Knowing that they were being recorded the Beatles learned to disguise personal conversations by making loud guitar noises, like spies in a movie. Sadly, for them algorithms that Jackson developed for his WW1 project proved adept at removing these guitars. Now every word spoken is present.

He talks about being most struck by the sheer ordinariness of The Beatles as people. There are no airs or graces, no prima donnas. They are decent and normal. They smoke competitively, swear often and laugh a lot. Over the 57 hours, Jackson says his abiding impression of them is simply as, “four good lads.” But four lads with exceptional gifts. And this is where the real magic of all this comes into play. You get to see ideas for songs pulled from the ether, songs starting off as just a phrase or a riff and being developed in that little Beatles world, through playing and ribbing and gentle suggestion, into some of the greatest songs of the 20th century.

The sheer number is jaw-dropping. Every day new songs are brought in. Apart from the Let it Be songs, there are 12 more that will make it onto Abbey Road, and eight that will become solo works including All Things Must Pass for Harrison and Another Day for McCartney. It is dizzying.

Jackson makes reference also to how shambolic it all is. Previously the band would have been organised by Epstein outside the studio and by George Martin within it. Here Epstein is gone and Martin rarely present. Chaos reigns, with amps, mics and equipment rarely where they need to be when they are most needed.

There is a ‘running battle’ but it is directed very much towards Michael Lindsey Hogg, the director who was tasked with filming all this. His remit, naturally, created tension, as did the onerous timetable, but amazingly only once does anyone - Paul McCartney – ask for the cameras to be stopped to facilitate a private conversation.

As someone who has written songs I was personally very struck by both the apparent lack of ego and the total value the four Beatles place in each other’s opinions. Paul introduces the song Let it Be for the first time and is genuinely seeking feedback from the others. He thinks it plods a bit. John disagrees.

It is this interplay that will lift the hearts of Beatles fans the world over. The light in John’s eyes as he jokes and plays bits to Paul. The utter lack of defensiveness. The joy of four men, John and Ringo then both 28, Paul just 26 and George, the baby, still only 25, making music , having fun and being themselves.

Jackson's initial edit ran to 18 hours before he somehow overcame his Lord of the Rings tendencies and got it down to six. When this was passed to all the various estates for their feedback he was astonished to receive no ‘notes'. ‘Notes’ is the industry term for suggested changes. He expected to be inundated. To receive no suggestions for changes has never happened to him before.

McCartney did say “It’s very raw, isn’t it?” In the intervening years even Paul had bought into the myth that this had been a dreadfully unhappy time. In reality it was what came next that was unhappy. The break-up and desolation. Making his way solo in the world, without the friends who had been with him, since school, on that amazing adventure.

This is, perhaps, almost the best bit of it all, that sense that something that was egregiously wrong is at last being corrected. That it gave McCartney, at this point in his life almost as big a fan of the Beatles as the rest of us, a chance to see that chemistry come alive again and think, yes, “That was the Beatles, that was us”, is priceless.

• The Beatles: Get Back launches on Disney+ on Thursday, November 25

 Peter Jackson was the right man for the job 

Peter Jackson.

So how did Peter Jackson get the gig? Why did he deserve the keys to this Beatles treasure trove: 57 hours of film and 150 hours of audio, untouched for half a century?

His CV helped: Lord of the Rings; The Return of the King, won 11 Oscars. His restoration of WW1 footage, They Shall Not Grow Old, made those soldiers seem to live and breathe. His King Kong remake, co-written, produced and directed by him, was the 5th biggest grossing film of 2005.

However, I suspect that his most essential qualification is the fact that he is, quite simply, a Beatles fanatic. The first two albums he ever bought, aged 12 in 1973, were their famous red and blue hits compilations. It was the beginning of a lifelong obsession.

Hence he approached this Aladdin’s cave with just the right sense of awe, respect, gratitude and wonder. Those qualities, combined with a passion for editing, a vast experience in film restoration and a working knowledge of all things epic make for a heady brew.

And epic this certainly was. It took 14 people four years to restore the grainy 16mm film to the vibrant hues we see here. A labour, then, of Love, Love, Love.