Feature / Music / Year End 2021
2021: A Year In Review

One early viral moment in the movie features Paul McCartney jamming on his bass while the band wait for John Lennon to show up. He's strumming away at the instrument while George Harrison and Ringo Starr watch, yawning. Almost by accident, though, he stumbles upon the A/D riff that makes up the core of Get Back. Seconds later he's singing a wordless melody which you'll recognise as the "Jojo was a man..." opening line. Within a couple of minutes, Ringo is drumming along on his knees and George is throwing in recognisable lead guitar lines. You've just witnessed the inception of an iconic piece of music history in the time it took to read this paragraph.

An early piece of drama centers on an awkward George/Paul conversation where Harrison whines "I'll play whatever you want me to play... or I won't play anything at all". A little later he stands up and announces he's leaving the group, his immortal parting words: "See you round the clubs". The rest of the band try to shrug it off by jamming a raucous blues/rock noisefest, but there are tears and reconciliations to come (don't miss the secretly-recorded conversation between John and Paul!).

George was nicknamed the Quiet Beatle but in the 8 or so hours of footage in "Get Back", Ringo speaks for approximately 12 seconds of them (and half of that time is him admitting he's just farted). Maybe when the cameras aren't rolling he's a constant chatterbox, but he comes across here as quietly charming, and the heartbeat of the group. He must be bored out of his mind at times watching the other three debate song structures and trade lyric ideas, but his backbeat is constant and flawless, even if he's not much of a soundbite guy.

The band's longtime sound engineer is at risk of stealing the show at almost every appearance – his incredible array of fur coats, sunglasses, scarves and just the sheer sense of style he oozes mean that he upstages the actual rock stars. But despite looking solely like a dedicated follower of fashion, he backs it up with his audio chops: the rooftop recordings that close the series feature on the album itself, and it's down to Glyn Johns' talents that he was able to make a ragged, windy rooftop set sound like a studio-quality recording.

These guys were at the height of their fame and seemingly unstoppable – but they still eat plates of toast like everyone else in the UK. It's also slightly bizarre seeing them complain about their equipment and ask to get hold of a better PA – it's the bloody Beatles, for Christ's sake! Though it's reassuring not to see them eating caviar washed down with Dom Perignon

The director of the original movie had some rock-and-roll pedigree: he'd worked with the Rolling Stones not long before this project, and had recorded promo videos for multiple Beatles tracks. But in this edit of the movie he comes across as a boorish, clueless toff: his tone-deaf suggestions that the band perform a set in a hospital, but "not for for the very sick, I mean, like kids with broken legs" sounds horrendous until he follows up with a suggestion they record in an orphanage. He also refuses to drop a frankly batshit idea about performing in Libya to "two thousand torch-lit Arabs" until the band make it bluntly clear that it's never going to happen. But credit to the guy: he managed to turn the chaos of this latter-day Beatles era into something compelling (with a little help from his friend Peter Jackson).

Even a Beatles nerd will eventually tire of the seemingly-endless footage of them rehearsing songs while singing in "funny" voices, or thrashing their way through an old Elvis tune for the hundredth time, with John gurning in a stoned haze. So it's a huge relief when musical prodigy Billy Preston pops in midway through episode 2 and instantly raises the calibre of the entire thing. As soon as he sits at the piano things take on a slightly slicker tone: a proper musician is in the room and he's making every track sound "right". The other musicians visibly respond to it and suddenly they're raising their own game to match his. It's no surprise they invited him to be the "Fifth Beatle" after this, and his playing on "Let It Be" really makes the album what it is. We salute you, Billy Preston!

Even Paul calls it out, imagining future critics saying "they broke up because Yoko sat on an amp". It's a sexist and racist trope to imply that Yoko Ono was the cause of the Beatles breakup, and watching "Get Back" illustrates what a great job the Beatles themselves were doing to irritate and neglect one another without Yoko needing to do anything. But all that aside, it's quite staggering to see her in this footage as a constant, silent presence (except when she gets on the mic for a primal scream session). She is almost *glued* to John and constantly offering him chewing gum or drinks or whispered feedback. Fan forums suggest that in the "real" footage from session bootlegs, she's constantly interjecting with ideas and suggestions to the band about the songs, but here she's mainly mute. What really stands out is her elevation: she's not sat in the background like the other Beatle girlfriends (or George's Hari Krishna monks) – she's an equal, sat on a chair so it looks like there are five Beatles on the sound stage. But far from this being an indicator of her impact on their breakup, it speaks to the love these four guys had for one another that they'd recognise how close John was to her, and how important he felt it to have her there.

Watching a series like this is endlessly fascinating when you know how it ends, whether it's the ultimate decision that gets made about the bridge in "I Me Mine", or the fate of the band after they decide to sign with Allen Klein. When Paul pops out for a meeting, John raises the prospect of Klein managing the group to the other two Beatles. Watching it today, we know that the schism this created (Paul favoured the management of, er, his girlfriend's dad) – so seeing the seeds of it onscreen is equal parts incredible and depressing. Worst of all is John trying to sell Klein to the others, when he turns to George—who he's known since the latter was a teenager—and says "he knows me as much as you do". Come on, John – you were supposed to be the cynical one.