Get Back
I must say, I absolutely love the Beatles. The group has produced so many of my all-time favorite recordings. The lingering lore still informs bands around the world to this day, and in a sense every band hopes to get good and tight as the Beatles did when touring in Germany during the start of their career and settle into month long sessions where songs are created in the studio.
In 2001 after I finished high school, I was so bored I applied for a Fort Worth Library Card. The world wide web wasn’t really what it is today and you could still use a card catalogue to find the subjects you wanted to learn about. The Fort Worth library always reminded me of the Clock Tower from Back to the Future. I’m still blown away at the beauty and selection the FW Library has to offer, and if you can’t find it at the central location in downtown, there are branches all over the city and you can even get books and recordings from other cities and states through the inter-library loan system. This was basically my introduction to a google-type service, although to google something didn’t start until Yahoo did away with using Google’s service around 2004. My first day at the library I checked out Revolver and Rubber Soul, and by the end of that year, I’d listened to every Beatles recording the FW Library had to offer. I’d ride around going to my waiting tables jobs with my floor boards littered with plastic Library albums. I’d listen straight through to each album and sing along.
Back then I couldn’t really hear individual instruments or even the distinct harmonies or voices. The music just came out of the speakers and into my mind. When a few of the waiters started bringing their instruments to the late-night parties, Colin told me I should sing harmony. I had no idea waht a harmony was, and he said, “You like the Beatles, don’t you? Well, go and try to mimic just one of their voices as you sing along and switch between them. That will teach you.”
I learned most of what I knew about music from the years 2001-2014 from listening to Beatles recordings. Most of the first monies I made while busking came from covering Beatles tunes at farmer’s markets and street side cafes. As you can probably guess, I’ve been watching the new documentary Get Back over the last couple days. It’s been an amazing watch, and there was a lot to take in. Got me to thinking mostly how I still haven’t had an experience quite like what the Beatles did for Let It Be, and it still could be a long-long while before I get the chance at something like that. One thing I took away from the film is The Beatles at this time in 1969, were really a working studio band. You can sense the years of experience from the 100s of studio hours. You also can see how the four of them are completely different and approach it all from different angles. When leaving the studio, they all left separately and with their own wives and girlfriends to return to their own individual and private lives. In some ways the film is a documentary of these guys’ job and them doing it.
Point being, you’re not always going to be best friends with your work partners, and it was refreshing to watch the frustrations come out. The arguments and the dissatisfaction of some of the members at times. You can see Paul developing into his true musical self, listening to the melodies and arrangements in his head and, pain-stakingly at times, attempting to communicate what he’s hearing in his head to his band mates. There was a lot of discussion on the methods of the previous years and attempting to do something different, and Paul seems to dominate the first half of the documentary. Time would prove my assumptions right as at the end of 1970 Paul filed with the courts to get out of his agreement with Lennon and The Beatles on the whole. The beauty of it all is that they stuck to it and rode the wave of creating Let It Be and created a masterpiece. One last notable mention, who is almost entirely left out of the up-to-now-available footage of the rooftop concert is keys player Billy Preston who was a welcomed relief to the at times torturesome dominance of Paul and the ensuing arguments, although gentlemanly they were.
John even says, “I’d like a fifth Beatle.” and George says, “Well, why don’t we get Bob Dylan to join, then.” foreshadowing not only the ultimate breakup of the group but George Harrison’s later formation of the Traveling Wilburys. This conversation was spawned when George mentioned making sure to take care of Billy and pay him studio musician rates. Billy just says, “I don’t have anything else to do,” and was truly magic the entire film.
That leads me to have to mention the astronomical cost of the project. In today’s monies the initial 12-day plan in studio dollars alone would have cost around 6K. That’s about $500/day. This money at best will cover the cost to rent the studio and an engineer to run the sound board. But as you can see in the film, things don’t always work out how you want. You have an initial budget and you hit snags and go way over; people fight and waste time and people even quit the project; if not a band member, then some part of the personnel. If you’re a solo artist, then you have to pay for those other players as well, a day rate of between two hundred and five hundred dollars a day. If you’re paying your producer and engineer separate from the studio rental, you’re looking at the same amount per person per day, again around $500. I have to say an established producer today like Dave Cobb could cost you thousands and thousands of dollars. Anyway, there is no way I could afford to do anything remotely close to this at this time in my life.
The film attempts to point this out with the beginning 15 minutes montage-esque sequence detailing the years and accomplishments leading up to 1969 and the making of Get Back. The Beatles were so established even if they didn’t have money, someone would have lent it. For a small timer you have to do all that rehearing and creating at home before the studio. Lynyrd Skynyrd literally woodshedded their songs hundreds if not thousands of times before ever recording anything, and if you haven’t checked out the 2018 documentary about them called If I Leave Here Tomorrow, it’s currently on Netflix.