I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

i just read a lot of jealousy in that statement

idk, I think it would be more for the spiritual element. John was pretty disillusioned by that point - just look at "God"!

Before he died, he said this in one of his final interviews:

Q: "How about George's solo music?"

LENNON: "I think 'All Things Must Pass' was all right. It just went on too long."

Granted, not a HUGE compliment, but he's not wrong about it being too long thanks to that crappy third disc.

I like George but ATMP (the song and most of the album) is interminable

I always preferred the version released on Anthology 3 back in 1996. It was one of three polished solo demos he cut at Abbey Road on his 26th birthday, less than four weeks after the rooftop concert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODEhwaU2Uw

I heard this first and loved it, only to be disappointed by Spector's elephantine arrangement on George's solo album. I've grown to enjoy Spector's arrangement despite its flaws, but the Anthology 3 version is still my favorite. I programmed it into my own version of Get Back as it felt like fair game.

Yeesh, the Beatles were pushing 30 when they officially split, but I just realized, Paul is only 26 and George is only 25 in January 1969. Halfway through their 20's and the end of the Beatles is already on the horizon.

i want a George Harrison biopic, titled Thanks for the Pepperoni

Peter Jackson should've found a way to shoehorn this in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gk1tnvl8mo

Sweet Jesus, I had no idea they made that into a video game. That's almost as absurd as this fictional one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AUaXI4jU88

Finished it. Enjoyed it a lot as an immersive experience - but not sure I can face hearing either Get Back or Don't Let Me Down again for a long time.

haha yeah otm with Dont' Let Me Down

The P. Jackson cosmetic smoothing is way too much, Lennon in particular often looks like an AI-generated hologram of himself. Yassification in full effect. Guessing that the others' facial hair mitigates the software effect somewhat

I would not have allowed "Only a Northern Song" anywhere near my record but y'know

But then again that record was Yellow Submarine, which their input was 'Here's "Hey Bulldog" and three tapes we found on the rack'.

huh I like northern song and hey bulldog

it’s all too much is a pretty extraordinary track, i think. gets my vote for the beatles song that sounds least like a beatles song.

Hey Bulldog is awesome, one of the best bass lines and guitar solos. Northern Song is rad.

Speaking of dogs, my dog Charlie always looses his mind and howls like crazy when he hears Martha My Dear (I used to practice it on the piano when he was a puppy). He had been ignoring all of the music in Get Back this weekend, but when Paul launched into Martha in episode 2, Charlie took notice!

My dog really loves Martha My Dear off the white album and lost his shit when McCartney played it on Get Back this weekend. pic.twitter.com/ewgColudMl

— Darin Fabrick (@fabrickd) November 27, 2021

played the crap out of that Give My Regards to Broad Street game in the 80's.

it’s all too much is a pretty extraordinary track, i think. gets my vote for the beatles song that sounds least like a beatles song.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.),

One of the few times in the later years when Paul and George sound excited to be on the same song.

otm re: IATM

Part 2 my fave but the rooftop concert - as old hat as it is by now - is exhilarating.

It also feels to me personally by the OK to negative reactions of folks on the street that The Beatles were probably hitting their sell-by date for The World when this all happened.

Some wings bullshit came up on the Shazam and fuck this

yeah rooftop concert was v exciting to me even now

people on the street reactions all great, esp gran who got woken up from her sleep <3

they all look v handsome on the rooftop too

Yes!

I defend “Only A Northern Song” (the Yellow Submarine mix, not the dreary Anthology one) on the basis that it’s the only song on the soundtrack record that sounds like the film looks. “It’s All Too Much” and “Hey Bulldog” are obviously great too, but “Northern” feels more evocative of the film’s mood than those (and far more than George Martin’s relatively hapless score).

John’s hair looks very ginger suddenly in the rooftop section.

Think he decided to go ginger after close proximity to Viv Stanshall whilst filming the “Death Cab for Cutie” sequence in MMT.

i watched most of the first episode of this. it's kind of "last dance: beatles edition" isn't it? unearthed, pristine footage of global icons. but the jordan doc was constructed to within an inch of its life and this.. despite the natural interest of the material i have to agree with captain jay vee that it doesn't feel particularly artfully made. i feel a little like the pinefox here but i'd actually say it's poorly made. the on-screen text telling you about things looks amateurish, with a bad drop shadow behind it. you have this perpetual "ADR" vibe of mouths not matching the words, re-used reaction shots, as darin points out. very strange little quick edits that i suppose are there to cover jump cuts or something similar but just feel strange. and i thought it was too long. really can't imagine watching all the parts. i can appreciate that a lot of people just enjoy the ambient nature of it. the comparison for me is "last dance". it's kind of "last dance: beatles edition" isn't it? unearthed, pristine footage of global icons. but the jordan doc was constructed to within an inch of its life. i have no doubt there were reels and reels of boring lockerroom talk there, gym sessions, bus trips, but they only included the bits that supported the story. here there is no story. they frame it with the calendar to give things a sense of urgency. but i would have vastly preferred they dropped half the material and add some reminisces from people - filling in all that juicy backstory that we've had so many good posts about here. from the remaining beatles themselves, from the red-headed tea boy, etc. This thread is far more entertaining that the doc imo! of course there are some moments of genuine magic. when 'get back' appears out of nowhere, for instance. anyway i'm glad people are enjoying this, it just feels like extended DVD extras when what i'd like is the actual doc, preferably with some more care taken with the editing.

lol whoops included a couple of sentences twice there somehow

speaking of poor editing!

CUT!

But yes it’s pretty sloppy in the editing department but it makes up for it in glorious faux-verité presentation of demi-gods at work. All the little details are wonderful: from the background tape ops to the plates of toast and mugs of “proper brew” and the pimples, beer bloat and greasy hair. Really dug this.

i loved Last Dance too so maybe my wheelhouse is just long documentary series’ of archival footage

ambient is the vibe for sure - was a rainy saturday here and this worked perfectly with a mid-morning coffee - i did feel that towards the end of the first ep i kind of leaned into the boredom - thinking of it as an interminable mid-century art film kind of helped with getting into the mood

but i also wholly agree that it is scrappily edited in the ways already described - and cheap looking - my particular grrr was that terrible pic of ringo’s house that you sort of forgave the first time but then they reuse it 5 mins later - also the episode of Out of the Unknown George and Ringo discuss exists in the archive - would’ve been great to show a couple of clips instead of some generic publicity material

right sorry in amongst my b-roll there i was trying to make the point that last dance had the benefit of contemporary recollections of these legendary moments that both contextualised and enriched what you're seeing as well as giving the filmmakers something to work with in terms of a story, and i would have loved that here. i mean it is what it is, but i would have liked a higher ambition from the filmmakers. instead of dropping a potted history of the beatles at the beginning, you weave it in. the snippy shit between george and paul becomes the peg for people talking about that relationship etc so you end up with a story and an understanding of them

thinking of it as an interminable mid-century art film kind of helped with getting into the mood

yes, warhol wouldn't hate it imo

it was cool seeing the actual photos linda was shooting that day. it's too bad she didn't know how to focus that nice camera!

I like the fly on the wall/no commentary aspect of it. I wouldn’t want it to be interrupted by contributors, voiceovers or analysis.

Commentators in particular are the curse of of the music documentary for me. You’d get the wisdom of Noel Gallagher or Paul Weller - shudder. Or journalists hoping to make a mark with their hyperbolic nonsense about the Beatles being like aliens from the future.

Exactly that. You can get your own perspective on all the interactions.

I’ve avoided the ‘bit by bit’ threads that watch the show ‘alongside’ not least to avoid spoilers. I mean, I know what happens to a greater extent..

Takeaways…
That George ‘I’ll play anything you want” bit wasn’t right before he walked.
Paul ‘forming’ “Get Back” was great, and the ‘no Pakistanis’ stuff (just about where I paused) wasn’t it’s origin.
The verses for “Carry that weight” would have made it a great Ringo song
Mal suggesting better words for “Long and winding” was lovely
And all the dumb ideas about amphitheatres, ships, orphanages etc were all from that director, not the Beatles (or Yoko). Hope he shuts up.

luna you’ve just described a very bad version that i wouldn’t want either. but that’s not what i’m suggesting. maybe you haven’t seen last dance. if you have though, what would it have been like without any of the interviews with pippen, jordan, jackson etc? interesting in its own way but more of a curio for the superfan rather than, you know, one of the best and most disscussed docs of the last 20 years. again i’m not saying there’s nothing interesting here, there is. but in order to get this running time and sticking almost entirely to this verité style they’ve had to create a frankenstein’s monster of footage and sound and it really shows.

I'm not a sports fan and the Last Dance isn't for me. The problem with interviews on the Beatles is that I know all of the stories already exhaustively. This incudes the differing versions ranging from the inner circle to the flakiest hanger on, the canonical account told in Anthology, Paul's 'Many Years from Now' etc. I couldn't face the extensive recycling it would involve!

I feel like the Last Dance is a weird comparison since, so far at least, this is pretty much just the footage shown (obv editing anything imposes an order and agenda but still) where Last Dance was clearly Jordan settling old scores, distorting the truth of what happened whenever it served him, plus him sitting there in the preset day downing whiskey and running down every perceived slight he'd ever experienced in his life...it was as much propaganda as anything....I loved every minute though

I loved The Last Dance, but I was in/near Chicago during most of those years, so it was however many hours of, “Hey, I remember that!” and I didn’t even follow sports in the least. (Best bits for me were Jordan’s first year or so with the Bulls and the city’s — soon the country’s — sudden collective realization that he’s an all-timer; Chicago sports hadn’t had many of those.) I don’t think it’s comparable to Get Back for reasons others have stated above. The revisionism in McCartney 3 2 1 is closer (Jordan’s score-settling replaced with McCartney’s gee-whiz cheery mythmaking).

That George ‘I’ll play anything you want” bit wasn’t right before he walked.

i mean it wa s literally days before he left, no? it’s true tho that the moment seemed far less contentious than it was portrayed in the let it be film. in this context, it just seemed like another moment of creative tension among many

it was also funny how casually everyone treated the whole moment of george leaving.

“i guess george isn’t in the band anymore, too bad. ok everyone, ‘don’t let me down,’ take 150...”

The bad ADR/editing vibe (I haven't had a chance to watch yet) may stem from the fact that there was much, much more audio available than film, so I imagine the doc is trying its best to stretch and max out the usable film it has.

Brit stiff upper lips, you know xpost

I'm with VegGrrl in having enjoyed this pretty much unreservedly. I don't play an instrument and I still find the process of arranging a song with bandmates to be magic or alchemy, even more than coming up with the initial germ of the song. The interminable goofing around seems an important part of the process to me, if the band members are paying enough attention to grab good ideas as they fly past. It makes "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" a bit more interesting, for one thing. I'm glad there wasn't any more work on "Maxwell's" after that bit in part 1.

Jackson didn't want victims' lawyers accusing him of manslaugher.

i'm starting to imagine an alternate world where Paul decided early on that "Maxwell's" was precious enough to reserve as the glittering centerpiece of some future solo album, or just gave it away to Badfinger again, and the Beatles stayed together another year or two as a direct result.

you guys saying “uh this isn’t like last dance” have clearly not read my posts very closely but i’m going to take that as my fault for not being clear enough i guess

I mean, I can sort of see it in a comprehensively-documented-last-hurrah sense.