Fresh perspective

• Published date: 30 November 2021
• Publication title: Signal

WHEN the world closed down in March 2020, most of us had to make do with video calls or baking bread. Peter Jackson, meanwhile, was busy sifting through a mountain of unseen footage — 60 hours in total — of the Beatles, shot by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg in 1969.

His four-year project is now finished and the resulting series, The Beatles: Get Back, has been released on Disney+.

The series is three two-hour episodes, using the mass of outtakes from Lindsay-Hogg’s work on what would become Let It Be, the band’s fourth feature film.

It is striking just how much joy is contained within the vivid and eerily detailed footage.

Contrary to most accounts over the past 52 years, John, Paul, George and Ringo are seemingly happy to be in the studio: laughing, joking, singing in the style of ventriloquists, talking about last night’s TV (Peter Cook and Zsa Zsa Gabor having a spat) and, of course, writing music.

It’s a unique insight into a band at work, restored to a modern, HD sheen. It’s also a study of four of the most idolised and scrutinised individuals in the world in their prime. This is not just a music documentary, it’s a history book come to life.

“I just can’t believe it exists,” Jackson says.

“But then I can’t believe any of it — that the Beatles let Michael shoot all that footage, that it sat in a vault all this time ...

“What other band in the ’60s or ’70s allowed themselves to be shot in such an intimate way? There isn’t another. And then I got to edit it. The whole thing boggles my mind.”

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