Friday, December 17, 2021

The Beatles - Get Back - Part 6

Whut's that guvnor, the Beatles is playing on the roof? 



The Fab Four? Wait for me luv! Woot woot!



Nice overhead shot



The Beatles biggest fan.



Thanks Mo.




OK after watching all three episodes twice, I'm calling it - I don't need to hear the song "Get Back" again for a couple of years at least.



How old is PC Dagg? Thirteen?



Find someone who looks at you the way Paul looks at John when they are playing together.



After the rooftop, Ringo tried to get in on a three-way with Linda & Paul - oh Ringo!







Thursday, December 16, 2021

The Beatles - Get Back - Part 5

McCartneys are here



Ringo can be so adorable

\

Other times - not so much - oh Ringo!



I think Heather had a crush on Glyn Johns



And who can blame her? Look at that fashion sense.




PLUS - he tried to warn John about Allen Klein, who alas did not listen.




Yes of course.




This is when they were definitely going on the roof.




John and Paul dancing together - what's not to like?



Sunday, December 12, 2021

The Beatles - Get Back - Part 4

Probably my favorite line in the whole show.



John wanted to make Billy Preston the official fifth Beatle.



It's safe to say Jimmy Nichol was at the bottom of the Fifth Beatle candidates list. 

They didn't have to worry about Billy Preston eyeing all the women - he was gay, although very closeted at this time.



I didn't realize Ringo was a SONY camcorder pioneer.



That's a drink.



Although George does get credit for asking for a prepared piano for "For You Blue" - the "paper-prepared piano" was pioneered by my boy Erik Satie.



And he gets even more credit for sporting psychedelic proto-Uggs.



Oh look, it's Pattie Harrison for five seconds. She's the anti-Yoko.

The only Beatle woman who showed up even less often during the Beatles' recording sessions was Jane Asher. But Asher was history at this point. According to Paul's rebound girlfriend Francie Schwartz, Paul actually speculated that Jane had a guy on the side when she was on theater tour. If she did it would serve him right - Paul cheated on Jane constantly. 

I tracked down Schwartz's book with a chapter about her time with Paul. I will be writing about that soon. Beatle wives/girlfriends generally observed the law of omertà, and Jane was the most tight-lipped of all, refraining from saying a single word about her relationship with Paul ever.

Francie, however, spilled some strong tea.




Speaking of Jane, Paul gets no credit for mis-identifying Pattie as Cynthia in this video segment with Jane and Mike Love.



I did love the video clips from Rishikesh. Peter Jackson got cute, but it was great.



Get Back deep cut - what Paul is referring to here is "bagism" which started when John and Yoko gave a press conference from inside a bag. One of their more successful bits I think.




And of course...


Thursday, December 09, 2021

The Beatles - Get Back - Part 3


Oh good, Yoko has some correspondence to read. I'm glad she has something to do,
I wouldn't want her to be bored in the middle of a Beatles recording session.


Very annoying op-ed in the NYTimes by Amanda Hess the other day. She admits Ono was rude - literally using the word rude, at one point, but Hess means rude in a good way.

She perches in reach of John Lennon, her bemused face oriented toward him like a plant growing to the light. When Paul McCartney starts to play “I’ve Got a Feeling,” Ono is there, stitching a furry object in her lap. When the band starts into “Don’t Let Me Down,” Ono is there, reading a newspaper. Lennon slips behind the piano and Ono is there, her head hovering above his shoulder. Later, when the group squeezes into a recording booth, Ono is there, wedged between Lennon and Ringo Starr, wordlessly unwrapping a piece of chewing gum and working it between Lennon’s fingers. When George Harrison walks off, briefly quitting the band, there is Ono, wailing inchoately into his microphone.

And in spite of Ono's obsessive, groupie-like behavior, Hess tries to argue that this makes Ono a feminist icon and a role model for Heather McCartney.

In Jackson’s film, you can see the seeds of this generational shift. One day, Eastman’s young daughter, Heather, a bob-haired munchkin, whirls aimlessly about the studio. Then she spies Ono singing. Heather observes her with scrunch-faced intensity, steps up to the microphone and wails.

I think the psychology here is more like, Heather figured, if a grown-ass woman could scream into a microphone, why couldn't she?

I do find some things to admire about Ono, but her behavior in the studio with the Beatles in 1968-69 was appalling, to be so oblivious to the feelings of other people in a room. 

Hess compares Ono's behavior to a performance piece, but there's a more likely, if prosaic explanation: Ono was from a family of wealthy Japanese aristocrats. The Beatles were working-class musicians. In the world that Yoko came from, you didn't worry about the feelings of the people you outranked. Why should she care if she was irritating the fuck out of everybody? 

A disruptive person in the studio was not only a sign of Ono's disrespect for the men in Lennon's band, it was a sign of Lennon's disrespect for the men in the band. Hess can call Yoko a feminist hero all she wants but Yoko was a tool that Lennon used to drive a wedge between himself and the band.




Speaking of George, the buzzkill is back. Between George and Yoko, it's a miracle the Beatles didn't end in Twickenham studios.



Luckily they had Ringo...



...and Billy Preston




Unlike Yoko, Linda was a fan of the Beatles.



Great shot in the film of all four Fabs



Lennon was mainly subdued in Twickenham studios, but once they got into the Apple basement, he perked up considerably and displayed his charisma and goofy, infectious sense of humor, the things that made him, in McCartney's words, "the boss," and which made all the difference in the sessions.











Monday, December 06, 2021

The Beatles - Get Back - part 2

This is the scene during which McCartney works out Get Back while Ringo and George yawn. Although to be fair, you could see Ringo tapping his foot.



A lot of drinking.



Ugh - Dick James. I don't think McCartney liked him at all. The conversations James has with the Beatles made him seem extremely crass, and later the Beatles made fun of him while jamming. McCartney responds to the comment in the picture below with something like "I don't think you paid enough."



Yes Yoko was annoying but this was one of the most charming moments in the original "Let It Be" movie - waltzing to "I Me Mine." Although I think George wrote that song as a message to the others.



Paul was a very fit 26-year-old. Here he jumps over a chair back, like it's nothing.




Nobody needs Eric Clapton.


No freaking body.


Curiously, in its first incarnation, Get Back was a protest song against, of all people, Enoch Powell. 

During the end of part 1, John and Paul got into it together, and I think this annoyed George as much as  anything else. When J&P get into a groove, there's nothing like it. I think George felt left out.










And he's off.

Buzz.

Kill.