One of the most unexpected streaming surprises of 2021 (especially for Beatles fans) has beenThe Beatles:Get Back, the 8-hour docuseries that chronicles the sometimes fraught, sometimes inspiring making of theLet It Bedocumentary and album. While it’s completely understandable that more casual fans ofThe Beatlescould find the documentary cumbersome, for more dedicated Beatlemaniacs (like yours truly), it’s a fascinating look into how this most legendary of rock groups operated. One huge reason thatGet Backis so illuminating is it doesn’t have any of the constraints which were placed on the originalLet It Befilm, which was released shortly after The Beatles broke up and had a more compact 80-minute runtime. But despite the availability of the more comprehensiveGet Backnow,Let It Bestill remains an alluring piece of Beatle history. First, because the film has been near impossible to see over the years due to a lack of release on home video or streaming, but also becausePeter Jacksonhas made it clear that he didn’t makeGet Backwith the intent of erasingLet It Befrom existence, and in fact, it may lead to the 1970 doc soon seeing the light of day.
Just likeGet Back,Let It Bechronicles The Beatles writing and recording new music over the course of a tight three-week schedule in January 1969 before rehearsing and then performing their new songs for their first live performance in three years. However, as both documentaries show, this plan quickly starts to unravel, as Twickenham Studios, where the band was to write and rehearse these new songs, turned out to not be conducive to The Beatles’ endless creativity. This led toGeorge Harrisonquitting the band, though a meeting was held a few days later and the rest of the Beatles were able to convince Harrison to rejoin the group. After this, they reconvened to The Beatles’ Apple Records studios, which made for a better environment musically, especially when keyboardistBilly Prestonwas brought in to give the band’s sound a new dimension. Since they didn’t have enough time or money to coordinate their plans for a live performance at the Roundhouse in London or a Roman amphitheater in Libya, they came up with the idea of playing on the roof of the Apple building. The Beatles then play triumphantly on the roof while unsuspecting Londoners are shown on the street below confused by what they’re hearing before the cops arrive to shut down the performance.
BothLet It BeandGet Backmore or less show this same sequence of events unfolding, thoughGet Back’s far longer running time allows for a lot more nuance in how this notorious period in The Beatles’ history unfolded. The biggest subtraction fromLet It Beis that George Harrison’s departure from the band is not depicted or addressed in the earlier documentary, though it does include a famously exasperated exchange between Harrison andPaul McCartneywhere the two have a disagreement about how over-controlling McCartney is being. One reason that directorMichael Lindsay-Hoggwas not able to include more of this saga in the original documentary is because whenLet It Bewas being assembled, The Beatles were in the midst of actually breaking up a year later, and since they were also the film’s producers, Lindsay-Hogg was under pressure to not show what he referred to as their “dirty laundry” onscreen.
Another reason this saga was removed was logistical, as most of the drama surrounding Harrison’s departure happens off-screen. However, the documentarians were able to capture a meeting betweenJohn Lennonand Paul McCartney that happened in Twickenham’s commissary by placing a microphone in a flower pot, unbeknownst to Lennon and McCartney. It’s hard to believe The Beatles would have let this recorded conversation make it intoLet It Be, but on top of that, Michael Lindsay-Hoggsaid in a recent interview, “when I played back the audio, all I got was the clatter of cutlery and plates and [inaudible] voices”. Due to modern advances in sound-editing technology, Peter Jackson was able to include this conversation inGet Back,which helps paint a much clearer picture of the band’s dynamics during this fraught episode.
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Let It Bewas also constrained by the amount that Lindsay-Hogg was able to includeYoko Onoin the documentary, since The Beatles management asked him to scale back the footage where she’s shown sitting beside Lennon. Ono has long been unfairly blamed as the reason The Beatles broke up, and this decision to cut her out of the documentary was probably a futile attempt to quash this narrative that was already gaining steam by 1970. Without these constraints,Get Backis able to show that even though Yoko was around for a lot of theLet It Berecording sessions, her presence rarely feels intrusive, as McCartney’s then-girlfriendLinda Eastmanis also frequently seen hanging around. Meanwhile, Harrison’s apathy combined with McCartney’s overeagerness to make this project work feels like a far bigger wedge between the band. Though I’m sure plenty of this could have been cleared up in Lindsay-Hogg’s original cut ofLet It Be(which he claims was an hour longer), its final 80-minute run time isn’t conducive to such clarification and is clearly a sign of The Beatles and their management trying to bury this footage.
Let It Behas basically always had the reputation that it shows The Beatles breaking up, especially since it was released a month after the band officially split. Though considering how little it dives into the tensions between the band, this has been more of an assumption by people who haven’t seen it, since even devoted Beatles fans have had a hard time tracking it down. After its theatrical release in 1970, the only other time the film has ever been released was on Laserdisc and VHS in 1981. The Laserdisc has become one of the rarest and most sought after items for Beatles completists, while VHS copies ofLet It Beare a little easier to find, but still go on eBay for hundreds of dollars. There have been various attempts to rereleaseLet It Beon both DVD and Blu-ray over the years, especially during the conception of theLet It Be Nakedproject, a reimagining of theLet It Bealbum which was similarly tinkered with to The Beatles’ derision. The reasons a DVD releasenever came to fruitionrange from George Harrison’s estate and Yoko Ono blocking the release to Apple headNeil Aspinallclaiming the footage was still “too controversial,” toRingo Starrclaiming that Lindsay-Hogg’s cut of the film was “joyless”.
However, in the 2010s, the bitter feelings within The Beatles’ camp towardLet It Bestarted to fade a bit. McCartneyexpressed interest in seeing the film re-releasedin 2016, saying that if anyone should be wary about people seeingLet It Be, it should be him (referencing the sometimes bossy manner in which McCartney is seen trying to corral the other Beatles). He then became even more receptive about re-releasing theLet It Befootage in some form when Peter Jackson came to McCartney with the idea of reappropriating the material intoGet Back,convincing the Beatlethat there was actually a lot of joy and camaraderie in the footage, despite the fact that it also shows some of the internal rifts within the band at the time. WhileGet Backshows a much more comprehensive view of theLet It Be/Get Backproject, it was never meant to replaceLet It Beas the definitive document of this time period, asJackson specifically wantedGet Backto be a companion toLet It Be, intentionally only using footage that wasn’t featured in the 1970 documentary unless they were essential shots where no other footage existed.
Additionally,when the release ofGet Backwas announced, it was also announced that a remastered version ofLet It Bewould be released for consumption. Any more specific details about when or where this release will be available haven’t been elaborated on, though one would assume (and hope) it will be available on Disney Plus in the near future. This, of course, is an easy thing to be cynical about, considering how ridiculously hard The Beatles have made it to seeLet It Beover years and how many aborted attempts there have been to make it more widely available. Yet considering the warm reception thatGet Backhas received (both from fans and from the livingBeatlesthemselves), there’s plenty of reason to be optimistic thatLet It Bewill easily be available. Either way,Get Backserves as ample compensation for fans that have been waiting to finally see (or revisit)Let It Befor all these years.
