14 Thoughts on The Beatles and ‘Get Back’
- I got there first. I always liked the Let It Be album. It was the first ‘proper’ Beatles album I listened to, on a very, very crackly vinyl. Before then I’d been introduced to the Beatles via the Anthologies, oddly enough. It had that wonderful cover. It was packed with unfamiliar and neglected titles, it had Paul’s ‘wandering 19th Wild West preacher’ beard and, most importantly, it contained several songs with the word ‘dig’ in the title, which is always a mark of quality. And I thought, since long ago, that Spector did a fine job producing it (ducks in Beatle).[1]
2. There’s been lots of re-evaluative chatter about ‘Dig A Pony’. Well, I am, quite frankly, here for that. What a wonderful title. Lennon seems to have claimed it’s garbage verbiage. I like to think it’s about either (i) John’s love of the £5 note (ii) John’s love of ponies (ii) John’s wish to encourage others to love ponies. I wistfully imagine him in a field, in that beautiful fur coat, just angrily pointing and saying, ‘I dig a pony-but do you?’. He had originally called it ‘Con A Lowry’ which, if you say it fast, sounds a bit Italian[2].
3. The coats. The coats.
4. I’m only ever leaving anywhere, from now on, with the words ‘see you ‘round the clubs’.
5. The best reason for doing anything is because ‘it’s a groove’, to quote Billy Preston’s unbelievably cool response to the rather unbelievable question from McCartney ‘why play with the Beatles?’
6. I’m firmly Team George and have been since I was floored by All Things Must Pass. Someone, somewhere (I think it was Erin Weber in her great book) made the point that Harrison was a radicalising force on the Beatles, constantly pulling them in new directions musically, philosophically and all other ‘allys’ that matter. If Lennon had ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ on Revolver Harrison had ‘Love You To’, which must have sounded really quite out there in 1966. Ditto for Sgt Pepper, where the two truly different tracks are ‘A Day In the Life’ and ‘Within You, Without You’. Hidden away on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack album is Harrison’s wonderful ‘It’s All Too Much’, which begins with a mother insult, has a droning guitar intro that would make Syd Barrett faint, and ends with a chant of ‘We are Dead’.
7. I’ve been, of late, on my own McCartney kick, caused by far, far too much lockdown listening of the Beatles and inspired by Ian Leslie’s piece here. I know, as many have pointed out, that middle age means, inevitably, a slide from vigorous youthful love of Lennon’s rebelliousness to a gradual appreciation of McCartney’s more sedate, stately, and altogether safer craftsmanship. I used to think McCartney was the purveyor of what Lennon called ‘music for grannies. My own ‘tilt to Macca’ started when I began to really, genuinely, enjoy ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, which was Lennon’s three-word answer in 1980 to the question ‘why did the Beatles break up’? McCartney was/is/will be unbelievably talented. As many people have pointed out, he nonchalantly tinkles Let It Be while John’s talking Bakelite. There is also the much remarked moment when, under pressure, he seems to whip ‘Get Back’ out of thin air. Just to put this is context, when I’m under pressure I normally seek to lie down and stress eat Pain Au Chocolat.
8. The scene when McCartney shows off his news songs to impress Linda Eastman is extraordinarily sweet because you want to shout ‘YOU DON’T NEED TO SHOW OFF, YOU ARE PAUL MACCARTNEY IN JANUARY 1969’. It beats what is now my second best ‘showing off to someone you fancy’ story, which involved a friend ringing the Coca Cola hotline to angrily complain he’d found a shopping trolley in his can of Coke.
9. Just back to Team George, for a moment. Harrison’s small tips and comments show just how collaborative the Beatles were, and how hard it is to parse out who did what. Note he quietly (and rightly) recommends cutting out the crappy weird answer vocals in ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ and (rightly) adding an extra verse to Let It Be. I kept shouting ‘listen to George’. He knows.
10. What is even more remarkable is the weird-ness of seeing extraordinarily famous pieces of music half-formed. Harrison shyly showcases a rough version of ‘Something’ with bits of lyrics missing. I found myself, again shouting, into the gaps ‘ATTRACTS ME LIKE NO OTHER LOVER, GEORGE, ATTRACTS ME LIKE NO OTHER LOVER’. It left me with a sense I’d helped him write Something and gave me an entirely unjustified week-long glow of a job well done.
11. Harrison’s pink suit made me spontaneously swear in shock due to sartorial stimuli.
12. As this article argues, one of the real obstacles in understanding the Beatles as artists lies with their personal fame and the resulting ‘intentional’ fallacy, so we all ascribe every lyrical inspiration to the lives of the authors. Get Back really opens up this problem. I’d long convinced myself ‘Carry That Weight’ on Abbey Road was an utterly sad, utterly poignant moment where the Beatles, supremely self-aware beings that they were, realised in song how they were collapsing and would have to live with their own legacy forever. McCartney tell us it is a joke song about someone with a large head.
13. This takes me to Lennon, who is somewhat lacklustre initially (does that need inverted commas?). There is another ‘hidden microphone’ scene, not in the film, where McCartney roundly chastises Lennon for not writing anything decent. It seems a little unfair when Lennon’s ‘bad writing spell’ includes ‘Dig A Pony’ and ‘Don’t Let Me Down’. If you want to hear unbelievably bad Lennon I’ve got five words for you: SOMETIME IN NEW YORK CITY. However , Lennon not only wakes up but shows how fun and funny he was, culminating in him addressing Harrison as the ‘Krishna Christmas Club’.
14. And with the passing of Ronnie Spector, we should acknowledge the often overlooked influence, debt and adoration that ran from The Beatles to The Ronettes, and the other girl groups. As this great piece explains, Lennon apparently spent his first night in the US ringing local DJs from his hotel room and requesting songs by the Ronettes.
Beatles reading
· This great analysis of the solo work of the Beatles, which concludes they broke up at just the right time https://holybeeofephesus.com/tag/solo-beatles/
· Erin Weber’s great book, The Beatles and the Historians, looks at how we understand the Beatles-see her blog here https://beatlebioreview.wordpress.com/
· Alongside Weber’s book, John Lennon’s very angry 1970 interview is well worth a read, as the demolition job that launched 100 misunderstandings http://www.johnlennon.com/music/interviews/rolling-stone-interview-1970/
[1] I knew it too well, it seems, and it was only recently I discovered that Lennon’s opening ‘I Dig A Pygmy’ comment was directed at Charles Hawtree not then Irish Minister for Finance Charles Haughey-I just assumed Lennon had an intimate knowledge of Ireland’s Cabinet and had a premonition that Haughey would go far.
[2] It actually sounds a bit like ‘with a degree’, which would be a nice Beatles pun.
