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Peter Jackson's The Beatles' Get Back: Sneak Peek


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I would add there was a fifth element, and that was the fifth Beatle himself George Martin. In him they had a key and crucial mentor and collaborator who taught them about recording, arrangements, and listened to them to help realize their ideas.

 

Absolutely, though I include him in the "Number 1" factor, which is them being who they were. I'd throw in Epstein too. For better or worse, the "band" really broke up when he died; the remaining few years were essentially a series of solo endeavors with some occasional but transcendent cooperation among them.

 

For that matter, Geoff Emerick needs included as well, so let's go 6. John wanted to put mics up inside Ringo's toms. The strictly adhered to rules at "Abbey Road" dictated a specific distance that a microphone must maintain at a minimum from a drum set. Geoff could have been fired if the Powers That Be knew what he had done by following John's wishes (and creating a new, more modern drum mic'ing technique in the process.)

 

Through sheer coincidence and luck, they were assigned a young studio engineer who was willing to risk his job to enable the whims of the Beatles and changed the way records were made forever in the process

The drum example is one of many. Another character in the story who somehow found himself in the right place at the right time.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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I remember reading about The Who going into the studio to record early on and a guy in a white coat told Pete Townshend that his guitar amp was distorted and too loud and he should turn it down so it would sound good.

 

Clueless to what was happening, down talking the man who pushed Jim Marshall to create the Marshall stack. lol...

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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I remember reading about The Who going into the studio to record early on and a guy in a white coat told Pete Townshend that his guitar amp was distorted and too loud and he should turn it down so it would sound good.

 

Clueless to what was happening, down talking the man who pushed Jim Marshall to create the Marshall stack. lol...

 

 

Geoff Emerick in his book about recording the Beatles said they broke every rule of record at Abbey Studio where Emerick was a staff engineer. I forget the name of the first engineer that worked with the Beatles where the rule breaking started with his close mic'ing instruments especially Ringo's drums. Abbey studio was serious mainly classical studio with the engineers in white coats or suits and a big book of engineer standards they were to follow. The Beatles mainly recorded late at night so the Abbey's management weren't around for all the recording magic being done. Even as the Beatles were becoming global stars Abbey didn't care, but little by little Abbey released their grip on their staff when recording rock.

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What blows me away is the clarity of the video....I felt like I was in the studio with them shooting the clips on an IPhone! I know nothing about videography or video clean-up software but, like the advances in audio clean-up software, the advances in video clean-up software will make this a very special film to watch beyond its musical content.

 

For those not familiar, Peter Jackson did a documentary film a couple of years ago called "They Shall Not Grow Old" where he and his team transferred old WWI footage and colorized it. The results are breathtaking. He's the right man for this job for sure...

 

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Geoff Emerick in his book about recording the Beatles said they broke every rule of record at Abbey Studio where Emerick was a staff engineer. I forget the name of the first engineer that worked with the Beatles where the rule breaking started with his close mic'ing instruments especially Ringo's drums.

 

Norman ("Normal") Smith, who left to produce a little unknown band named Pink Floyd.

Now out! "Mind the Gap," a 24-song album of new material.
www.joshweinstein.com

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Geoff Emerick in his book about recording the Beatles said they broke every rule of record at Abbey Studio where Emerick was a staff engineer. I forget the name of the first engineer that worked with the Beatles where the rule breaking started with his close mic'ing instruments especially Ringo's drums.

 

Norman ("Normal") Smith, who left to produce a little unknown band named Pink Floyd.

 

 

Then Alan Parsons who was the Beatles engineer after Geoff Emerick went on to record Pink Floyd and eventually become a solo artist. The Beatles were a great apprenticeship program for recording engineers.

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I hope Peter Jackson is more true to the Beatles than he was to Tolkien.

You're the only person I've ever heard give his adaptation the thumbs down, but I guess since my McCartney III thread also brought out someone calling The Beatles overrated, I'm two for two! :wink:

Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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There's a clip of Paul talking to Howard Stern about Let It Be and this new movie. He admits he bought into the negativity as well, and was glad to see the fun and respect they actually had for each other back then.

 

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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I hope Peter Jackson is more true to the Beatles than he was to Tolkien.

You're the only person I've ever heard give his adaptation the thumbs down

 

Ehm...have you seen The Hobbit trilogy?

It's frankly shameful. It only has a very slight reseblance to the book (mostly in the title), amidst new characters, invented love stories, embarassing pranks, etc etc etc

 

After the masterpiece that was TLOTR, that monstruosity completely disqualified Jackson in my world. I also winced when I saw it was him doing Get Back. However the sneak peek is promising, finger cross...

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I hope Peter Jackson is more true to the Beatles than he was to Tolkien.

You're the only person I've ever heard give his adaptation the thumbs down

 

Ehm...have you seen The Hobbit trilogy?

Oh The Hobbit films are excruciating, no argument from me there. Goes to show you -- I didn't even think about them when CEB brought up Jackson adapting Tolkien! I never even bothered seeing the third one; I thought I'd give them another try after a recent viewing of the LotR triology and barely made it through the first film that time. I know we're drifting OT here, but the flim critic
, if you're into that sort of thing. It's interesting to put together the pieces of why they turned out the way they did.

 

But I grew up with Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, and my wife and I usually watch them at least once a year. She's run the gauntlet of watching all three extended editions in a single day, back before we met... I've never quite managed that feat. I have a nasty habit of falling asleep during the second half of The Two Towers, despite the excitement of Helm's Deep. :roll:

Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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(reprinted with permission)

For those who don't subscribe to Bob Lefsetz's newsletter, I though you might appreciate this. It's long, but echoes what people are saying (in his inimitable style :)

 

UTTERLY ASTOUNDING!

 

We forget the Beatles were a band. Of twentysomethings. United by the music. Which they loved playing.

 

I don't know if your inbox has been blowing up with this, but mine certainly has. Showing the power of virality. It seeps through society, slowly, and when it hits you and you click and you start to smile you feel both an individual and part of something greater than yourself, that was the power of the Beatles, that is the power of music.

 

Too much of the internet is about manipulation. Those with the greatest power are the worst. Just try to delete your account on Facebook. Purveyors are constantly shoving stuff down our throats. First, with a scorched earth publicity campaign, followed up by all kinds of online shenanigans, trying to enlist the hoi polloi to spread the word, to the point where most people ignore hype these days. Talk about being out of touch with the public, did you see the "Wonder Woman" theatrical grosses in Europe? A pittance! No one wants to go to the damn movie theatre, except those not wearing masks who believe they're immune, and there are not enough of those people to sustain all these businesses bitching that they're being hobbled by the government. So, you've got the movie business trying to hold back the sands of time, trying to keep windows in force when you're lucky if anyone is paying attention at all, when you need to hoover up the cash immediately, legs are shorter than ever, get it now, do it now. And chances are your project is a stiff, most are. The key is to get right back in the game, as opposed to promoting that which people do not want. You're a hit or a zit in internet culture, and almost nothing is a hit, and too many substandard products are vying for attention, and then you come across this clip from Peter Jackson's Beatles movie.

 

I'll admit, I didn't immediately click. I'm jaded. Is there anything new under the sun? The Beatles have been ravaging and raping their past for far too long. The insidious remixes, momentary dashes for cash...what I'm worried about in the future is these third-class takes will become the standard, the ones everybody knows, and they're tripe. Do you have any idea what makes a record a hit? Change one little element and oftentimes you ruin it. To create a hit, everything's got to line up...the song, the playing, the singing, the engineering, the mix... And Geoff Emerick was one of the greats, he had history with the band to boot. Do you think he mixed these records willy-nilly? Of course not, he even told me face to face that the stereo mix of "Sgt. Pepper" was not an afterthought, but never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

 

And film is truth. Image is truth. You believe what your eyes see. Well, you used to, before manipulation, but I didn't see any here, watching on my 5k iMac I felt like the sixties were happening right now, it wasn't nostalgia, the Beatles were positively alive, as a group, and I was in the studio with them!

 

Now the great thing about this clip is the lack of flourish, the lack of seasoning, the lack of shining up. Now, in this all too fake culture, we appreciate, cling to, honesty, directness. When Peter Jackson looks into the camera and talks...you feel like he's speaking directly to you, as if you were in the cutting room and he was setting you up to watch footage on a computer monitor. And he didn't don makeup, he was wearing shorts, he was a creator, not a star, someone like you and me but with a hell of a lot more on his resumé.

 

Then you see all the guitars. People today have no idea what gearheads we were back then. In an era where electronic gear was not de rigueur, all we had were transistor radios and record players. Guitars were exotic. We learned all the brand names, we could tell what was what by its shape, and it started with the Beatles...a Rickenbacker?

 

Ringo Starr is still alive, spry and active. We've forgotten that he was once just a young man, barely out of boyhood.

 

And then when we see/hear John Lennon reading from the paper in that voice, the one we know so well from the intro to "Two of Us"...WHEW, the record comes alive! We've been accustomed to the records for so long we've forgotten that human beings made them, with a hell of a lot less sophisticated equipment than today, and that they were inventing it as they went, there were not well-worn footsteps to follow.

 

And they're having so much FUN!

 

And then they're playing together as a BAND! For decades the focus has been on the breakup, the feuds, but here they are all together, SMILING!

 

And playing. They know how to do it, they've been doing it for years!

 

And then Lennon tapping his hand on the strings of his guitar...

 

Then the studio equipment, how ancient, but they got this sound down.

 

And then Linda and Yoko are so YOUNG, and so ALIVE! You can see the appeal of each of them, before they were dragged through the mud.

 

Then the band listening to the playback... The dream used to be to be in the studio, you needed access, you had none, that's where the magic was created!

 

And Billy Preston and George Martin, both so young, both now dead.

 

But the revelation is John Lennon. His reputation has been dragged through the mud, he's seen now as an angry young man, oftentimes dour, in competition with Paul. But here he's jumping around and smiling and involved, not detached, he's totally different from the legend that's been established, he's once again a musician, a creator, an experimenter, who's also sometimes an imp, the mischievous one who refused to follow norms, who questioned authority. WHEW!

 

And now you can see why the sixties were so great. It was about liberation! Today too many want to bring us back to a theoretical past that never existed. Where we were all prim and proper, obeyed the rules and were good citizens. But that's not how it WAS! We were testing limits, and we were led first and foremost by the Beatles, who kept pushing the envelope, getting us to question who we were, what we believed, how we dressed, everything was up for grabs, the sky was the limit.

 

Today "musicians" are "brands." In many cases literally, their music/fame is just a jumping off point to sell you crap. Not only perfume and apparel, but multiple album covers and merchandise, they can't stop milking fans, meanwhile the media doubles down and says it's all right, but let's not forget in the sixties the media was CLUELESS! In order to know what was going on you had to tune in to the radio and listen to the music. There was something happening there, and it certainly wasn't exactly clear.

 

Same deal today. No one knows what's really going on. Let's start at the top, with the presidential election, the pollsters got it so wrong that they're not even weighing in on the Georgia senatorial elections, we've learned not to trust them.

 

The only way you know what is going on is by firing up your computer, whether it be a desktop, laptop or the phone in your hand. Meanwhile, the oldsters can't stop decrying them, lauding physical books, like you can't read on a screen, which people are doing all day, saying we're spending too much time in front of screens when the truth is THAT IS WHERE IT'S HAPPENING! It's akin to the parents of the sixties telling their kids to turn off that damn music, the music that's still alive today.

 

Most definitely in this clip.

 

These are real human beings, who followed the sound, for years before they got any recognition. And when they finally got in the studio they kept expanding the boundaries, they did not want to be in stasis, do what was expected of them, they wanted to get turned on themselves, they knew the result would turn on their audience.

 

They may not have gone on tour, but they still loved to play. And create. That was the essence. They were still musicians, they were still a band, that came first, the pronouncements, the controversies, those were all secondary to the music.

 

And this clip is evidence. Show it to youngsters and they'll feel it, show it to ANYBODY and they'll feel it. That was the power, that was the draw, who in hell could be exposed to the Beatles and want to work at a bank, play it safe? Never forget, Steve Jobs was a big Beatles fan.

 

But Steve Jobs is already fading into history. But not the Beatles. Music is set in amber, it cannot be superseded with a faster chip, get it right and it lasts. But, more than five decades later we've forgotten the genesis, we're so detached from what once was that we're influenced by the penumbra as opposed to the essence. But Peter Jackson's film brings us right back.

 

GET BACK HOME LORETTA!

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Finally got to watch the footage just now, after a super-long day at the office. Just what I needed, but is this much fun legal? Nice also to see Linda and Yoko hanging out together and getting along well.

 

I think one has to realize that the non-participants were probably getting bored now and then, and also it was probably a bit much with the volume levels. Being around geniuses isn't non-stop joy.

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I hope Peter Jackson is more true to the Beatles than he was to Tolkien.

You're the only person I've ever heard give his adaptation the thumbs down

 

Ehm...have you seen The Hobbit trilogy?

Oh The Hobbit films are excruciating, no argument from me there. Goes to show you -- I didn't even think about them when CEB brought up Jackson adapting Tolkien! I never even bothered seeing the third one; I thought I'd give them another try after a recent viewing of the LotR triology and barely made it through the first film that time. I know we're drifting OT here, but the flim critic
, if you're into that sort of thing. It's interesting to put together the pieces of why they turned out the way they did.

 

But I grew up with Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, and my wife and I usually watch them at least once a year. She's run the gauntlet of watching all three extended editions in a single day, back before we met... I've never quite managed that feat. I have a nasty habit of falling asleep during the second half of The Two Towers, despite the excitement of Helm's Deep. :roll:

 

Yep add me to this list. I thought the LOTR adaptation was brilliant but The Hobbit movies were an abomination. It's beyond me how the Hobbit movies run the same time as LOTR.

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I think one has to realize that the non-participants were probably getting bored now and then, and also it was probably a bit much with the volume levels. Being around geniuses isn't non-stop joy.

 

Was going to post the same. The idea that she should have been some subservient prop is related to your previous comment about this. Plus she was stoned AF.

 

BTW, contemporaneously, the fans blamed Linda for the Beatles' break-up. Why Paul and Linda ended up getting a pass in the long run that John and Yoko did not, is IMO reflective of the two couples' different dynamics, with John seeming to be the beta in that pairing (or at least, a willing equal), and Paul retaining his alpha status. Add the gender and race aspect, and things become a bit clearer.

 

I think I've posted this before, but my aunt (great-aunt really) was the one who brought Yoko to the US, long before her association with Lennon. There was no doubt in that house or my family that she was a legitimate artist in her own right. The aunt in question actually helped write the Japanese constitution and wrote the women's rights section of that document, so she did not abide (or convey) any condescension around Yoko or women in general. I can see how Yoko's art might not be for everyone, but will always reject the idea that she was just some acolyte. Yoko was deep in a scene that John aspired to.

  • Love 1

Now out! "Mind the Gap," a 24-song album of new material.
www.joshweinstein.com

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Not to go too OT on Yoko,

I just wanted to nerd out on the fact that you managed a 7-word introductory clause that uses only one vowel (o).

Must've had mini-donuts on the mind. I shall now take a bow.

 

Banter Of The Year!

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Here for the gear.

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  • 1 year later...

The YT rabbit hole suggested this video to me, which is pretty cool that they found this bobby after all these years.

 

 

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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