Get Back

Peter Jackson’s restoration of footage made for a documentary of the Beatles recording the Get Back album. They shall not grow old – hah.

What is fantastic is watching the band work together so well (for the vast majority of the 8 hours) – the stories of this film showing the Beatles falling apart don’t wash. But what’s even better is seeing them compose and play: the bit where Paul works out the tune and words for Get Back itself is wonderful.

Get Back presents an apotheosis, as the band’s attempt to film a documentary of them first recording an album and then playing it live is slowly attenuated (or elevated) to a show on the roof of the Apple building with no audience at all. Or, rather, an audience of office and shop workers who have clambered out onto roofs, and a crowd in the street below who can’t see a thing. What other end could there be for this band of gods? Is this a mockery of the idea of a gig, or the ultimately pure live show? Napoleon as monarch of Elba.

Scoop

The 2019 Emily Maitlis-Andrew Windsor interview. Gillian Anderson and a gloriously unattractive Rufus Sewell.

How they are related

If only Andrew had had no audience. The reverse of an apotheosis (‘apanthroposis’ perhaps – ooh dear), in which one with revered status shows his feet of clay (and as a result loses various elementts of his official status). Perhaps both groups didn’t see the audience as important, just their performance?