Originally published at: Watch the moment Paul McCartney composed "Get Back" | Boing Boing
…
3 Likes
Unreal. And John just strolls in at the end and starts strumming along to this new tune as if that’s the most normal thing in the world. Which I guess it was for them, then.
20 Likes
I was waiting for George to start noodling around in between the words.
2 Likes
There’s another part where John is talking with Mal the road manager I think about the proposed upcoming show and in the background you can hear Paul working out Let It Be. Ringo just watches Paul and says “we could just have him play piano for an hour, I’d watch that, he’s so good”
Other best moments:
- Every minute Heather McCartney is on screen
- Alan Parsons appearing in the control booth randomly 3 or 4 times, saying nothing, permanent blank look on his face, for a total of about 15 seconds
18 Likes
I wish Peter Jackson had left the explanatory words off the screen. “OMG! Look what’s about to happen here…!”
5 Likes
One almost wishes he would project a bit more.
16 Likes
Man there are so many good finds and pivotal moments so densely packed. And I’m only halfway through Ep 2. It’s simultaneously the creation of musical genius and an impending crash before your eyes. Billy Preston falling into their laps seems to be about all that held the project together. They were that fragile by that point.
6 Likes
My first thought is this moment:
Jokes aside… I gotta say about most of the footage I have seen from this series and UGH! go easier on that sharpening filter this stuff looks horrible.
3 Likes
Us common folk forget: The Beatles didn’t set out to become THE BEATLES!!! They were just four guys who liked playing music, had a real knack for writing songs, and their musical skills were supercharged by playing in Hamburg while they were still teenagers.
8 Likes
it doesn’t happen often. only to highlight particularly important things.
so far, i particularly was blown away by the “Let It Be” section, but also this exchange was really something, working through early stages of “Don’t Let Me Down”:
George [not meanly, just observationally]: it sounds like the same old shit, honestly.
John [vocal shrug]: i like the same old shit.
8 Likes
Paul on guitar and vocals. George on yawning and cool. I reckon that, if they keep working at it, these guys could show real promise.
3 Likes
To my ears, before he turned his pedal on when Ringo hits the beat and the guitar got louder and funkier, George was adding notes lazily, off the beat, which influence Paul’s choices with the groove later on.
That’s the kind of reason long running bands split royalties.
4 Likes
Indeed, George is tickling his strings from the start. 
2 Likes
For all these year I never knew that he had just stopped in to say hi. They had been talking about getting a piano player for days but no one did anything about it. They probably would have called Nicky Hopkins eventually and it would have turned out he was vacationing in Gibralter or something and they would have said “oh well, we’ll just get along without”
And if they hadn’t disliked the other studio so much and moved back to Apple, Billy would have stopped by and no one would have been home.
3 Likes
I’d been unaware that Preston had known them from Hamburg. It was a stroke of luck that they got someone they already knew well and liked.
1 Like
I had always heard exactly that. They brought him in because they knew him from touring in Germany and they all liked him and knew he was good. Even in the ads/previews for this documentary, it talks about how they “brought him in” to play with them, not that he wandered by to say hi. I guess there was no reason to think otherwise, because the truth seems a bit hard to believe.
I still find variations out there. This one seems plausible:
During his break from the group, Harrison caught a performance by Ray Charles in London. On the stage that night was Preston, whom Harrison and his fellow Beatles had befriended during their years in Hamburg. Excited to see his old pal, Harrison sent Preston a message inviting him to join the Beatles in the studio.
So he “stopped by to say hi” after George invited him to do so.
3 Likes
how many years ago was Hamburg at that point? 10? 15?
What’s also kind of interesting to me is that they had met Preston when he was a member of Little Richard’s band. Little Richard must have really had an eye for talent – Jimi Hendrix also played for him for a while.
5 Likes
only about 7 years. The Beatles were in Hamburg from 1960-1962 but Preston was there in 1962, age 16, playing for Little Richard
2 Likes
Wow, and Let It Be studio work was in '69
that’s a short time, considering their trajectory over those 7 years. I mean I can run into people who live in my own neighborhood that I haven’t seen for 7 years. When I see them it seems like I saw them yesterday.
3 Likes
