Michael Lindsay-Hogg's 'Let It Be' is coming!

[Gringo557]

"Black and white director's cut?" Never heard that before . . .

[silvercup67]

I can't wait to see the SHF thread, with 675 pages worth of arguments about the cropping and grain reduction!

Myself I don't really care as neither really bothered me in Get Back. What I enjoyed in Get Back was all the stuff that they performed incidentally. The stuff that they were TRYING to record was and is a huge bore for me. I don't think any of those songs are much good except LIB and TLAWR and it must have been so boring just playing them over and over. No wonder they got aggro with each other. So I'm tentatively hoping there will be more oldies and jokey songs included as extras because that is the only thing I can get excited about.

One of the most interesting bits, for me, was watching Paul compose "Get Back".
Historic too.

[onemojofilter]

I can't wait to see the SHF thread, with 675 pages worth of arguments about the cropping and grain reduction!

Myself I don't really care as neither really bothered me in Get Back. What I enjoyed in Get Back was all the stuff that they performed incidentally. The stuff that they were TRYING to record was and is a huge bore for me. I don't think any of those songs are much good except LIB and TLAWR and it must have been so boring just playing them over and over. No wonder they got aggro with each other. So I'm tentatively hoping there will be more oldies and jokey songs included as extras because that is the only thing I can get excited about.

What annoyed me the most was hearing them stumbling through Paul's songs without knowing the chords or even the structure. All I ever saw on the Get Back documentary were printed lyrics. Could Paul have not written down the chords for them to follow in some way?

Then again, it might have been part of their process - not writing down things so that they could play them by rote instinctively. I don't know. Seems like a huge time suck to me in rehearsals. George Martin also said that in the White Album they jammed endlessly and that the sessions were mind-numbingly boring for him.

[WOA76]

got laserdisc about 25 years ago and copy DVDR and friend gave the CED Sony version

[beatlesfanfromsop]

If the Let it Be Movie is finally released on DVD/bluray,I hope it has the whole rooftop concert as was apart of Peter Jackson's Get Back documentary,and also has unseen footage.
I still have a Let It Be Movie bootleg VHS copy I bought at the old Acqueduct Flea Market in 1989,
and unfortunately the Acqueduct Flea Market no longer exists.
Mary from the old Bootlegzone reference site years ago mailed me a DVD-R Let It Be Movie
bootleg copy where it constantly changes colors,and it was very nice of her
to mail me it.
Mike

[Lord Reith]

What annoyed me the most was hearing them stumbling through Paul's songs without knowing the chords or even the structure. All I ever saw on the Get Back documentary were printed lyrics. Could Paul have not written down the chords for them to follow in some way?

Then again, it might have been part of their process - not writing down things so that they could play them by rote instinctively. I don't know. Seems like a huge time suck to me in rehearsals. George Martin also said that in the White Album they jammed endlessly and that the sessions were mind-numbingly boring for him.

I think their approach was pretty free form. The composer played it to the others and they just joined in and tried to get something happening. The only account we have of this is jan 69 but I think they always worked that way, especially during the tour years where they had no time to rehearse.

Actually I just thought of another example: the second version of That Means A Lot where they try different rhythms and then give up.

I just can't understand what is going on in January 69. They just play those same songs over and over... what was the point?? Normally they'd just work on the song for one session, then add overdubs at extra sessions, mix it and then forget about it. But Paul seemed determined to drive the songs into the ground and with it the nerves of all the others. The only time they enjoyed themselves is when they stopped doing what they were supposed to be doing. That should have been a huge red flag that something was terribly wrong.

Imagine an alternate timeline where there was no Apple and they just went off and did their own solo projects for a couple of years. Abscence makes the heart grow fonder. Eventually, they'd have wanted to workl together again and we might have had the odd Beatles album every now and then up to the late 70s. People always say, "No, there was no magic left and they would have gone downhill" but that is bollocks as far as I'm concerned. If they'd split up in 1965, people now would be saying "Oh they were running out of steam in Help" and no-one could have imagined they'd do Revolver and Pepper. Likewise, if they'd split at the end of January 69 people would be saying now that they would never have made another decent record, when in fact we got Abbey Road. I think there could have been a lot more Abbey Roads and they should have had more years together than they did. Such a waste.

[snrub]

I just can't understand what is going on in January 69. They just play those same songs over and over... what was the point?? Normally they'd just work on the song for one session, then add overdubs at extra sessions, mix it and then forget about it. But Paul seemed determined to drive the songs into the ground and with it the nerves of all the others. The only time they enjoyed themselves is when they stopped doing what they were supposed to be doing. That should have been a huge red flag that something was terribly wrong.

The point seemed to be that they wanted to get the new songs tight enough to be able to perform a live concert of all new material for their next LP, or at least a live in-studio performance of the perfect take, with no overdubbing.

I've always felt that was a really interesting and ambitious goal, but as you said it resulted in driving everything into the ground. At least we did get three live rooftop performances on the LIB LP. IIRC Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps started out the same way but he did do overdubs later. I wonder if anyone has ever succeeded in releasing a "live" album of all new songs?

[Lord Reith]

I just can't understand what is going on in January 69. They just play those same songs over and over... what was the point?? Normally they'd just work on the song for one session, then add overdubs at extra sessions, mix it and then forget about it. But Paul seemed determined to drive the songs into the ground and with it the nerves of all the others. The only time they enjoyed themselves is when they stopped doing what they were supposed to be doing. That should have been a huge red flag that something was terribly wrong.

The point seemed to be that they wanted to get the new songs tight enough to be able to perform a live concert of all new material for their next LP, or at least a live in-studio performance of the perfect take, with no overdubbing.

I've always felt that was a really interesting and ambitious goal, but as you said it resulted in driving everything into the ground. At least we did get three live rooftop performances on the LIB LP. IIRC Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps started out the same way but he did do overdubs later. I wonder if anyone has ever succeeded in releasing a "live" album of all new songs?

I think the other problem is that they began with only a few fragments of songs and somehow expected that they would write an album's worth of good songs during the process. But you're not likely to come up with good songs when you're spending all day sitting in a cold film set. They needed to be off doing their normal thing to come up with those good song ideas. It was all so regimented and structured that it completely cramped their style. What they actually needed was the complete opposite: a long holiday away from each other.

[snrub]

Very true, we'll never know how much smoother it would have gone if they had shown up more prepared with the new songs. They fell back on that "well, something will happen" philosophy, which did at least give us a fascinating glimpse of how they responded to those challenges.

Now that I think about the concept, George Martin had the idea first when he considered recording their first LP live at the Cavern. It obviously had cover songs and thus would not have been 100% all-new material, but they certainly would have been prepared to bang them out live!

[Jay]

I just can't understand what is going on in January 69. They just play those same songs over and over... what was the point?? Normally they'd just work on the song for one session, then add overdubs at extra sessions, mix it and then forget about it. But Paul seemed determined to drive the songs into the ground and with it the nerves of all the others. The only time they enjoyed themselves is when they stopped doing what they were supposed to be doing. That should have been a huge red flag that something was terribly wrong.

The point was to rehearse the songs until they'd be able to pull them off in front of an audience, which evidently was quite a mountain to climb for them in January 1969. At this point they were used to playing things in bits and pieces in the studio, but hadn't really played together as a foursome since they stopped touring three years earlier. They were incredibly rusty as a band.