POLING: ‘Get Back’ a mirror of memories

Published 5:00 am Saturday, December 4, 2021

Memories of old friends haunted me while watching “The Beatles Get Back” documentary. Haunted me and filled me with joy. 

To quote a Beatles song that plays no part in the documentary but sums up a recurring bittersweet feeling watching it: “All these places have their moments / With lovers and friends I still can recall / Some are dead and some are living / In my life I’ve loved them all.”

There’s so much for Beatles fans to see and love in the eight-hour documentary of never before released film: 

– George Harrison in the early stages of writing the song “Something” is at a loss for words. He’s got the familiar “Something in the way she moves attracts me like …” John Lennon suggests using a replacement word like “cauliflower” until the actual word is found. George tosses in “pomegranate,” singing “Something in the way she moves attracts me like a pomegranate.”

– The world owes Yoko Ono an apology for a half century of accusations that she broke up the Beatles during these sessions. Yoko knits, reads newspapers, works search-a-word puzzles but never interferes in the recording sessions. She just sits beside John. The future Linda McCartney isn’t as omnipresent as Yoko but she’s in the studio visiting Paul McCartney on a regular basis.

– Billy Preston coming into play keyboards on the album that will be “Let It Be” is like a breath of fresh air.

– John is running late for an early session in the recordings. While waiting with Ringo Starr, Paul finds the early music structure of the song “Get Back.” Watching the creative process is a marvel throughout the documentary. It’s fascinating as a viewer to know the words in advance of the Beatles in these films. Like the George scene with “Something,” while he’s singing “Something in the way she moves attracts me like a pomegranate,” it’s tempting to yell out the eventual lyric, the famous line, “… attracts me like no other lover.”

– The film reveals that Beatles fans have been living with a grim myth for the past half-century. The myth is the band was miserable with each other while recording “Let It Be.” The documentary shows the cracks leading to the band’s break-up in the coming year but there’s nothing grim here. 

“Get Back” highlights a group of great friends who work together like brothers full of jokes, spats, love, resentment, respect and a tenacious chemistry to make unforgettable music – despite the viewers knowledge of the break-up and tragedies ahead.

Director Peter Jackson not only creates a compelling revelation but he’s remastered the footage so the film looks new. Even though it’s 53 years ago, there’s a spontaneity to it, that a viewer may feel like it was filmed yesterday.  

But it wasn’t. In my case, I realized I was not yet 5 years old when the footage was filmed in January 1969 but now I’m 30 years older than the Beatles were when they recorded “Let It Be.” And now so many years later, John has been dead more than 40 years and George has been dead 20 years no matter how immediate the film seems.

And it seems as immediate as memories of our own younger lives. Memories of our own friends who were like brothers or sisters. Friends whom we’ve lost touch with due to time or distance or different ways of thinking or bitter disagreement or an actual break in the bonds of affection. Friends whose minds have left them with no memories of past friendships. Friends who have died. 

But friends who were once encircled in laughter and drama and joy and hour upon hour after hour in the swirl of our lives, in the madness and what we thought would be the longer lasting splendor of our youth. 

Friends with whom we danced and sang and played and worked and cried and shouted and watched over and shared our most secret thoughts, our most secret wishes, our youthful regrets before many of us fully understood what regret could be.  

Friends who live in memories more faded than any film mouldering in a studio basement, more clear and vibrant than any restored footage. But still no matter how immediate and fresh that memory may seem, they are memories as far away as 2000 or 1993 or 1985 or 1978 or 1969.

No matter how much we may wish it, we can’t go back or get back. Even without documentary footage of our past relationships, we are greatly blessed and a little cursed for having the memories, for having lived those experiences and for having those friends who have come and gone.

In my life, I’ve loved them all.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.