Let It Be/Get Back 50th Anniversary Releases! (Content and Sound Quality Discussion Only)!

Lets hope.

 

True. BUT it is possible there is not footage of complete takes at the Twickenham sessions. Lindsay-Hogg did not film everything, especially in the early days of January 1969.

 

The whole Get Back project no doubt would have benefited from an informal demo period involving some or all members of the group such that happened with the Esher recordings prior to the White Album sessions. They would have then gone into the project with a good idea already of the material available, and the band members would have already learned the songs to some degree. That they ended up with as much good material as they did with Let it Be under the circumstances is pretty amazing in retrospect...

 

Me too though I believe they were held back for the big payoff later on.

 

I have just finished watching part 1 and have basically ignored this thread since it started being streamed, so I don't know if any of my initial thoughts have already been mentioned by others:

Firstly I absolutely loved it. Although I am a big Beatles fan I haven't really listened to much of the Twickenham bootlegs so it was great to see and listen to them rehearsing and jamming in this episode.

I am not sure that the opening sequence showing their history was necessary, particularly where some parts the screen ratio was stretched. I guess it provided context...

I loved seeing Paul gradually picking the melody for Get Back and building up the song.

I found the way they continued rehearsing after George left really fascinating.

The way it was edited suggests George might have been upset about Paul's comments about 'soft lead guitarists' as George appeared to have face like thunder after that. But I am not going to claim to know what was going through his head....

It is great that they are releasing so much footage, but I could see that 100 minute edit also being useful if I just want to dip my toe in at any point in the future - maybe they could double it up in a release of the original film?

And a purely random thought:
After major Beatles archive releases, Yoko and John's estate usually release something similar - eg after the reissues of the Red and Blue albums we got Lennon Legend. After The Beatles Anthology we got the John Lennon Anthology. After the Sgt Pepper Super Deluxe, we got Imagine Super Deluxe. So are we going to see a 'fly on the wall' documentary of the Imagine sessions (I know a lot of this has already been released, but could see them expanding on it).

 

Spun up the EP last night , and boy was it every phenomenal sounding !

The Glynn Johns mixes are amazing!

I can’t say I’ve ever handled a higher quality pressing in my life.

 

Had to watch part one in two segments, a few interesting moments, some tedious yawn inducing bits too, even nodded off for a couple of minutes, don't think I missed anything.

 

We know there is complete footage of all the takes that have been released on boot because those were all taken from the Nagra reels. There may be some annoying synch tones though. I really expected at least a couple of complete takes, hopefully some are upcoming.

For me John’s detachment and George’s building frustration are the plot threads driving this episode. George says he doesn’t want to perform any of his songs live but quickly changes his tune after coming up with I Me Mine - with John and Yoko dancing being seriously considered as part of the stage show!!

 

George's row with John is not featured in the film. And it won't be, since it should have been on part one.
So maybe that weighed in his decision.

 

It's not there because it never happened. Just another Beatle myth. That's also what's so great about this whole doc series is all the myth-busting involved. Yay Peter Jackson!

 

Really enjoyed part one. Amazing how much those boys smoked back in the day. Paulie hitting the cigars, too. Changed times.....

It's going to be interesting to see how the vibe changes once they move to the Apple basement and Billy arrives.

 

„Yes“ - John Lennon (in „Commonwealth“)



Never heard that song before.

 

Amazing. This has been sustained all through the years. Anyway, I guess we'll never know the real reason why George parted.

 

And when they start smoking pipes too ...

 

Paul's hair is very clean, innit?

 

You know what? You’ve got a real point there.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched DVD’s of say “Hogans Heroes” and it’s WEIRD watching it all the way through without the commercials. Same with football games, I record the Seattle SeaSucks on HDD, and once I edited out the commercials, watched it back and it just didn’t work. Although most of us hate commercials they do serve a purpose.
And I think that today’s episode will turn off a lot of casual fans. Definitely, a different monster then a regular movie
BeaVe

 

What’s a “shire”?
Beave

 

Yeah, I'm 55 minutes into it now and tedious was the word that I came here to report as well. I don't know if this kinda stuff is more interesting to non- musicians who don't have the similar band experience of sitting around working out tunes for hours on end - but even in my amateur experience - this is toooo familiar even if it is on the genius Beatles level. That said, I love the snippets of the old songs they considered resurrecting. And it is somewhat interesting to hear the struggles in working out Don't Let Me Down - for example - and how different the tunes were in their early stages. With so much footage devoted to such workouts, ya wonder when they'll ever get to the classic versions...but I say somewhat interesting as opposed to fascinating. Anywho, I'm in for the long hall and expect I'll have further observations before it's over.

 

I've enjoyed it so far...........and then Yoko started singing.

 

I'm not a hardcore Beatles fan by any means but I'm an hour in and I've really enjoyed it so far.

 

A couple of quick notes after watching the first episode:

The stream on Disney+ looked a lot better than the YouTube clips. Visible grain in the footage!! Did not get that "uncanny valley" plastic skin feeling. The possible blu-ray may be even better. The image is a little soft, but seems okay.

Sound production credits for Giles Martin and sound mixing credits for Giles Martin and Sam Okell. Based on the demix tech that Peter Jackson has been showing in interviews, this makes sense. Peter probably gave Giles and Sam the elements post demix, and let them produce and mix the song portions.

I can't comment more on sound quality. I only listened on my back room mono TV speaker last night when it dropped - midnight PST. Hopefully I can commandeer the big TV once the Thanksgiving parade watching is over.

Side note - I found it super useful to turn the subtitles on. Helps to peel apart the conversations and can be used to identify who's speaking to The Beatles in various scenes, since they add the person's name to the subtitle.

Finally, I had thoughts of having my family watch this, but at 2+ hours, they will not grow old, but they will get bored. I will probably have to excerpt it for them - scan to the highlights. We'll see how that goes.

Cheers,
Paul

 

George steps out and they (instrumentally) start channelling The Who.

 

George Martin said it happened. Was he lying?

 

I wouldn't say lying, perhaps misinformed?