Originally published: . Volume 13, No. 6. Source pages: 2.
For my 70th birthday, our son and daughter-in-law gave me a copy of “Get Back,” the nearly six-hour documentary about The Beatles, who, in 1969, launched an effort to regain their energy and creativity. The group decided to write and record an album at a breakneck pace and build toward a live performance, their first together in years. I knew the story, and remember the events well. The Beatles were breaking up after their mega success of the 60s. While most of this film is a fly-on-the-wall view of how the group produces music, the storyline of the documentary jumps when George Harrison, the introvert, walks out, collapsing the whole project. We watch the group dynamics while Paul McCartney, conscientious and structured, pushes for productivity and deadline. John Lennon is engaging and creative, but always late and with Yoko Ono persistently attached at his elbow. Ringo Starr is steady, agreeable, and flexible. The four try to work through an exhausting schedule of creating 14 new songs and prepare for a live performance.
It was fascinating to watch these young geniuses create their music, magically connecting sounds with words and words with sounds, as if from thin air. The synergy and creativity is supported by each in his own way. They move forward like sculptors, sometimes starting with pure inspiration. Sometimes starting as if with a block of granite and painstakingly carving away everything that does not fit their vision. Aside from this intimate perspective, another payoff for watching hours of these interesting men chatting, smoking cigarettes, fretting, and horsing around with each other, was the "rooftop concert." At first, mostly to appease Paul’s wish to do something different, the group agrees to perform on their rooftop in London. We watch as people emerge from offices and shops to listen, on the street below and on the other rooftops, leaning on chimneys in the blistering cold. We are told that this was the last time the Beatles would perform together in public. I knew this already but was hit by a sad nostalgia. The 60s belong to me. The Beatles exerted a bi-directional influence, both created by, and leading the 60s, as if from the rooftop, heard but not always seen, reflecting and creating a message. The sheer numbers of Boomers in their adolescence helped create the sexual revolution, women’s liberation, and dramatic changes in the music industry. The open, humanitarian ideology fueled the civil rights movement. The cultural needle was moved, a culture with the confidence to put a man on the moon. I was there when the Beatles were televised on Ed Sullivan, I was there when the KKK burned a cross on our yard, and I was there when LSU let women wear jeans instead of the mandatory skirt. Cultural boundaries oscillate naturally. They zigzag through history, open then closed, closed then open. Partly genetic, partly environmental, always complex. Only later, from the rooftop, can we more clearly see if we made good use of it.
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