The Beatles: Get Back, addendum

I never get tired of writing about The Beatles. So bear with me.

After recently watching Peter Jackson's time-traveling three-part documentary The Beatles: Get Back last week, I felt compelled to add to last week's blog.

There was just too much to process. So much to unpack.

The eight hours of Jackson's video were culled from nearly 60 hours of archived footage taken during The Beatles Let It Be sessions, held at Twickenham Film Studio and Apple headquarters in January 1969 and shot by directer Michael Lindsey-Hogg. The resulting film was a gloomy overview of the eventual breakup of the world's most prodigious band.

Jackson's effort, by contrast, showed The Beatles, at times, joking around, serious and mostly friendly with each other. The Beatles say so themselves in the footage. At least, that's how it came out in the film editing. But I'll take it.

I suspect the truth of their eventual breakup lay somewhere between the two films, released more than 50 years of each other. The one thing we truly gained here was perspective.

There were seminal moments for me in Jackson's work. I'll go through a few of them, as much for myself as for you.

Part 1

• About an hour into Part 1, and four days into the three-week project, we reach what I think is the most remarkable moment of the entire documentary. Paul, George and Ringo are sitting around together, waiting for John to show up. Paul picks up his signature Hofner violin bass and starts strumming a tune that only he can hear hidden in the synapses and axions of his brain. He's playing the bass as if it's a six-string Martin acoustic. Who does that?

A moment later, a melody appears and the beat is catching. Ringo starts hand-clapping a percussion line. George, who was yawning and bored to tears just 60 seconds earlier, picks up his guitar and follows along. We instantly recognize the tune as "Get Back," and already Paul is singing fragments of the lyrics.

Then John finally arrives, picks up his rhythm guitar, and seamlessly jams with the others to a tune he's never heard before.

It's a remarkable moment. The sequence was caught mostly by an overhead camera and, 50 years later, we truly feel like flies on the wall as we watch something special happening. We were granted access to the birth of a new single, created, coaxed and recognizable within two minutes. Two weeks later, The Beatles are playing it on the roof of Apple headquarters in full glory.

• Some of this documentary can be tedious as we listen into banal conversations and bits and pieces of songs from a group that knows it is fraying at the edges. Near the end of Part 1, George has had enough. He's been ignored. Disrespected. He announces that he is leaving the group. It's lunchtime. The others aren't sure what's happening. "See you 'round the clubs" he says and walks away.

In the film's most tender moment, as the group tries to figure out what to do, Paul, John and Ringo get ready to leave for the day. Studio engineers, girlfriends, technicians still linger, but the three come together in an arm-embracing huddle. We can't hear what they're saying, but we see it. The band is making an effort to stay viable in the midst of chaos. As the group begins to splinter, these three may be never closer than this moment.

The background music, as the scene fades to black, is George's "Isn't It A Pity?", which will ultimately end up on his epic All Things Must Pass trilogy. It's a timely lament of sorrow and heartache.

Part 2

• A few minutes into Part 2, Paul and Ringo are both on the verge of tears. George, who left the group on Friday, still hasn't returned. And John is late for Monday's session. John is always late.

Paul briefly touches on the forces pressing in on The Beatles after nearly 13 years together, and he can foresee their demise. John finally arrives in time for lunch, and in a revealing discussion with Paul around a hidden microphone in an arrangement of flowers in the studio canteen, Lennon/McCartney discuss how they've alienated George. It's almost a revelation to them, and they make another effort to get George to return.

• At the 21-minute mark, Ringo comes to work and immediately joins Paul at the Bluthner piano, where they bang out an original off-the-cuff boogie woogie tune together ("I Bought a Piano the Other Day"). I'm stunned because I didn't know Ringo could play the piano. "Lookit that," I said to myself.  "They can all play multiple instruments but can't read a note of sheet music."

• About 40 minutes into Part 2, George is back and the sessions have moved out of Twickenham and into the friendly recording studio in brand-new Apple headquarters on Savile Row. The Beatles are back at work, but there's an energy and a focus that's obviously missing.

Then, in a stroke of serendipity, Billy Preston arrives unannounced just to say hello to some old friends.  A keyboardist who backed Little Richard, Preston knew The Beatles as long ago as 1962. Because the group is now planning a live album, they need a piano player, because as good as The Beatles are, none of them can play guitar and piano at the same time. Would you like to have a go, Billy?

Billy sits down at an electric piano and immediately joins in with the others to "I've Got a Feeling" as if he's known the song all his life. He makes all the difference. Paul smiles. John smiles. The documentary smiles, and the new energy Preston creates carries the film all the way to the end.

"You're in the group," John tells Billy.

Part 3

• The opening sequence has Ringo back at the piano, working on a tune called "Octopus's Garden," which eventually shows up on the Abbey Road album.

Ringo is stuck and George comes over to help. It's a memorable moment as we see another song taking shape.

• But the final segment is building toward the famous rooftop concert, which covers the final 40 minutes or so of the documentary. It's amazing. And it's not really a concert, either. But it is their last performance as The Beatles, and Jackson gives us all of it, for the first time, from start to finish.

There's just enough time to knock out 10 tunes, all in bitingly cold weather. But it's more like a rehearsal. "Get Back" is played three times. "Don't Let Me Down" and "I've Got A Feeling" each are played twice. Also included in the set are "One After 909," "Dig A Pony," and an instrumental of "God Save the Queen." The last few songs are played in the presence of the police, who are responding to a noise complaint. The bobbies are unfailingly polite, but confused. How do you arrest the United Kingdom's greatest musical export for noise disturbance?

And then it's over.