The Beatles "Get Back" inspires to "get back" to an analogue world
Peter Jackson's "Get Back" documentary, where we get about 6 hours of footage of the Beatles just songwriting, rehearsing, and working together, is worth the investment. Here's why.
This last weekend, my youngest son (9) saw me watching The Beatles’ documentary, “Get Back” and looked at me and said, “You’re watching The Beatles? Again?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Dad, are you a fan of The Beatles?”
I guess the moment of truth had arrived. I realized I probably needed to admit that I am. I never thought of myself that way, but when I considered it, I’ve listened to all of their albums repeatedly, including much of their solo offerings, and I don’t know of many people who are going to enjoy watching 6+ hours of them rehearsing and writing songs.
Get back to normality
After finishing the documentary and firing up the (just released) remastered film “Let It Be”, the original film in 1970 where all the footage for “Get Back” came from, I wondered why I found it so inspiring and exceptionally relaxing to watch the fab four do their thing. It seemed I kept getting this feeling of ‘normal life’ about it - like those few hours had taken me from the abnormality of my actual life and transported me to something that felt more human and natural.
It may have been because the documentary gets you to peer behind the mythology of The Beatles and see them behaving as ordinary guys punching in for another day at the office. McCartney impressed me the most with his simple passion to just get things done. The artist in me was almost left disappointed that the process wasn’t some deep mystery, but yet made me happy at the same time. While there were many discussions around what the best way forward for the band was, they weren’t spending hours deliberating over guitar tone or whether the organ had the right sound. There were moments, perhaps, of that sort of thing, but it wasn’t as deep as the mythology sometimes suggests. For the most part, they’re just tinkering, enjoying, and adjusting.
But from that, you begin to see the reason why the mythology became what it became. The Beatles come off as very natural at what they do. These days, when recording, there’s all sorts of things you ‘have to do’ to get it right. But The Beatles kind of sit around, singing (yet sounding good) into some taped-up microphones, while their engineers hit ‘record’ and tinker. It seems a whole lot more fun than all the producer Youtube videos I’ve watched over the years.
We live in a day and age where we can call almost any piece of software up to emulate the sounds that The Beatles were capturing on their equipment - and more besides. Compressors, reverbs, delays, automatic-double tracking (ADT - which, by the way, The Beatles invented in the first place), equalizers, more equalizers, impulse response, flangers, amp simulators, guitar emulators. All of it available on a laptop, or even a phone or iPad. We can recreate vintage sounds of any era, basically, and make it believable. We can go beyond the vintage and use auto-tune. Now, even more, A.I. can cook up songs for us in almost any style, and it’s getting better at it. But yet, with all these tools at our fingertips, there is still an element of soul we cannot capture. It’s this element of soul that created the mythology of artists like The Beatles, or The Who, or David Bowie, or Elton John. The late 60s, early 70s, was a period of immense creativity as new recording techniques were discovered, music styles were meshed, and rock ‘n roll matured into a steady artistic movement. One cannot listen to Elton John’s “Rocket Man” and not get a sense of enchantment.
Or perhaps one can if they are Gen Z or Alpha. My youngest son is Alpha, however, and I can tell you he responds to this music in a very interesting way. He doesn’t claim to like it, but when I put it on he pays attention. He pays no attention when I put on, say, 90s music like Pearl Jam, or if I put on Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift (who my two kids dislike with a passion, anyway). In fact, he’ll often ask me if I don’t mind turning that stuff off. The only music my kids will willingly admit to liking is electronic-styled music, or video game or movie soundtracks. “No lyrics or singing, dad,” they will frequently tell me. (I like to imagine it’s auto-tune they’re rebelling against!). With The Beatles, however, my youngest always ends up watching or listening with me, as if there is something about it that he finds immensely interesting.
Get back to analogue
I’ve thought a little harder on why I enjoyed “Get Back” so much, and I think one of the reasons why it feels ‘normal’ and ‘more human’ is because, well, most of it was analogue. The Beatles were not doing their tinkering on a computer screen. They were still interacting with technology - any invention is really ‘technology’ - and they were frequently pioneers, supporters or even inventors of new recording technology. But computers tend to be different. I think it has something to do with feedback and interactivity.
The way computers interact with humans is primarily cerebral. When I say “computers” I mean modern-day electronic devices. The phones in our hands are now computers. Our devices, our computers, are generally designed to provide as much comfort as possible. Keyboards must be quiet. Screens must be crisp. Mouses need to be shaped to the shape of the hand. Phones must be light and easy to hold. I remember when I first worked on a typewriter I was amazed by how my whole body felt like it was involved in the process. I found it a tremendously refreshing experience. I needed to fight a little bit with my Olympia, and this little fight made me feel like I was actually working. I wasn’t just thinking, I was laboring.
It’s ironic that despite all this effort to make our devices comfortable and seamless, so they feel ‘natural’, our devices still feel so unnatural and intrusive. I think that’s because the entire experience is designed for the mind. They are not designed to be ‘tools’ but analytical, information-processing and information-providing, ‘always-on’ machines.
It’s great that I can make so much music, so quickly and much more seamlessly, on my laptop these days. I have a tremendous amount of fun with it. But yet I look at The Beatles with their guitar amps, as the tape engineer pushes big buttons and switches the tape; as the microphones have to be strapped together with duct tape; and I think there’s something in that which possesses soul. It certainly wanted me to get back to being in a band again! There’s a strange magic in these one-purposed, analogue pieces of technology like electric guitars and amps. It seems more natural, more free, even when those tools seemed cumbersome and ‘in the way’. Because it’s as if they weren’t in the way at all but were assisting the human process of making. They were not demanding attention. But our devices, in contrast, with all the engineering to make them seem ‘out of the way’ and sleek and seamless are, in fact, attention-grabbing pieces of wizardry. I find myself wondering: where does the real magic lie? Increasingly, I don’t think it lies in a shiny screen connected to an A.I. chatbot that appears intelligent but hallucinates when pushed. Right now, my wife and I are re-reading Harry Potter together and I realize that some wizards impress with flash, others impress with character. It’s not difficult to figure out which of these two are the good guys.
Yet, at the same time, “Get Back” would not have even been possible without A.I. technology. This makes you realize that it’s perhaps not the wizardry that seems intrusive, but the wizards. It’s not the technology, it’s the industry. It is how Silicon Valley appears to be trying to shape the world today. And perhaps that’s why it’s no wonder that Apple thought it a good idea to create an advert where all the analogue is crushed into the digital.
And it’s no wonder almost everyone hated it. It just doesn’t feel… human.