The Beatles - Get Back (1969, 2021)

(This is a special record review.)

Peter Jackson's Disney + documentary on the Beatles' January 1969 Get Back sessions changed a lot of minds on how those sessions played out - we now know they were not the dismal, despondent affair that the Beatles themselves remembered them to be.  But no amount of historical revisionism and 20/20 hindsight can change my verdict on the original attempt producer Glyn Johns made at making an album out of the sessions.  It's still a mess.

Johns, who engineered the original Get Back sessions that led to the Let It Be album that Phil Spector ultimately wrought, tried to make an LP out of the sessions in the spring of 1969 and concentrated on playing up the Beatles' rough edges - "warts and all," as it were.  He hoped to capture the relaxed nature of the sessions and preserve the feel of the original recordings, which were mostly recorded live, with as few overdubs and edits as possible.  Having circulated for decades as a bootleg, Johns' Get Back album has always been revered by Beatles fans who were displeased with Spector's efforts, but in actuality, there's little to recommend of it.  I have the bootleg, and EMI and Apple have made the original Get Back LP available in the new Let It Be box set and on YouTube, professionally remixed for the digital age.  Even after hearing the new remix of Get Back, though, I still don't get why so many Beatles fans prefer it to Let It Be.

The sound quality is the best asset of the Johns album; Johns went the extra mile to get an authentic, rootsy sound that is mostly lacking from Spector's Let It Be.  My big problem with Get Back is the choice of takes of the songs.  While Spector used more of the takes from the rooftop performance of January 30, 1969 and from the studio performance of the following day, Johns opted for earlier, unformed takes from earlier in the sessions.  Earlier recordings of "Dig a Pony" and "I've Got a Feeling" thus sound as unprofessional and sloppy as you might imagine, with flubbed lyrics and unnecessary improvisations.  An earlier recording of "Two Of Us" struggles with a slightly lower tempo and some disconcerting hesitation, and after hearing a longer, fuller version of "Dig It" here, I'm ever more grateful that Spector kept his remix to fifty seconds.  And while Johns' remix of the "The Long And Winding Road" - using the same take Spector used - is free of a Mantovani-style orchestra (this mix also appeared on Anthology 3), the better performance of this song remains the one seen in the original Let It Be movie (which made its debut on disc on Let It Be . . . Naked).      

Johns' inclusion of tune-ups, false starts and studio banter are just as distracting as those on Spector's Let It Be - more so, in fact, because Johns uses more of them.  It gets to be a distraction that diminishes even the better musical performances.  The takes Johns includes throws in some cross-talking, most annoyingly notable with John Lennon's disparagingly improvised square-dance lyric in Paul McCartney's "Teddy Boy," a song that didn't even make the final cut in either the Let It Be movie or on the album.  (And for good reason: It's not one of Paul's best.  It ended up on his first solo LP.)  A medley of an improvised instrumental with a brief cover of the  Drifters' "Save the Last Dance For Me" piques interest, but its over so quickly that you're left wondering why the Beatles couldn't follow though on a promising idea. 

Among the highlights of Get Back is its only rooftop track, "The One After 909," which is a lot more vivid than Spector's remix of the same take.  Johns also excelled with his mix of George Harrison's "For You Blue," as it uses the original vocal track and not the one George overdubbed later.  You can really hear "the warmth and freshness of a live performance" here that Spector's LP promised but rarely delivered.  But the ragged, demo-style quality of Get Back is tiresome and makes it sound like the Beatles didn't care what got put out in their name.  Except that they did; the Beatles rejected this album twice, even after Johns revised it by adding okay but undistinguished remixes of "Across the Universe" and "I Me Mine." 

No, Get Back is not the great lost treasure of the Beatles' January 1969 sessions.  It means well as an album that tries to present the Beatles in a more intimate and relaxed setting, but it doesn't do well in presenting the best elements of their music.  Spector doesn't get off the hook, though; Let It Be may be more presentable, but it suffers from its own deficiencies.  As for Get Back, Johns may have produced an album closer to the Beatles' original "live" idea and with a greater sense of consistency, but it depicts the Beatles not as a band rediscovering their roots but as a lackadaisical rock group going through the motions.  Inadvertently, it depicts Glyn Johns as a lackadaisical producer doing the same.