'The Beatles: Get Back' (2021)

That End Of An Era, Half A Century Ago

Thanks to this lousy Covid infection I had the time to sit through the 3 part documentary put together by Peter Jackson. As with any historic document from the era, the power to evoke the era's ambience is powerful. There was even one moment Paul McCartney mentions the 1968 Hong Kong Flu pandemic, and somehow that felt really quant.  

I have a soft spot for all the stuff in the film. The Beatles, the 1960s, the equipment, the look of the fashion, the mood on the streets, the cars, the ambience. All of it. So it's a relatively easy thing to take it all in but I do wonder how much of this would make sense to somebody who grew up with the internet and mobile phones. They try calling John but his phone remains off the hook. They sort of give up on phoning him - no messages are left. What kind of technological Dark Ages were they doing this in?

Jokes aside, the overall elegiac feeling is that the 1960s are coming to a close, like it or lump it. Somewhere on the horizon is the feeling that The Beatles just can't keep going on. They don't see the drama that is about to engulf the management of the band and their company, Apple Corps. All of that is in their future; for the present, they are trying to play themselves into shape for an unknown outcome. 

What's Good About It

The documentary delivers a pretty comprehensive account of how the Beatles worked, and captures a vast trove of communication between the members. It is not clear for a long time if the Beatles are heading towards any particular outcome beyond doing another album, but as the episodes progress, there is an accelerating feel of cohesion that climaxes on the rooftop concert.

We get a pretty good view of the side players like Glynn Johns, Mal Evans, George Martin, and their respective roles in keeping The Beatles functioning. Mostly, it is the nuanced dynamic of the members that we come to understand, and it blows away all the conjectured theories about why The Beatles broke up, that have plagued us since the day they split up. The story is a lot more nuanced than that - and in some ways very difficult to articulate. To see the interpersonal dynamic between these people was priceless.

What's Bad About It

It's really long. I wondered if it really was worth sitting through the 3rd jam on 'Blue Suede Shoes'. 

It could have been chopped into 6 parts and still been equally compelling. I had to stop each episode somewhere in the middle just to get a rest and have a think about what I was watching. 

Peter Jackson must have an elephant's bladder. 

What's Interesting About It

All of it is interesting if you like the Beatles. I imagine it's a weird kind of torture if you don't. My significant other couldn't possibly sit through all of this because she does not like the Beatles at all. But if you're a fan, this series is a must. 

It's basically a story of how The Beatles pull out an album's worth of material in under a month - with a week missing in there because George quits at the end of week 2. It's impressive how quickly they work up the outline of the material but equally impressive is how they spend long days honing the arrangements and working out the harmonies. We know where the end point is and how the songs go and for the vast majority of the time we see those songs in a very loose state as they feel their way towards a solid arrangement.

Some of the songs are not quite right as they close out rehearsals the day before the rooftop concert, but miraculously, the versions with which we are so familiar, manifest themselves on the winter rooftop. It's so weird to see through to the Beatles' music in the hot molten state back through the history reification that has taken place to their music. 

Yoko Ono, International Woman Of Mystery

Yoko does stick out. Apart from the wives and girlfriends, the inner circle surrounding the Beatles is pretty blokey. Billy Preston turns up and his blackness is in stark contrast to the essential whiteness of London 1969. That was the world then, and therefore all the more reason why it is so strange to see Yoko Ono in that space.

There's a funny bit where Linda brings in her daughter Heather who watches Yoko do her scream thing in an impromptu jam. I'm sure it adds fuel for the people who want another reason to hate on Yoko. The next thing you know, Heather is copying Yoko's screams into the microphone. It's delightful, charming and funny.  

In most part she seems to sit there quietly taking it all in, reading her Japanese magazines. With everything going in the series, it's abundantly clear that the Beatles did not split up because Yoko turned up. 

Take These Broken Wings And Learn To Fly

A wag out there on the internet made the observation that the problem with The Beatles at this point in their career is that McCartney is trying to do a dress run for Wings, and the other members simply do not want to be subjected to this project. It's funny, but also a bit unfair. We can clearly see George is chafing under Paul's hectoring instructions because he has his own creative needs that are burgeoning quickly. At the same time we see John is drifting deeper into Yoko and drugs, politics and activism. Keeping the Beatles together is a Herculean task of the will. It is clear by the effort McCartney puts in that Wings, which follows the demise of The Beatles is his second option given he cannot keep The Beatles going.

The truly amazing thing about the Beatles between 1967 and 1970 might be how much good stuff they manage to produce. There's Sgt Peppers, followed by Magical Mystery Tour. Then there's the magnum opus of 1968, The White Album; and all the while they are producing enough single to fill yet another disc of its own (which got released as 'Hey Jude' in America) and then the Let it Be sessions followed by Abbey Road. That's 7 discs in 3 years 6 months. It might be the most productive 3 years and 6 months of any band ever. 

After their break up, the respective Beatles keep the pace up until about 1982. John Produces 7 albums, 5 of which take place between 1970 and 1975 plus Double Fantasy and his posthumous Milk & Honey. Paul produces 11 albums up until 1982's 'Tug of War'. He does more after that but it doesn't seem to belong to the same creative impulse after 1982. George produces 7 albums 9 discs up to 1982's 'Gone Troppo'. Even Ringo produces 8 albums up to 1981. It's a lot of work, and you have to figure if they tried doing it as The Beatles, they would have been pumping out double albums every year between 1970 and 1982 or so. 

Granted, not even half of it is good, but it is still a lot of music. It's easy to argue contractual obligations and grubby commercial incentives led to this overproduction, but it highlights the extraordinary nature of the Let it Be sessions for what they were, a band at the peak of their powers grinding out the hits. It's an inside look at the sausage factory of the best band of the 1960s doing their thing - and we are grateful to be able to witness so much of it.  

The Smallness Of Rock History

Because I grew up in the era, Rock music seemed like it was this gigantic social artistic phenomenon and movement. Of course, this might have been overstated. Rock goes from Chuck Berry and Elvis to the debut of the Beatles in a mere 7 years. Then the Beatles define recorded music with their own stamp for 7 years. Afterwards, it is a short 5-6 years until Punk emerges and from there it is a short 3 years before New Wave. When you consider the longevity of a band like The Foo Fighters today, you sort of have to marvel at the how quickly Rock music's market and target demographics moved through the genre. 

At each juncture, rock added an extra digit of global fans. Rock music had tens of thousands in the early days. That became hundreds of thousands during the Sixties, and then became millions in the maturation phase. This compounding growth of its fans clouds our appreciation of what The Beatles were to their peers as well as fans in real time, through the 1960s. Today the music landscape cannot encompass a fan base as broad and deep as The Beatles commanded. This series goes a long way to casting some light on the breadth and depth of their impact. 

The Beatles And Reification

If one thing works to the disadvantage of the music by The Beatles today, it is that through 60 years of their music being in the public sphere has led to a fixing of meaning. The people know the catalogue well have had so much time to settle upon the personal meaning of these songs. Those who do not know the catalogue well are confronted by a gigantic cultural icon replete with generational zeitgeist of sometime in the middle of the last century. What this means is that it is actually quite hard to have a fresh, fluid vantage point on the meaning of The Beatles' song catalogue. The entirety of the project has become fixed in the public consciousness like World War II or Seinfeld.

As such, it is interesting to be confronted by alternative readings of the famous songs as they are being worked up. Suddenly the meaning of a song like Get Back is not fixed in our minds on the basis of having heard it for 50-odd years. It is a song that is seeing a dynamic process of creation unfolding in front of us. What this presents is an opportunity - a rare one at that - to remove ourselves from our own sense of the reified art that surrounds our perception of The Beatles' work. 

In that light, the documentary series is interesting in its ability to undo some of the reification that has taken place over the decades. I'm sure the marketing machine will think of new ways to re-package The Beatles and sell it to us all over again, but this might be the last time they find anything actually fresh and unexpected - and for that this series deserves more than a little commendation. 

  

What You've Got

When The Love Gets Too Old

Johnny Depp is back in the courts fighting his ex-wife Amber Heard. I don't really keep track of it but the headlines have a way of dancing into view. Based on what I'm reading Amber seems like a real piece of work but also, Johnny was a fool to believe this nut job woman was the right woman for him. On one level, I sort of sympathise because if you're a guy, you kind of let things just happen and trust in yourself to make things right. It's only natural - the extent you can believe in a natural with this kind of thing. 

One of my friends Quincy is getting a divorce. It's suddenly blown up this past week and his wife is talking lawyers and getting papers drawn up. It doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun. Maybe there was a fundamental difference in not just outlook but beliefs as well. It's been crazy with the pandemic and maybe they spent too much time in each other's company and they're both sick of one another. That's not exactly surprising. Fortunately they don't have kids so it's not like they've got that to fight over.

His ex-wife-to-be Rhonda seems pretty relaxed about it all, now that she's getting a divorce. Maybe she's been feeling like this was a long time coming. It's hard to say. Quincy is complaining that she's making him out to be the bad person and that's why they're getting a divorce. Knowing the arguments they've had in the last few years, I can't say that Quincy is without some modicum of guilt in the way things have transpired. They're being mean to one another because they're unhappy with the way things are. What can they do if counselling hasn't worked?

Oh yes, the counselling. Quincy has described it as an opportunity for Rhonda and the counsellor to gang up on him every session. 

"Every session! Like I'm some kind of abusive psycho villain!"

The thing is, Quincy will be out in the wide world in no time, probably looking to hook up with somebody. It's probably for the best anyway because he'd always grumble about how they missed their boat for having kids and all they had to look forward to was old age with cats. Maybe he'll manage to find a woman who can give him kids, even at this stage of his life. I myself would not want to do that, but he actually sounds game. 

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Dinosaur Remains On The Moon

Speaking Of Dinosaurs...

I've had COVID-19. No it wasn't my very own personal extinction event because here I am typing this stuff. 

Anyway, as I started to recover bit by bit, I had this hazy bit of time where I could sit upright but do not much more than watch stuff. And I would be like that only because after 3 days of laying flat on my back in bed, my whole back got sore. So it was better to sit up at the computer and watch something - and that is how I came to watch the entire 3 episodes of 'The Beatles: Get Back'. 

I'll try and write more about it in the coming days but the short version is it's like wading through unedited footage in parts, even though Peter Jackson cut it down from something like 60 hours of raw footage. Because it was Peter Jackson, it could only come down to 8 hours something, which seems to be the duration to which Jackson makes his magnum opuses. 

Do I love it? Parts of it, yes. Do I hate it? Maybe the parts where they interminably work out material and then go in disjointed jams on covers. It's clearly about the extending and exploring the process The Beatles had in creating their material, but at the same time it could've been a punchy 3 hours and we'd be no less enlightened to the vibe. The most moving bit is the rooftop concert because suddenly they come into focus under the glare of the public, and they play really tight after spending 8 hours of the documentary not really getting it together. 

Anyway, I'll write more on it in another entry. For now, I just feel like I've seen the very dinosaur remains on the moon as postulated. 

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Cosmic Orphans

Sunken Dreams In The Black Sea 

The amazing news of the last day or two is how the Russians had to concede they lost their flagship, the Moskva. At first they said they had a fire near the armoury and the ammunition blew up. Then it came up that the Ukrainians managed to successfully launch a missile at the ship and this had caused major damage. The Russians flatly denied it had been attacked, but conceded it had been sunk later on. Which is to say, they were happy to admit they were incompetent over admitting that they had in fact lost their flagship to a country with no significant navy. Their flagship went down without exchanging fire with any other ship, its demise resembling more of a gangland hit than say, Battle of Trafalgar. 

And now the Black Sea Fleet is down to 10 ships. For some reason I thought of Admiral Nikoai Nebogatov. The Russians really suck at this war thing. 

Panspermia

We are all cosmic orphans, if you believe the theory of panspermia. 

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Social Media Turned Us Into Rats

Hungry Rats At That

It's true. Social media turns us into hungry rats. Especially if you pay attention to who is disliking what or how a post is getting responses. Influencers might be the worst variety of social media junky one could become. 

The fractious nature of public discourse following the events of 2016 sort of paints a picture where a whole bunch of us who are on social media are in turn incredibly vulnerable to being manipulated by bad faith actors. When you look at the fact that Facebook essentially allowed itself to be the implement of choice for an outfit like Cambridge Analytica (special emphasis on the Anal there), who were in turn paid by Vladimir Putin to fuck with the UK vote on Brexit and the US Presidential election which led to the Trump Administration, tells you enough about how little social media companies think of the average punter. In some ways they don't even care about the politics or how they look in light of all this as long as Congress can be talked out of regulating social media as a media industry. 

So that's on one side, and here we are tapping on our bloody mobile phone apps liking and laughing and whatever else responses they give, and handing over gobs and gobs of data - and all the while our brains are impoverished by the cumulative experience of just being on social media. It really isn't a fair exchange. They sort of have you over a barrel in the sense that, with some people, social media is the only way with which to keep in touch. It's a frightening world that we've allowed ourselves to build. The conscious architect really balls-ed up that one. 

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Grieving Stages

When My Friend Went Wonky

You don't really notice your friends sliding down into alcoholism. You notice them drinking heavier than at other times, or you might notice them drinking at odd hours that most people would not. Sometimes you might notice they're mixing their alcohol with meds and that might be disturbing. 

By the time my friend was identified with having full-on alcoholism and alcohol dependency, he was well and truly too deep into it. The diagnosis as such came years and years too late. I blamed myself for not saying earlier that their drinking was a problem - but then it would have fallen on deaf ears. Once somebody is deep into that vortex, the last thing they listen to is their friend saying maybe they should lay off the turps. And so you tend to lose your friends to their addiction, even if you want to lend them a hand. I imagine people who lose their friends and family to other things like opioids would be much worse. Interventions don't help because they're addicted to opium and that's the toughest thing out there. 

In the end you lose them and you go through the grieving stages to come to terms with the loss - even if they didn't exactly die. They might still be alive, but you nonetheless journey through the grieving stages. I can be disconcerting as you negotiate your anger and resentment as well as attempts to negotiate with the reality. It really is no fun at all. 

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Is Our Galaxy In A Bubble?

We're Most Certainly In A Housing Bubble, Though 

Well, everything looks to be in a bubble on some level. One of the more encouraging things during all the lockdowns was how science kept progressing. One had to be surprised at how quickly they put together effective vaccines against the original strain. It's a shame the Omicron variant sort of watered down the effectiveness of the vaccines, but it was pretty amazing all the same. If this whole thing had happened a decade earlier, I doubt we would have been able to work fro him so effectively, and we sure wouldn't have been able to come out of the lockdowns with a modicum of confidence without the vaccines. 

In light of that, you take note that maybe the very galaxy we live in, is inside some kind of bubble. The information seems to be a metaphor for our state of being in lockdown. 

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20th Century Rocket Boy

Getting Away With Mass Murder

The news out of Ukraine regarding the reclaimed township of Bucha is beyond the pale.  

In response Russia has claimed is that it's all fake news and we should be examining our own conscience. That one's pretty laughable because I living in country that tears itself apart over whether one its great war heroes might in fact be a psychopathic war criminal. Next to what Russia has been doing in Ukraine, it's arguable our conscience is white as bleached toilet paper before use compared to the shit they're carrying around in their lives in the Russian leadership.

So Joe Biden has since again labelled Vladimir Putin a war criminal - and by modern definitions, he would most certainly fit the accusation. The thing is, he's also hiding behind a wall of nukes in one of the most paranoid dictatorships on par with the one in Pyongyang. 

The thing is, we can accuse Putin of war criminality all we like. If we can't bring him to justice, it's all kind of pointless. There are clear signs we still have to negotiate with this sociopath if we want to get to peace, and he's going to push every lever and button to get what he wants to let us get to that peace. Even when we get the peace we want, we would not be able to bring him to justice as things stand. 

So what good is any of it? It just goes to prove that the notion of war criminality is the justice of victors. If you can do it and win, you will get away with it as surely as Vladimir Putin will. 

It's a sucky kind of world, but them's the breaks. 

When The Lights Go Out

Somewhere in the pandemic, Chuck Yeager passed away. He was 97 and its wasn't from COVID-19 so it's not like he was cut down before his time. It was a full and eventful life with plenty of achievements. Frankly, I was a little surprised he was still around even for most of 2020. 

There's still the weird romanticism for the early pioneers of space. It is kind of cool to be a test pilot that straps into a rocket plane and breaks the sound barrier. It's a weirdly optimistic moment in history, even as the Cold War hangs nuclear weapons over everybody's heads. If you want nihilism, there was plenty of that to go around in the 1980s, but a generation before that, there was still this buzz for the technological achievements and accomplishments of these figures. Chuck Yeager was somebody you learned about in books, if nothing else to get to put a name and a face on the Bell X-1.

And just like that with his passing another piece of 20th century sort of fades out of view. We're already 1/5th of the way into the 21st Century, and in several years' time it would be a quarter of the way in. The 20th Century fades from the rear view every day, but it seems worthwhile to remember the old excitement of that glistening age of early rocketry. It was a very different kind of ball game to Elon Musk and Space X. 

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Running With Scissors

Once Upon A Time in Sydney... 

Back in the 1980s when we didn't have anything like the internet, we really had to make our own entertainment. This is why we formed bands or formed up in groups to go watch movies together or played Dungeons and Dragons. It's what we did in those days and it wasn't even particularly cool.  

We were probably an earnest, callow bunch in most respects, and we seemed to do a lot of driving around at night.  Looking back on it, it seems incredibly dumb but also quite energetic. We were full of beans and we'd drive around, just cruising and talking about things - deep and meaningful things as we used to call them - and generally kill time waiting to be entertained in some way. I think about it now and most of my memories of those times are night time jams and conversations and games and pizza parlours. 

Phil, who is a respected doctor now, used to have this Alfa Sud. He knew how to drive it too because he grew up in one of those wealthy families that let their kids race go-karts so he had this racer's instinct for taking corners hard. I remember sitting in the passenger seat as he drove me home in the middle of the night with nobody else on the road, the Alfa Sud engine roaring through the leafy 'burbs. It was pretty anti-social when I think about it now; but also a kind of quintessential Gen-X experience.  

Phil looks after dying people now in palliative care. He sure doesn't drive like that today. 

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Making Meat On Mars

Perils Of Space Colonisation

The lockdown thing was very much like living in your very own Biosphere 2 experiment. And pretty much true to form we mostly stayed in with the occasional 'cheat' moment where we gave ourselves excuses to go to the shops. Otherwise, there was a lot of Doomscrolling headlines. Put it down to the pandemic and watching markets go haywire. 

I think I also watched a lot of 'The Expanse'. That's a show that really makes you reconsider whether you really want to go outing deep space just to make a mundane living. I mean, being an astronaut's only great if you get the celebrity, as amply demonstrated by the Mercury Seven in 'The Right Stuff'. By the time everybody is in space doing that space suit EVA thing and living on microwaved meal packs, there's not going to be anywhere near the glamour going around - but the food is likely going to really suck. 

In light of that you have to feel for the future space explorers eating stuff that tastes totally disconnected from what food is on their native planet. Meat, would be an absolute luxury unless you had the technology to weave it out of simple carbon compounds. Sure enough if you Doom Scroll long enough you can find this story about an Israeli outfit trying to synthesis meat, in preparation for the day colonists will be on Mars. They've even done early tests in space. 

It's amazing what can be done when people put their minds to it.  

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