The Get Back: Beatles

by Eva Ruiz, John Harris (Editor), Ethan Russell (Photographer)

Paperback

Published October 11, 2021

Reviews

[Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Beatles: Get Back” (2021).

I saw the Peter Jackson 3 part Get Back edited series and loved every minute of it. I just read the book version. I’m not from the UK (I’m in the US) so sometimes their accents would confuse me so it really helped reading it to grasp it all. My quick overview of the band members is: Paul-Great at writing, great at organizing everyone. Great sense of humor and tried to please everyone best he could. Could play bass, a bit of guitar and excellent on piano. John-Happy to be a Beatle, easy to get along with, eager to please Paul, excellent song writer. Excellent guitar player. Fantastic sense of humor. George-Getting tired of being a Beatle at this point. Shy. Excellent song writer and great on guitar. Tended to vote against most everything. (Did not want to play on the roof concert) Ringo-Shy, quiet. Eager to please Paul. Excellent sense of humor. Wrote more songs than most people remembered. Better drummer that he was credited for. He could/can also play the piano.

Amazing what they could do together. Pulling songs out of thin air. This book is loaded with excellent photos from Ethan Russell and Linda McCarthy! (Plus a ton of images pulled from the 57 hours of footage) She was an accomplished photographer before she met Paul. She was the first female photographer to have a cover she shot on Rolling Stone magazine. Etc.

The only horrible part of the film (you can’t hear the book) was when the band were just having fun and Yoko Ono was “singing”. It’s definitely the worst sounds ever recorded. It’s just howling.

This book is for anyone that enjoyed The Beatles and wanted more! Watch Get Back on Disney+.

[Patrick Barritt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Xmas present from Will,God bless him! Heavy old hardback with lots of pictures and basically the transcript of the conversations from the Get Back project. As I am borderline obsessed with the Beatles and in particular cannot listen to George Harrison's music often enough I loved the book and went through it pretty quickly. Did not learn anything new but to spend time reading the chats between such close friends who are also casually making the most magical music was a joy. I may not read it cover to cover again for a while but am glad to have it to look at every now and then.

[John Russo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting companion book to the Peter Jackson movie. The book is the dialogue from a month of the Beatles working in January 1969. I think the movie is more positive than the book which shows their frailty and lack of confidence factor discussing whether to do a live concert in front of an audience after not performing live since 1966. Ringo did not want to go abroad. George seemed to not want to perform. Paul was gung ho. John seemed for and against. In the end, the compromise was playing live on the rooftop but really without the audience that a concert venue would have. George had the great idea that he had a lot of material to record and couldn’t they record separately and come back as a group at times. Too bad this never happened. John was immersed with Yoko bringing her with him to the studio every day. Who does that in real life bringing their wife to their work where she is not a worker? Billy Preston seemed to invigorate the group in his sessions with them. I’ve loved the Beatles since 1964 so I did enjoy this insider story. Funny how they took days and weeks to create songs when back in 1962-64, they could record an album in a day or two. But they really evolved in those eight years. What a diverse catalog of music that still amazes me.

[Vivian Zenari · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the Beatles, and I love this account of musicians at work