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  1. #26
    Haven’t finished it, as I’m slammed with holiday stuff and I want to be able to actually sit down. But I have thoroughly enjoyed diving back in.

    I am a serious fan, but not a super fan, (haven’t seen everything/heard everything ever released). I didn’t know about the “naked” remasters of let it be Album until Rick Beato pointed them out. Those versions of let it be and long and winding road have been some of the best finds for me personally. Never really enjoyed/understood those tunes in the original album versions.

    I also really enjoyed the making-of interviews and documentaries with Peter Jackson etc on YouTube. Rick beato’s Is great.

    My biggest takeaways from the film so far:

    This material does a lot to reconcile the seemingly contradictory ideas that Yoko ruined everything or that the band was mostly OK with her. Both of these seem to make more sense in this context and can kind of live together.

    It really confirms the fact that we mostly don’t remember things clearly from the past, the way we think we do. There have been a lot of studies on this regarding recollections for courtroom testimony etc and it’s a neuroscience thing that’s pretty well-established I guess. Anyway, the whole thing was surprisingly more POSITIVES than I ever would’ve thought. In a lot of ways, it seems we remember things mostly through pictures etc. I’d imagine that the original let it be film had BECOME their memory of events in a lot of ways.

    It’s just an overall great insight into the creative process for a lot of us “normals”. To me, this film feels like I kind of analog in video form for the kind of vibe I got from reading Bob Dylan’s Chronicles. (That book is so nonlinear, in a lot of ways stream of consciousness, and I think if you described it to me verbally, I would’ve said it’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t be interested in reading.) Anyway, I was very surprised at how much I really liked that format, and the same is true with this film.

    I just love all of the new audio/video. Crazy amount of unseen footage, at least this quality or these mixes. Reminded me of my unforeseen awe At the new mixes I got to hear when I got Beatles rock band for my kids back in 2009. (By the way, if you’re a super fan and you’ve never played all the instruments and Vox on that game, you haven’t heard all of the mixes. :-). Just saying.)

    The technology used in creating the the film itself is fascinating. Check out Peter Jackson’s interviews where he talks about the machine learning that was used to extract multiple tracks out of the original mono audio tapes, and even extract inaudible dialogue etc. It’s pretty fascinating in and of itself.

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  3. #27

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    Quote Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
    Haven’t finished it, as I’m slammed with holiday stuff and I want to be able to actually sit down. But I have thoroughly enjoyed diving back in.

    I am a serious fan, but not a super fan, (haven’t seen everything/heard everything ever released). I didn’t know about the “naked” remasters of let it be Album until Rick Beato pointed them out. Those versions of let it be and long and winding road have been some of the best finds for me personally. Never really enjoyed/understood those tunes in the original album versions.

    I also really enjoyed the making-of interviews and documentaries with Peter Jackson etc on YouTube. Rick beato’s Is great.

    My biggest takeaways from the film so far:

    This material does a lot to reconcile the seemingly contradictory ideas that Yoko ruined everything or that the band was mostly OK with her. Both of these seem to make more sense in this context and can kind of live together.

    It really confirms the fact that we mostly don’t remember things clearly from the past, the way we think we do. There have been a lot of studies on this regarding recollections for courtroom testimony etc and it’s a neuroscience thing that’s pretty well-established I guess. Anyway, the whole thing was surprisingly more POSITIVES than I ever would’ve thought. In a lot of ways, it seems we remember things mostly through pictures etc. I’d imagine that the original let it be film had BECOME their memory of events in a lot of ways.

    It’s just an overall great insight into the creative process for a lot of us “normals”. To me, this film feels like I kind of analog in video form for the kind of vibe I got from reading Bob Dylan’s Chronicles. (That book is so nonlinear, in a lot of ways stream of consciousness, and I think if you described it to me verbally, I would’ve said it’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t be interested in reading.) Anyway, I was very surprised at how much I really liked that format, and the same is true with this film.

    I just love all of the new audio/video. Crazy amount of unseen footage, at least this quality or these mixes. Reminded me of my unforeseen awe At the new mixes I got to hear when I got Beatles rock band for my kids back in 2009. (By the way, if you’re a super fan and you’ve never played all the instruments and Vox on that game, you haven’t heard all of the mixes. :-). Just saying.)

    The technology used in creating the the film itself is fascinating. Check out Peter Jackson’s interviews where he talks about the machine learning that was used to extract multiple tracks out of the original mono audio tapes, and even extract inaudible dialogue etc. It’s pretty fascinating in and of itself.
    I agree with everything said, but as was pointed out above the director as an editor has an incredible amount of control in the vantage point he/she presents to the audience. Jackson's POV is probably better than Lindsay-Hogg's, i.e., more "accurate," but it's a manufactured view nonetheless.

    That is true about memory though. (Cf Errol Morris amazing documentary works.) For example, after going through a divorce, I have a hard time seeing the marriage as anything other than a slog, though I know objectively that wasn't true.

    I will have to relisten to the Glyn Johns' mix. I have the Naked CD, but TBH I find the songs like LAWR missing something without all the Phil Spector additions.

  4. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
    I agree with everything said, but as was pointed out above the director as an editor has an incredible amount of control in the vantage point he/she presents to the audience. Jackson's POV is probably better than Lindsay-Hogg's, i.e., more "accurate," but it's a manufactured view nonetheless.

    That is true about memory though. (Cf Errol Morris amazing documentary works.) For example, after going through a divorce, I have a hard time seeing the marriage as anything other than a slog, though I know objectively that wasn't true.

    I will have to relisten to the Glyn Johns' mix. I have the Naked CD, but TBH I find the songs like LAWR missing something without all the Phil Spector additions.
    That’s interesting. I really think the negative space sets off McCartney’s vocal phrasing, but I came later to this stuff than many, I’d think. I didn’t grow up with it.

    Re. bias in editing/story telling, I completely agree. I just thought that this footage gave some additional credibility to the “other side”... or even that it provided a context for both coexisting.

  5. #29

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    Quote Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
    That’s interesting. I really think the negative space sets off McCartney’s vocal phrasing, but I came later to this stuff than many, I’d think. I didn’t grow up with it.

    Re. bias in editing/story telling, I completely agree. I just thought that this footage gave some additional credibility to the “other side”... or even that it provided a context for both coexisting.
    Yes certainly there can be more than one fact...the Beatles were great friends and creative geniuses, AND they were insufferable and louche and on each other's nerves all the time.

  6. #30

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    Well this one started exactly as I imagined; a bunch of guys who have spent too much time together eating sandwiches and making passive aggressive comments.

    Honestly I found Paul’s behaviour in the first episode insufferable and it’s like watching a slow motion car crash how much he’s winding up George and how oblivious to it he is, especially when George makes that famous comment saying ‘I’ll do what you want but you don’t know what you want’ which goes completely over Paul’s head.

    The whole first episode is excruciating yet compelling. It’s also interesting how ropey they could sound one minute and the next just miraculously be the Beatles.

    Ringo is consolidating his status as my favourite Beatle. What a trouper. Some people just have the right personality for the job.

    And then George leaves and the whole thing gets more interesting. Paul shows vulnerability if not anything resembling actual self awareness. John is by turns disconnected, hilariously acerbic and remarkably perceptive. Often extremely irritating too. The bit where he refuses to talk in anything but song lyrics is… well, revealing. The way they deal with the trauma of George leaving is fascinating. A couple of moments are almost unbearably poignant.

    I have no idea how people have watched this and said that this represents a joyful process for them… or that they were ‘goofing around’; there’s a forced awkward quality to all of this. It just seems like a horrible situation.

    I’ve got up to the studio move. I’ll be watching the rest of this, a little at a time. It’s certainly a thing.
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 12-08-2021 at 04:46 AM.

  7. #31

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    Well this one started exactly as I imagined; a bunch of guys who have spent too much time together eating sandwiches and making passive aggressive comments.

    Honestly I found Paul’s behaviour in the first episode insufferable and it’s like watching a slow motion car crash how much he’s winding up George and how oblivious to it he is, especially when George makes that famous comment saying ‘I’ll do what you want but you don’t know what you want’ which goes completely over Paul’s head.

    The whole first episode is excruciating yet compelling. It’s also interesting how ropey they could sound one minute and the next just miraculously be the Beatles.

    Ringo is consolidating his status as my favourite Beatle. What a trouper. Some people just have the right personality for the job.

    And then George leaves and the whole thing gets more interesting. Paul shows vulnerability if not anything resembling actual self awareness. John is by turns disconnected, hilariously acerbic and remarkably perceptive. Often extremely irritating too. The bit where he refuses to talk in anything but song lyrics is… well, revealing. The way they deal with the trauma of George leaving is fascinating. A couple of moments are almost unbearably poignant.

    I have no idea how people have watched this and said that this represents a joyful process for them… or that they were ‘goofing around’; there’s a forced awkward quality to all of this. It just seems like a horrible situation.

    I’ve got up to the studio move. I’ll be watching the rest of this, a little at a time. It’s certainly a thing.
    Ringo was perfect for the band. He could play and listen and he didn't have the baggage that went back to their pimp house days in Hamburg. The others Beatles gigged there a lot.
    Those were the kind of gigs that could make you go to church and say, forgive me Jesus. I've been bad.

  8. #32

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    Interesting take on Yoko as a performance artist:

    The Sublime Spectacle of Yoko Ono Disrupting the Beatles - The New York Times

    I agree with this observation.

    Think of it--you have the 4 main musicians, whose relationship and creative process are being intruded on and even disrupted by a couple of external forces--Michael Lindsay-Hogg and his camera (though he was a well-known presence to the boys), the various managers and producers who pop in from time to time to bring up their specific interests, and then there's Yoko.

    Yoko was clearly the most disruptive presence there, whether she was ACTIVELY interfering with the relationship of the Beatles or not. But I think she knew she was having an effect on the group, and John probably wanted her there precisely for that reason.

    Whether the Beatles benefitted from this disruption is another question that bears more analysis. They were clearly worn out and running out of steam. If Yoko hadn't been in the picture, would that have made a difference? Would they have Come Together (pun intended) and continued on like the Stones did in '69 until they all dropped dead of natural causes? One can only wonder.

  9. #33

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    One After 909. The Glyn Johns mix. Take a listen with headphones.

    It's strange and somewhat jarring to hear John and Paul's vocals separated left and right, and yet it adds a sort of casual realism--like two guys sitting there jamming--that I found charming after I got used to it.

    It reminds me how much my ears are married to a specific mix of many classic old tunes.

    What do you think?


  10. #34

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    Quote Originally Posted by Flat
    One After 909. The Glyn Johns mix. Take a listen with headphones.

    It's strange and somewhat jarring to hear John and Paul's vocals separated left and right, and yet it adds a sort of casual realism--like two guys sitting there jamming--that I found charming after I got used to it.

    It reminds me how much my ears are married to a specific mix of many classic old tunes.

    What do you think?

    I listened to the Glyn Johns mix yesterday. I like it quite a bit. I wish they had stuck with that and perhaps cleaned it up a little, rather than calling in Spector. Though it would have been interesting to have Spector produce a Beatles record from the beginning.

  11. #35

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    I always thought the talk about Yoko breaking up the Beatles was dumb. Like John couldn't think for himself.

  12. #36

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    Quote Originally Posted by Stevebol
    I always thought the talk about Yoko breaking up the Beatles was dumb. Like John couldn't think for himself.
    I agree: For me Harrison sums up why The Beatles broke-up:


  13. #37

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    I watched part 1 but probably won't watch any more of it. It was ok but it really lacked the focus of the 1969 movie, Let It Be, which used much of the same footage.

  14. #38

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    Quote Originally Posted by doc w
    I watched part 1 but probably won't watch any more of it. It was ok but it really lacked the focus of the 1969 movie, Let It Be, which used much of the same footage.
    It gets a bit more enjoyable in part 2

  15. #39

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    I thought the doc showed why the Beatles broke up.

    McCartney was brimming with energy and overflowing with ideas. He was clearly pre-hearing arrangements and wanted to record what he had in his mind. Without the skills to write or read charts, he had to communicate all this verbally, which was difficult for him and, apparently, not so pleasant for George.

    McCartney was ready to be the writer/arranger and leader of his own band, playing his own material. He went on to do that for 50 years.

    Two of the best songs on Abbey Road were Something and Here Comes the Sun. George had written a lot of tunes and could only get a couple recorded on each album. He had reason to believe this wasn't fair. He was treated as a sideman, but he felt more accomplished than that. Nobody ever mentions it, but I think that he deserved writing credit for a number of his guitar solos.

    Take "Help" for example. The solo is a short composition that's an integral part of the tune IMO. Why should the guy who wrote the bridge, say, get a composer credit and the guy who writes the guitar interlude does not?

    So, for Paul and George, the issue was outlet for burgeoning creativity.

    For John, it seems different. Early in the doc, he seems distant, checked out. He's got his two tunes, but you don't see him spending much time working on new ones or dictating arrangements. He's more engaged in the concert, where we see his talent. I'm inclined to believe the story about heroin use at that time. Post Beatles, John's mind was clearly in a different place, making basic rock songs, allowing Yoko's vocalizations, composing a few better songs and doing other things with his life.

    Aside: at some point, somebody should have told Yoko that she isn't a musician and she should stfu.

    Brings me to Ringo. Brilliant sideman. Doesn't get involved in the drama. Takes direction and plays his parts perfectly. He always plays the song, not some beat in his head. Post Beatles, he said that he was lost for a bit, not knowing what to do but then reminded himself that he's a musician and then went on to a productive musical career. A bunch of radio hits and the All Starr band, created with a good formula -- sidemen with their own hits -- enabled by Ringo's stature among his fellow musicians.

    So, the Beatles broke up because of the way the need to create hit each member. JMO.

  16. #40

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    One thing that annoys me. YT is randomly suggesting clips from the doc. This is advertisment. I bet you can go to a secret office in YT and pay for your clips to be suggested sneakily.

  17. #41

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    I was always kind of glad they broke up, though not at the time. The evolution of rock after them would have dragged them through some incredible depths… disco?! Hair and metal. Rap? I fear they would have become caricatures of themselves. I never thought the Stones could be compared in a creative context, they had a winning formula and stuck to it like glue. Trace the Beatles from start to finish and the creative growth is staggering. Especially viewed in the light of what comes after them.
    Been reading a guy on Quora, RJ Holland, a touring drummer. He highly respects Ringo and gives many examples from a pro drummers ear why Ringo was a great drummer. Worth a look!
    Episode 2 for me tomorrow.
    Wrong Lennon spouse was eliminated. So sad. John’s needs must have been miles deep.
    Last edited by jazzkritter; 12-12-2021 at 06:54 PM. Reason: Auto type doing its thing

  18. #42

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    Well the 3rd episode is incredible. I got teary-eyed, as the story arc came to its conclusion with a rather triumphant, if brief, performance, and of course those brilliant songs. The interplay between the 4 was never better, and we could see the beginnings of Octopus’ Garden and Something, among other soon-to-be-classic songs.

    It’s interesting to compare the Beatles to the Stones. Lots of parallels—the Beatles were in a funk and created this self-imposed deadline to produce or else. They did, then eventually parted ways as the parts became more independent of the whole.

    The Stones decamped to Nice for a decadent year or so, which also produced some incredible albums. They lost their guitarist, sort of the way George left the Beatles, though only momentarily. They decided to soldier on and got an old fellow traveller, Ron Wood, to come in. They stayed together and made several really good albums for another 12 years or so before running out of steam.

    In a parallel universe George would have left, Eric Clapton and Billy Preston would have joined the 3 remaining Beatles, and they would have soldiered on and made some good recordings until Eric and maybe several other members’ drug use caught up with them.

    (George could have joined the Stones, but the excessive drug use of the Stones would have rubbed him the wrong way—not to mention he was not stylistically in tune with Keef and the boys—UNLESS maybe he converted Keef to Krishnaism, which might have changed the course of history as we know it.)
    Last edited by Doctor Jeff; 12-13-2021 at 03:33 PM.

  19. #43

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    Speaking of parallel universes and the Beatles staying together:
    The Twelfth Album - Wikipedia

    Basically more mildly interesting exercise in Beatles-ology than a convincing story IIRC

  20. #44

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    Quote Originally Posted by jazzkritter
    I was always kind of glad they broke up, though not at the time. The evolution of rock after them would have dragged them through some incredible depths… disco?! Hair and metal. Rap? I fear they would have become caricatures of themselves. I never thought the Stones could be compared in a creative context, they had a winning formula and stuck to it like glue. Trace the Beatles from start to finish and the creative growth is staggering. Especially viewed in the light of what comes after them.
    Been reading a guy on Quora, RJ Holland, a touring drummer. He highly respects Ringo and gives many examples from a pro drummers ear why Ringo was a great drummer. Worth a look!
    Episode 2 for me tomorrow.
    Wrong Lennon spouse was eliminated. So sad. John’s needs must have been miles deep.
    Paul seemed to think Ringo is a draggy drummer. Listening to these stems gives me an idea why he would think that lol, and I don’t think it’s down to the drumming. That’s all I’ll say.

    The dynamic between them which sounds alchemical when they all kick into gear reflects their personal dynamics as seen in the film so completely. Perhaps it’s ultimately unfair to listen to the isolated tracks, but it is fascinating.


    Anyway, nothing lasts forever.

  21. #45

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    Speaking of parallel universes and the Beatles staying together:
    The Twelfth Album - Wikipedia

    Basically more mildly interesting exercise in Beatles-ology than a convincing story IIRC
    That would make a pretty good album...

    Back in the day I DID think the songs Uncle Albert and Maybe I'm Amazed were Beatles songs. I only belatedly came to find out they were "just" Paul songs. But so Beatles-esque...

  22. #46

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    Kind of a surprising thing. I’m not a fan of the Beatles but my daughter got me to watch this and I really liked it. I watched the entire thing.

    the process of their writing was interesting to watch. Even as a non fan I know a fair amount about the Beatles just by existing and it was fun to see some of it in action and to form my take based on what I saw. I thought it was cool see other come into some of the well known songs. Fumbling through the music and lyrics. As mentioned, the song Get Back was kind of a hi light of that.

    looking at their equipment and the recording devices was fun.

    I definitely recommend this to the non Beatles fan. You may not make it through it but you may be surprised.

  23. #47

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  24. #48

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    Here it is…

    Early in “The Beatles: Get Back,” Peter Jackson’s nearly eight-hour documentary about the making of the album “Let It Be,” the band forms a tight circle in the corner of a movie soundstage. Inexplicably, Yoko Ono is there. She perches in reach of John Lennon, her bemused face oriented toward him like a plant growing to the light. When Paul McCartney starts to play “I’ve Got a Feeling,” Ono is there, stitching a furry object in her lap. When the band starts into “Don’t Let Me Down,” Ono is there, reading a newspaper. Lennon slips behind the piano and Ono is there, her head hovering above his shoulder. Later, when the group squeezes into a control room at the studio, Ono is there, wedged between Lennon and Ringo Starr, wordlessly unwrapping a piece of chewing gum and working it between Lennon’s fingers. When George Harrison walks off, briefly quitting the band, there is Ono, wailing inchoately into his microphone.

    At first I found Ono’s omnipresence in the documentary bizarre, even unnerving. The vast set only emphasizes the ludicrousness of her proximity. Why is she there? I pleaded with my television set.But as the hours passed, and Ono remained — painting at an easel, chewing a pastry, paging through a Lennon fan magazine — I found myself impressed by her stamina, then entranced by the provocation of her existence and ultimately dazzled by her performance. My attention kept drifting toward her corner of the frame. I was seeing intimate, long-lost footage of the world’s most famous band preparing for its final performance, and I couldn’t stop watching Yoko Ono sitting around, doing nothing.

    “The Beatles: Get Back” is being read by some as an exculpatory document — proof that Ono was not responsible for destroying the Beatles. “She never has opinions about the stuff they’re doing,” Jackson, who crafted the series out of more than 60 hours of footage, told “60 Minutes.” “She’s a very benign presence and she doesn’t interfere in the slightest.” Ono, also a producer on the series, tweeted an article without comment that claims she is merely performing “mundane tasks” as the band gets to work. In the series, McCartney himself — from the vantage of January 1969, more than a year before the band’s public dissolution — pokes fun at the idea that the Beatles would end “because Yoko sat on an amp.”

    Her presence has been described as gentle, quiet and unimposing. Indeed, she is not the set’s most meddlesome interloper: That is Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the hapless director of the original documentary “Let It Be,” who keeps urging the band to stage a concert in an ancient amphitheater in Libya or perhaps at a hospital for children suffering from reassuringly minor ailments.

    And yet there is something depressing about the recasting of Ono as a quiet, inconspicuous lump of a person. Of course her appearance in the studio is obtrusive. The fact that she is not there to directly influence the band’s recordings only makes her behavior more ridiculous. To deny this is to sap her of her power.

    From the beginning, Ono’s presence feels intentional. Her gauzy black outfit and flowing, center-parted hair lend her a tent-like appearance; it is as if she is setting up camp, carving out space in the band’s environment. A “mundane” task becomes peculiar when you choose to perform it in front of Paul McCartney’s face as he tries to write “Let It Be.” When you repeat this for 21 days, it becomes astonishing. The documentary’s shaggy run-time reveals Ono’s provocation in all its intensity. It’s as if she is staging a marathon performance piece, and in a way, she is.

    Jackson has called his series “a documentary about a documentary,” and we are constantly reminded that we are watching the band produce its image for the camera. Ono was, of course, already an accomplished performance artist when she encountered Lennon, seven years her junior, at a gallery show in 1966. She was a pioneer of participatory artwork, a collaborator of experimental musicians like John Cage and a master at coyly appearing in spaces where she was not supposed to belong. In 1971, she would stage an imaginary exhibition of ephemeral works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the catalog, she is photographed in front of the museum holding a sign that says “F,” recasting it as the “Museum of Modern [F]art.”

    The idea that Ono doomed the band was always a canard that smacked of misogyny and racism. She was cast as the groupie from hell, a sexually domineering “dragon lady” and a witch who hypnotized Lennon into spurning the lads for some woman. (In 1970, Esquire published an article titled “John Rennon’s Excrusive Gloupie” that promised to reveal “the Yoko nobody Onos,” featuring an illustration of Ono looming over Lennon, who is rendered as a cockroach on her leash.) These slurs would spiral into an indefatigable pop-culture meme that has hauntedgenerations of women accused of intruding on male genius.

    Ono did not “break up the Beatles.” (If Lennon’s distancing from the band was influenced by his desire to explore other pursuits, including his personal and creative relationship with Ono, that was his call.) But she did intrude. In the documentary, McCartney politely complains that his songwriting with Lennon is disrupted by Ono’s omnipresence. For her part, she was vigilant about escaping the typical role of the artist’s wife. In a 1997 interview, she commented on the status of women in rock in the 1960s: “My first impression was that they were all wives, kind of sitting in the next room while the guys were talking,” she said. “I was afraid of being something like that.” Later, she would dedicate her barbed 1973 song, “Potbelly Rocker,” to the “wives of rockers who are nameless.”

    In her 1964 text project “Grapefruit,” a kind of recipe book for staging art experiences, she instructs her audience “not to look at Rock Hudson but only Doris Day,” and in “The Beatles: Get Back,” she skillfully redirects the eye away from the band and toward herself. Her image stands in contrast to that of other Beatles partners — modelesque white women in chic outfits who occasionally swoop in with kisses, nod encouragingly and slip unobtrusively away. Linda Eastman, McCartney’s future wife, lingers a little longer, occasionally circulating and photographing the band. Eastman was a rock portraitist, and one of the film’s most fascinating moments shows her in deep conversation with Ono — as if to prove Ono’s point, it is a rare on-set interaction with no recovered audio.

    Ono simply never leaves. She refuses to decamp to the sidelines, but she also resists acting out stereotypes; she appears as neither a doting naïf nor a needling busybody. Instead she seems engaged in a kind of passive resistance, defying all expectations of women who enter the realm of rock genius.

    The Barenaked Ladies song “Be My Yoko Ono” compares Ono to a ball and chain (for the record, Ono said of the song, “I liked it”), but as the sessions go on, she assumes a weightless quality.

    She seems to orbit Lennon, eclipsing his bandmates and becoming a physical manifestation of his psychological distance from his old artistic center of gravity. Later, her performance would grow in intensity. The “Let It Be” sessions were followed by the recording of “Abbey Road,” and according to the studio’s engineer, when Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a bed to be delivered to the studio; Ono tucked herself in, commandeered a microphone and invited friends to visit her bedside. This is a lot of things: grotesquely codependent, terribly rude and iconic. The more Ono’s presence is challenged, the more her performance escalates.

    All of this was used to crudely fashion Ono into a cultural villain, but it would also later establish her as a kind of folk hero. “It all comes down to YOKO ONO,” the drummer Tobi Vail wrote in a zine connected to her riot grrrl band Bikini Kill in 1991. “Part of what your boyfriend teaches you is that Yoko Ono broke up the Beatles,” she writes. That story “makes you into the opposite of his band.” It relegates women to the audience and ridicules them for attempting to make their own music. In Hole’s 1997 song “20 Years in the Dakota,” Courtney Love summons Ono’s powers against a new generation of whining fanboys, and says that riot grrrl is “forever in her debt.” Vail called Ono “the first punk rock girl singer ever.”

    In Jackson’s film, you can see the seeds of this generational shift. One day, Eastman’s young daughter, Heather, a bob-haired munchkin, whirls aimlessly about the studio. Then she spies Ono singing. Heather observes her with scrunch-faced intensity, steps up to the microphone and wails.

  25. #49

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    To me this all tastes like 21st century historical revision making any and all not responsible for their actions. Yes dear Yoko, sweet Yoko. Im not sure that’s accurate.
    Yoko did not (nor really could have) broken the guys up just at the recording sessions. Yoko’s damage was in changing John over the year or more prior. John was someone whom suffered greatly because of his family situation…. Losing your parents is a terrible abuse. And i suppose left John in an open needy state that Yoko obviously filled. From her vantage point she probably thought she was saving him.
    But all the heroin, the bed protests, the ‘be with me not them they don’t understand you like I do’ is what took out the close John Paul relationship. (Paul does seem to be exercising a lot of control but if your collaboration partner of many years is now unfocused…. He had no choice.
    But honestly I am glad it went that way. Like a beautiful 26 year old girlfriend I rather recall her then, not the 70 year old I occasionally see. Same with the Beatles. They never aged in my mind.
    Heck I lost darn near every close friend in senior year HS thanks to a chick like that. She did her best to cull me away from my bandmates and succeeded.
    However, I confess i was reaping considerable rewards in the um, um, lets say physical arena.

  26. #50

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    Quote Originally Posted by jazzkritter
    To me this all tastes like 21st century historical revision making any and all not responsible for their actions. Yes dear Yoko, sweet Yoko. Im not sure that’s accurate.
    Yoko did not (nor really could have) broken the guys up just at the recording sessions. Yoko’s damage was in changing John over the year or more prior. John was someone whom suffered greatly because of his family situation…. Losing your parents is a terrible abuse. And i suppose left John in an open needy state that Yoko obviously filled. From her vantage point she probably thought she was saving him.
    But all the heroin, the bed protests, the ‘be with me not them they don’t understand you like I do’ is what took out the close John Paul relationship. (Paul does seem to be exercising a lot of control but if your collaboration partner of many years is now unfocused…. He had no choice.
    But honestly I am glad it went that way. Like a beautiful 26 year old girlfriend I rather recall her then, not the 70 year old I occasionally see. Same with the Beatles. They never aged in my mind.
    Heck I lost darn near every close friend in senior year HS thanks to a chick like that. She did her best to cull me away from my bandmates and succeeded.
    However, I confess i was reaping considerable rewards in the um, um, lets say physical arena.
    As the song says, you can’t go somewhere you don’t already want to go. John had a restless spirit that was unlikely to be confined by a collaborative band arrangement for more than a decade or so. And everyone else was wanting to spread their wings (pun intended) one way or another.

    So Yoko was just a catalyst, not the primary factor in the equation. IMO.