Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of the Beatles "Let It Be" Disaster

This book is a must for any more-than-casual Beatles fanbecause it sheds a great deal of light on the breakup and clears up anumber of misconceptions. Although the literary style is pretty dry, it does lend the book a measure of objectivity: the authors are simply presenting what happened, with very little interpretation or commentary. So what did happen? Well, the Beatles seemed to be facing two major interpersonal problems in early 1969. One was John's use of heroin and consequent unwillingness to communicate. He generally used Yoko as his mouthpiece, to the understandable consternation of the others. The other was George's frustration at the shoddy treatment of his material by John and Paul- and as the book shows, John bears the brunt of the responsibility, since Paul was enthusiastic about all the material in his effort to motivate the band to work. In short, there is really no way to understand the breakup of the greatest group of all time without reading this book. (And incidentally, I would not call these sessions "ill-fated"- they produced some wonderful music: "Let It Be," "Get Back," "The Long and Winding Road," "Two of Us" and "Across the Universe.")

This book offered a unique glimpse inside the "Let it Be" sessions, covering far more ground than the documentary film. The authors document each rehearsal session, and describe how songs were crafted and the individual writing styles of each Beatle. The conversations during these sessions are also documented in the book. These were quite illuminating in deciding why and how the Beatles broke up. You will not find this information anywhere else but in this book. As a reader of over 25 books on The Beatles, I can recommend this book as a truly fresh look on a well-covered subject.

Be forewarned: this is not light reading for the casual Beatles fan. What it is is one of the most stunning examples of scholarship yet exhibited on the Beatles: a finely crafted piece of detective work, one that reconstructs an entire month of Beatles recording sessions and places the available bits and pieces of tape in their proper historical perspective. The focus is tight and meticulous, and so is the research. Far from being a "mere paraphrase of available bootlegs," the authors spent hours upon hours piecing together the "Get Back" puzzle from what was previously a jumbled mess of fragmented bootlegs. The bootlegs are still jumbled and fragmented, but they are no longer a mess. Indeed, the entire Beatles collecting community has quickly adopted this book's method of cataloguing the sundry performances, and you cannot refer seriously to a moment from these sessions without quoting Sulpy and Schweigardt. That, to me, is the most simple and eloquent testimony to the worth of this book. In short, the book is a dense and sometimes tedious micro-examination of one month of the Beatles' lives. But that month was, by its very nature, dense and tedious. The authors cannot change the monotony of that history, they can only explain it. They do it eloquently, with a book that not only serves the collector's community by helping identify stray performances, but one that contains an identifiable dramatic arc as the tensions between the bandmembers flare and fizzle, as the group literally disentegrates before our ears. If you are a die-hard, hardcore Beatles fan, you cannot find a more entertaining way to get to know "the boys" better than to obtain a large number of "Get Back" bootlegs and listen while you're reading this book. It is an experience that will never be forgotten.

When I got this book, my wife became a Beatles' widow for two weeks. I spent many happy hours combing through all of the session details. The "Get Back / Let It Be" period was the best-documented period of the Beatles' recording career. However, until the release of this book, most of the material was hidden on obscure bootlegs. The authors put in innumerable hours of detective work to piece together this coherent picture of a great band being destroyed by drugs, divorce, and a slipping image.

Covers all sessions of January-1969 Let it Be album and flm sessions. Goes over song by song the good, the bad and the ugly of these sessions. It documents how badly the rehearsals were. The arguements are detailed, their future plans are revealed, and ultimately...predicts the break-up of the Beatles. Sometimes can get tedious but if you stay with this you get the most accurate picture available of this time period. A cool book for Beatles fans. PG