In a flash, The Beatles transitioned from living ordinary lives and running everyday errands to being permanently thrust into the public eye. Even after the band’s dissolution in 1970, the world’s fascination with every move of the Fab Four remained relentless.
While some band members, such as Paul McCartney, dealt with the relentless obsession with relative ease, it’s fair to say that George Harrison had a hard time with The Beatles’ success. He was particularly ill-equipped to deal with the intensity of the interviews, Beatlemania, and stadium shows, making him anxious, stressed, and paranoid.
Harrison never sought fame, and the sheer immensity of The Beatles’ stardom would have landed any other group of lads in their early adulthood in a psychiatric institution. Still, somehow, The Beatles managed to emerge intact, and Harrison eventually found spirituality to be his escape from the intensity of his reality.
Thankfully, at the start, he also had McCartney, John Lennon and Ringo Starr to tackle the insanity of their existence. Naturally, as the years passed and they developed a greater sense of individuality away from the Fab Four dynamic, they found themselves less and less able to relate to one another, something that reached a head during the recording of their 12th and final studio album Let It Be.
Allowing a documentary crew into the rehearsal room seemed strange during this turbulent time. Part of the reason The Beatles had decided to stop performing live and retreat into the studio was to remove themselves from the incessant inquiry of the outside world. Yet, here they were, inviting the outside world into the studio when they were already on the cusp of implosion.
Michael Lindsay-Hogg directed Let It Be, which notably enjoyed a second wind of life when Peter Jackson later used the unused footage to make the Disney+ documentary series Get Back, which arrived in 2021. Unfortunately, Harrison didn’t live to see Jackson’s take on the recording of the final album, which presented a very different picture to Lindsay Hogg’s original and offered up a contrasting version of events.
Harrison’s opinion on Let It Be was extremely critical, as he revealed in 1987. By this time, the guitarist had established himself as an incredibly successful solo act, meaning he could reflect on his time with The Beatles with a sense of perspective.
In an interview, Harrison was asked about the numerous Beatles films that the group made throughout their career. He made it clear that he had no qualms about A Hard Day’s Night and Help! but couldn’t bear to watch Let It Be. In his eyes, the film intended to capture how The Beatles put their songs together in the studio, but what it captured was something far more unpleasant.
“That, you know, I didn’t like,” Harrison explained, referring to the film as Let It Rot. “There’s scenes in it-on the roof, that was quite good, and there’s bits and pieces that’s OK, but most of it just makes me so aggravated that I can’t watch it. Because it was a particularly bad experience that we were having at that time, and it’s bad enough when you’re having it, let alone having it filmed and recorded so that you get to watch it for the rest of your life. I don’t like it,” he concluded.
The scene Harrison is referring to is a tense argument between himself and McCartney, which he wished was never shared with the wider world. It was a private argument that should have been kept behind closed doors but instead spiralled into something bigger than he could have envisaged.
Harrison is not alone in his scathing perspective on Let It Be. In 2024, Jackson restored the movie for Disney+, but Starr maintained his disdain for the original documentary.
The drummer told the AP: “I think Peter Jackson has done an incredible job, and which he took the one that’s coming out is the original. For me, not a lot of joy in it. It’s from the point of view of the director, and that was up to him. We found 56 hours of unused tape, we found it and Peter Jackson put his heart and soul into it and it works really well.”
Furthermore, he previously scathingly remarked in 2021: “I didn’t feel any joy in the original documentary. It was all focused on one moment, which went down between two of the lads. The rooftop concert was also only about seven to eight minutes long. With Peter’s, it’s 43 minutes long. It’s about the music and a lot of joy.”
Until Jackson restored the film for the streaming platform, it was unavailable to watch legally for several decades, which further suggests what The Beatles thought about the original. While Let It Be provides a smattering of insight into how The Beatles produced their final record, Get Back is now the definitive documentary on the subject, which would likely please Harrison if he were still here.
