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

Doug Sulpy (Author), Ray Schweighardt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1997

Here, for the first time, Beatles experts Sulpy and Schweighardt trace the group's breakdown through the fascinating prism of the Get Back recording sessions. January 2, 1969: The Beatles begin a month of intensive sessions, designed to capture the musicians "as nature intended." Playing raw, live, with no studio tricks or gimmicks, the Beatles were consciously rejecting the high-gloss production style of their recent albums in favor of a return to their earlier stripped-down rock and roll sound. But Beatles Unplugged soon became Beatles Undone, and the project turned into the thirty-day saga of a group in freefall. Bickering and sniping, trudging through sloppy versions of old hits, the Fab Four were coming apart. For twenty-five years, tapes from the ill-fated Get Back sessions - only a fraction of which were released as Let It Be - have circulated among collectors. Sulpy and Schweighardt, for the first time, have undertaken a Herculean task: Sifting through those countless hours on tape, they reconstruct in amazing detail the drama of those sessions - the songs, jokes, outbursts, and fights. Get Back puts the reader in the studio as John cedes power to Yoko, Paul scrambles to keep things afloat, and George quits the band. It traces each step in the band's unique creative process. And, finally, it relives the glorious coda - when, for an impromptu rooftop concert, all four left their differences downstairs and mustered the singular Beatles magic.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Beatles experts Sulpy and Schweighardt have written a detailed chronology of the Let It Be sessions. Studying hundreds of hours of tapes originally filmed for a television special and later released as a movie, the authors provide a minute-by-minute account of the events from January 2 to January 31, 1969. They divide the rehearsals into songs/improvisations by day: A take of "I Me Mine," for example, becomes 8:39 as the 39th Beatle activity of January 8. The authors find imbedded in the sessions familiar causes of the Beatles' breakup: John concentrating on Yoko Ono; George feeling a lack of respect from the others; Ringo bored and haggard; and an optimistic Paul seemingly the only Beatle interested in continuing the legacy of the group. Though meticulously researched, this compilation of Beatles minutiae sheds little light on the Fab Four, and its minute details will appeal to Beatles fanatics only.?David P. Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

In a rather extreme act of completist devotion, two Beatlemaniacs describe in bleak detail the woeful January 1969 recording sessions that were more selectively documented in the film Let It Be. The film presented the Beatles as bored, bickering, and bitter pop veterans whose creative energy had nose-dived in the year and a half since their Sgt. Pepper album; Sulpy and Schweighardt corroborate that impression in their moment-by-moment descriptions of the (bootleg) audiotapes of the sessions. They list every song performed, no matter how fragmentarily, and give fairly bloodless paraphrases of all the chatter picked up by the microphones. Besides endless repetitions of the mostly third-rate material that wound up on the Let It Be album and several other songs they would record a few months later for Abbey Road, the Beatles famously recorded a slew of rock-'n'-roll oldies, sometimes as warm-ups but more often as attempts to inject some fun into the grim proceedings. The documentary film of the rehearsals was supposed to serve as the introduction to a televised live concert, but the band's indifference and indecision reduced the concert plan to a handful of songs performed on the rooftop of Apple Records' London headquarters. George Harrison, frequently rebuffed or condescended to by John Lennon when he tried to introduce new songs, quit the band for a few days; the zoned-out Lennon allowed Yoko Ono to serve as his voice in band decisions; Ringo Starr scarcely spoke; only Paul McCartney seemed to care what songs the band should even bother finishing. But the only news here is confirmation that most of the oldies the band ``performed'' amounted to muddled, abbreviated japes, not full-out covers. The actual tapes would evidently make pretty dour listening; this description of them lacks even the personality that would be the tapes' only selling point. For diehards only. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (August 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312155344
• ISBN-13: 978-0312155346
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,220,581 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but flawed, April 7, 2003

By 

petalblossom (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of the Beatles' " Let It Be" Disaster (Paperback)

I read this book and enjoyed it immensely, with a few reservations. As a Beatles fan, I did not find it boring at all, and in fact, I was saddened it had to end so soon. I really enjoyed reading what happened, how they rehearse, and the creation process, even if this is the worst example of the Beatles doing so. There are a few revelations, as well. Yoko does not seem quite as intrusive as I believed she was, and she is quite humorous sometimes with her off-the-wall comments.

From the look of it, it does seem like a few myths are debunked, though not the one the authors seem to think. John often complained he was not able to contribute new material because of Paul "hogging" the later records. For this session, at least, Paul appears to keep asking John to bring in new material to work on. Paul seems honestly wanting Lennon to contribute. It is Lennon himself who doesn't seem to want to. The other myth seems to be the common complaint of John that "Across the Universe" was not properly paid attention to. It DOES seem a little like Lennon himself was not that interested in working on the tune as well, so blaming the other Beatles seems a little harsh.

Having said that, I want to explain how there is HUGE flaw in this book committed by the authors. They inject into the book what the Beatles are "thinking" when they do things, something they cannot possibly know. They also give REASONS for actions for Beatles which is plainly just an opinion, but which they treat as a fact.

Case in point; They say that Paul backs up Lennon and agrees with Lennon on some things because he is scared if he does not, Lennon will leave the group. At one point, Paul does appear to not want to confront Lennon about Yoko because he perhaps fears John will just pick Yoko over the Beatles, but they use this blanket statement over all of Paul's actions toward John, something they cannot possibly know. I mean, every single thing Paul agrees with Lennon on should not be assumed to be because of this one angle. I mean, this goes way beyond the bounds of what they can know.

This book also assumes to show that George left the group because of John and not Paul and treat this as if it is indeed some sort of fact. But the truth is, the tapes that lead up to George leaving are missing, so it is impossible for them to simply assume this because of the actions of Lennon against Harrison, which are very evident, but which did not cause Harrison to immediately leave. They state that Paul is helpful, cheerful, etc., in the tapes, so he must not have really been the cause, ignoring the very real fact that Harrison himself said Paul was the reason he left. Just because Paul acted better than John in the tapes that people have does not mean he did not do something atrociously inappropriate in the missing tapes that preceeded George leaving. They say the myth is debunked, and I see no such thing. I've never heard McCartney ever say that it was John and not him that caused Harrison to leave, which is something he would seem to say since he is the always the culprit in the story.

Also, the authors seem to suggest Paul was much nicer than John in this respect, but that fails to explain if he was, why Harrison was brutal in referencing to Paul after the Beatles broke up, with quotes like he would join a band with Lennon anytime but would never join a band with McCartney. So since the tapes leading up to the quitting are missing, and Harrison himself said it was Paul, and his anger about Paul after the Beatles, I think it is safe to assume there was a big blow-up in the missing tapes between Paul and George. The authors try to excuse McCartney, making Lennon the villian. And it is true, Lennon is quite nasty in "Let It Be" to George, but that is no reason to say Paul is innocent. They both are not too nice. But Harrison's attitude is just as well to blame. Lennon could not have missed the dagger thrown at him in "I Me Mine," and we all know how Lennon reacts to such things, as we saw when Paul did the same thing to John in "Too Many People" a few years later.

But if you take out the authors' opinions and read it just as a document of sorts, it is incredibly interesting and I enjoyed every

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Illuminating, February 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of the Beatles "Let It Be" Disaster (Hardcover)

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.")

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A long-- too long --look inside, October 24, 1999

By 

Winston Engle (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of the Beatles "Let It Be" Disaster (Hardcover)

It's fascinating to have a look inside the Beatles' creative process, especially at such a contentious time. However, this was hardly one of the Beatles' great moments musically. If only we could have a similar view inside the creation of, say, "Sgt. Pepper." The scattershot, disinterested attitude of the Beatles themselves in this case turns what would otherwise be an asset-- the book's structure of listing, bit by bit, exactly what the Beatles recorded each day --into a serious liability. Do we really need to know how many times they went through half-hearted rehearsals of already-written songs? The authors' dull reportorial style would be a problem in any case. And is it really necessary to know about every conversation any of the Beatles had? (And it's all in paraphrases. Is there some legal reason why the authors couldn't use direct quotes?) By giving everything equal weight, the authors miss the forest for the trees. A thematic overview, fortified with quotes, might have meant more. All in all, the book is useful for Beatles diehards like me, but hardly essential.