Get Back: musical genius, but a project manager's nightmare from The Beatles

Like many people, I spent the festive period watching Peter Jackson’s new documentary series Get Back, following The Beatles as they record what became their final album, Let It Be.

There are some incredible musical moments captured on film: Paul McCartney willing the song Get Back into existence out of nothing ; George Harrison trying to find the right lyrics to Something (“attracts me like a cauliflower”, John Lennon suggests); the final, legendary rooftop concert.

But because I’m a nerd and can’t just watch and enjoy something for what it is, I spent much of the more than seven-hour total run time fascinated by the interaction between the four core members of the group and their supporting cast.

Starting the documentary, you’re expecting to see the break-up of The Beatles – and you do get a fair bit of that – but what I mostly saw were four young professionals who’ve committed to delivering something (an album definitely; a TV special?; a live show?) but are struggling to make it happen.

McCartney’s conjuring of Get Back out of the ether is quite instructive – it seemed less an act of genius creativity, and more the well-practiced grinding of a professional songwriter.

Lennon drifts in and out, Harrison is frustrated and fragile, Ringo is Ringo.

There are tensions, missed deadlines, shifting aims for the project, it all seems incredibly lacking in direction and yet, out of that came a No.1 album in Let It Be and a No.1 single in Get Back.

So what can watching seven hours of The Beatles recording tell us about effective teams and project delivery?

1)?????Create the right environment

The documentary opens with The Beatles at Twickenham Studios, intending to rehearse for a TV special which will be shot there, with the group performing new songs which will be recorded for release as a new album.

A giant studio, with dozens of people scurrying about, where they seem to need to keep their coats on because it’s January, immediately seems the wrong setting. They all seem put off by the activity, and distracted by cameras and microphones, hamming it up with knowing looks to the lens or stage whispered conversations.

Despite trying to create a little workspace with instruments and Beatles all facing each other, they struggle with sound, and aren’t sure how they’re going to record things having turned up without the right equipment (Harrison lends the production team his gear from home).

This compounds tensions in the group, and it isn’t until they relocate to their purpose-built Apple Studio on Savile Row that they start to find their swing.

That studio was itself thrown together, but was a more intimate and familiar place with significantly less scurrying occurring, and the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place.

2)?????Set a clear unifying goal or task

The Beatles turn up at the beginning of January to write and rehearse new songs, but without any clear idea of what they are aiming to do, and certainly no firm buy-in from all four members of the group.

McCartney seems to want to do a TV special mostly to focus his mind; all of them except Harrison seem to want to perform live but they don’t know where or when; they all seem broadly in favour of an album but frustrated at the idea of doing ‘just another album’.

With no clear goal, there’s drift and frustrations boil over – Harrison is particularly pained by the whole thing as various ideas for the live show, including foreign travel and cruise ships, are floated.

Having clarity wouldn’t have solved all the issues, but it might have helped keep things in check – especially when discussing the first large-scale live shows for the group in three years.

3)?????Have the right personnel for the task

If the move to the studio at the Apple building helped all the pieces fall into place, then keyboard player Billy Preston was one of those pieces.

The Beatles had decided they wanted to play the new album ‘as live’, rather than record each instrument individually and correct or overdub later. This was again partly a result of wanting to do a live show, and so needing songs which could be performed live by the group, but was a departure from the technical wizardry and innovation that had been the hallmark of their recent recordings.

They soon found they couldn’t get the sound they wanted with just four members of the group, and were coming up against the limitations of their own playing capabilities.

Preston was a friend from their days playing clubs in Hamburg, and a session musician who had backed Little Richard, Sam Cooke and Ray Charles. He drops in briefly to see them, and ends up staying for the remaining weeks of recording, having allowed the rest of the group the freedom to do what they needed. Preston is the only non-Beatle to have been credited on one of their recordings – Get Back by The Beatles with Billy Preston.

4)?????Think about individuals and their development / motivations

Watching the documentary (especially the opening few days at Twickenham), you see these weary characters with the weight of the world on their shoulders.

It’s easy to forget how young they were – Lennon was 28, Ringo was 28, McCartney was 26, Harrison was only 25.

They’d been doing their jobs for more than ten years, and had been huge stars for a big chunk of that, but they were still very young men and unclear about what their futures looked like and how much longer they wanted to be Beatles.

Harrison was most explicit about this, quitting the group (with a very British and understated “I think I’ll be leaving the band now”) and, then after being coaxed back, talking about a backlog of songs and wanting to get them out there as part of a solo project alongside the band. While Harrison is out of the band, the remaining three soldier on, and when asked about what they’ll do without him, Lennon says they’ll get Eric Clapton – which I could have probably added to the ‘have the right personnel’ section above. This was the period when the graffiti read ‘Clapton is God’, but then The Beatles were “bigger than Jesus”, so I’m not sure who that would be a coup for.

Lennon himself is distracted and drifting in and out of sessions, his relationship with Yoko Ono has often been cited as a reason for the band breaking up, but McCartney wryly points out how silly it sounds, saying that in fifty years people will be talking about how there was no big bust-up, the Beatles broke up because Yoko sat on an amp. But, nevertheless, his involvement appears to have been different to previous recordings and his head is often somewhere else.

Starr is doing more acting, and is waiting to start filming on the film the Magic Christian with Peter Sellars. That was part of the reason for the group ending up in Twickenham Studios, as he’s due to be filming there in the weeks following the Let It Be sessions. He still turns up to work and is stable and reliable, as all good drummers are.

McCartney is trying to hold the whole thing together, frustrated and anxious, and his attitude and approach grates on Harrison in particular.

All four members of the group are pulling in different directions or, at the very least, aren’t really pulling at all at various times – they seem to have lost the ability to see each other’s perspectives or understand motivations.

5)?????Understand your leadership dynamic

At one point McCartney talks about the band needing a ‘daddy figure’ to tell them what to do. For years that had been Brian Epstein, who had died a couple of years prior, and there was no equivalent figure by the time of the recordings in January 1969.

Instead the group were managing and organising themselves, with specialists and supporting staff around them – including producers George Martin and Glyn Johns and road manager Mal Evans.

But those others were all employees, and weren’t partners in success like Epstein had been.

Lennon and McCartney seem especially self-aware – by the end of the sessions at least – of their predicament, and their position as de facto co-leaders.

The group was Lennon’s band initially, he and McCartney shared the main songwriting and arrangement duties but, with Lennon drifting away, McCartney had become a micromanager telling people what to play or playing it himself.

A joint leadership wasn’t effective, and nor was obtrusive micro-management – this leadership dysfunction was the root cause of some of the broader issues and the lack of productivity they suffered initially.

Still, it all worked out fine in the end (...until they all hated the recordings and finally broke up for good a few months later...):

Photo by IJ Portwine on Unsplash