As I continue to watch...a few minutes at a time...the Beatles' Get Back movie that Peter Jackson coproduced and is airing on the Disney Plus streaming channel, I've reached a scene in which the four are sitting in a rough circle in their makeshift studio along with various staff. They're just throwing out thoughts to one another, but it's clear that Paul McCartney has taken center stage as he prattles on about how, since manager Brian Epstein's death in 1967, the band has been leaderless and without discipline. McCartney here seems to think his bandmates are unmotivated and wants to whip them back into shape...but openly disclaims the role of leader in doing so. Finally, one of the staffers suggests the band go back to playing their music, which is why they came here in the first place. So they work on the later Abbey Road track Maxwell's Silver Hammer, not exactly one of my favorite Beatles songs..I think I would have preferred they continue talking instead...
The notion that the Beatles...and presumably other acts of this time in the late 1960s...felt that they were under constant pressure to record a new album at least twice a year stands out to me in 2021 when my current favorite recording artist, Regina Spektor, hasn't come out with a studio album for six years and running and others in our era space out their releases similarly. McCartney was also railing that in the previous year, '68, the Beatles weren't as coherent a band as before, with the different members essentially writing and recording their own songs apart from the others...using their bandmates strictly as accompaniment without collaborative feedback and bringing in outside musicians. Hindsight is very convenient, I recognize, but looking back on their emerging domestic lives and distractions at that time, the very things that McCartney was criticizing in this discussion...if implemented regularly...might have kept the band together for much longer instead of their dissolution just a few months later. John, Paul, George...and even Ringo...could have put out their own solo albums at their own convenience while at the same time coming up with material that could be used for upcoming Beatles albums...which would be recorded every two or three years using the 1968 so-called White Album as a model without the bandmates getting on each others' nerves too much. Everybody'd be happy with the band remaining intact, especially the fans although a few would be miffed...like me about Regina Spektor's few-and-far-between albums. And if Paul, George or Ringo wanted to go on tour while John didn't, then those three could still do so while promoting their solo albums...which is what happened anyway but with the Beatles split up. Ain't hindsight wonderful?
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