Inside the Studio - The Beatles: Diggin' Into Get Back

The Beatles’ rooftop performance is legendary, historic, and it has always been an enigma to me. Why would the biggest band in the world, who can arguably perform anywhere on earth, show up on a rooftop in London during rush hour, play a handful of brand new songs written just weeks and days before and then – oh, and by the way – it would be their last public performance? You’ve probably heard about and hopefully seen The Beatles: Get Back documentary series, created by and streaming on Disney+. If you haven’t, watch it now - so what if it’s almost eight hours long? I’ll wait. Directed by Peter Jackson (Lord of The Rings), produced by surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr along with Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison and a long list of others.  The movie was edited by Jabez Olssen (Rogue One) and Giles Martin and Sam Okell mixed the music. Jackson does what most people would probably be scared to do. He takes 60 hours of video footage and 150 hours of audio recordings that have been locked away in a vault for over 50 years and re-shapes the narrative around the biggest band in history and the original Let It Be film and album (both released in 1970).

What led to The Beatles breaking up? How (and why) did Let It Be come together on such a condensed timeline? How did the band function under stress? And what was the real deal with the rooftop concert? Sure, we’ve seen some of this footage before, but not through this lens. It’s entertaining, educational, voyeuristic, and at times it’s uncomfortable…but across all of these, it looks and sounds fantastic.

Watching and hearing that concert in its high-definition glory seeks to remind us why The Beatles are who they are in the history of popular music. For musicians and audio engineers, perhaps it also reminds us of why we got into music in the first place. We also can’t help but try and balance enjoying the film vs. rewinding it repeatedly to see what mics are being used, the recording desk with the weird faders, what guitars are they playing? So, let’s break it down The gear, the instruments, the techniques and what we have available today to chase these pioneering tones in our studios.