Peter Jackson to Direct Beatles “Let It Be” Project
The 30th January 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the last live concert ever performed by The Beatles on the rooftop of their record label headquarters in Saville Row, London. Fans from around the world gathered in the streets below to pay homage to that final gig with tour guides recounting the story behind the event and buskers (myself included) recreating the setlist song by song.
The 30th January also held good news for fans of the Fab Four when it was announced that Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson would be collaborating with Apple Records to create a new documentary using over 55 hours of unseen footage from the unsuccessful “Let It Be” project which was filmed in January of 1969. In a statement, he described the film as “the ultimate ‘fly on the wall experience that Beatles fans have long dreamt about”. He said: “It’s like a time machine transports us back to 1969, and we get to sit in the studio watching these four friends make great music together.“
The rooftop concert was the conclusion for what was to be a grandiose project which would have seen The Beatles work on new material for “The Get Back Sessions” and would have seen them play in a Roman amphitheatre in Tunisia or in the Roundhouse in London. These plans fell apart due to lack of interest, cost and the already frayed relations between each of the band members. Since the Let It Be film release in 1970, the film has fallen out of favour with McCartney and Apple due to the documentary showing the band bickering during rehearsals and recordings. The film has since been out of print with many of the surviving low-grade copies been bootlegged and pirated online.
Whilst the news of this Jackson project has been welcomed amongst many Beatles advocates, there has been some detraction, with some saying that it is an attempt to rewrite history by covering up the cracks and the darker side of the band’s internal relationships. Jackson himself is no stranger to found footage projects, having compiled and meticulously restored surviving World War One film for the acclaimed They Shall Not Grow Old documentary.
Interestingly, the rights for The Lord of the Rings were at one point nearly bought by The Beatles, with John Lennon wanting to play Gollum, Paul McCartney playing Frodo and Stanley Kubrick at the directing helm, a project which author which J.R.R. Tolkien ultimately refused to back. Now, in a twist of fate, The Hobbit director will finally collaborate on a project with the surviving members of the band and hopefully offer fans a fresh perspective on one of the most studied and written about groups in popular music history.