After The Beatles comes The Mess
Limitations can be freeing and focusing for artists
Of all the things I loved about Peter Jackson’s documentary series The Beatles: Get Back , and I loved practically everything about it, the thing I think I loved most was this: the way in which it managed to explode the mystique and romance of music making, and yet somehow still leave us feeling like we’d witnessed true magic.
Music making, as anyone who has ever tried it knows, is a process and not simply did not wholly come to Paul McCartney in a dream, despite what legend might tell you). What made engrossingly and enchantingly – if also sometimes patience-testingly – clear over 468 minutes, was that even for the greatest band ever, music making was lots of very humdrum things, done over and over again – such as the following, in no particular order.
