The Banality of Genius: Notes on Peter Jackson's Get Back (2022) | Hacker News Reader

The Banality of Genius: Notes on Peter Jackson's Get Back (2022)

ian-leslie.com

154 pointswallflower75 comments

For those that are interested in seeing artists conjure up hit songs, check out the documentary "Billie Eilish: The World's A Little Blurry". There are some scenes showing Billie and her brother sitting on a bed in their parents' house coming up with lyrics and melodies for songs that would go on to sell millions, win grammys and totally change their lives.

I'm a huge beatles fan, and while Get Back shows sparks of creativity - for the most part it, it shows a few childish rich dudes high as all hell dicking around in front of cameras in a super-weird situation that they put themselves in trying to document themselves writing an album.

The World's A Little Blurry on the other hand shows two siblings battling through some tough shit and turning it into gold on a shoestring recording budget.

I'm not very familiar with Billie Eilish's music, but any interview I've seen her brother Finneas has been really great. Seems like a cool dude and a great musician.

You may want to read the article you're commenting on, which posits the very opposite of what you're contending here

Meh, the hardest part I'd the mixing and mastering and getting it heard. They don't seem to do that themselves

I like Billie Eilish's music and think her brother is a decent producer, but you can't really compare the two in terms of song writing. I don't think there's a single Billie Eilish song that people are going to remember in five years, let alone after 50 years. I did enjoy this video about how they made bad guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpx2-EMfdbg

But there are literally _thousands_ of videos of producers making songs on youtube now.

If the Beatles started at the same time as Eilish then do you think they'd be remembered 5 years later? 50 years?

How could that make sense in the context of popular music post-the-beatles? would someone else have broke the boundaries they did?

My point is there was less competition and more space to innovate. At this point I suspect nostalgia and interia are the biggest factors in their lingering popularity.

That's an anachronistic analysis. You want to say it was "easier" to innovate, sure. but to analyze the beatles without regard to their innovations is just prima facie wrong.

I don't know -- I liked her James Bond theme a lot, and I'd bet that it will be around a long time.

I liked the quote mentioned about the Beatles being "proof of the existence of God":

"It transcends everything. It’s much bigger than four kids from Liverpool. For me the Beatles are proof of the existence of God. It’s so good and so far beyond everyone else that it’s not them."

I hadn't heard that one before.

I think what the Beatles did can be called "riding the wave of fortune" or "being on a roll", but they somehow did it year after year instead of just a few times, like most people manage to.

> year after year

I was surprised the first time I heard they recorded as a band for only 7 years. Their last album is so different from their first album, I find it astounding to think about what they accomplished and how much they grew in that time.

Their last albums are not only different from their first album, they are different from their mid period. Personally, my interest wanes after Magical Mystery Tour because one can’t hear the drugs any more, and it was the psychedelic element which made that, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper so great for my ears.

And they had been together as a band for about seven years before they recorded.

> but they somehow did it year after year instead of just a few times

And without ever learning to read or write sheet music.

It’s just trivia, but it never ceases to amaze me.

All four of them had keen ears, and could pick up anyone’s songs, almost effortlessly. That was thanks to their years playing 8 hour shifts in Hamburg. In their later work much of the time they didn’t know the names of the chords they were playing. And they didn’t really write down much at all. It’s very hard for me to reconstruct in my head how they could’ve created some of those crazy harmonies without at least scribbling down a bunch of note names.

I think some people have a better head for it than others. I have a friend who at the age of 13 would learn songs on guitar by playing them back in his head while he sat in school during the day, and then go play it in the evening. I had nowhere near that kind of ability, with about the same number of hours of music training up to that point in our lives.

I think I’m in your camp, but how much better would we be if we played music for a full shift every night, every summer?

The most important Beatle could - George. George Martin of course.

I don’t know a lot about the beetles but wasn’t the song strawberry fields forever what finally drove The Beach Boys drummer insane? Like he had spent so much time/effort on a new kind of music and the beetles just blew past him and all his work. Iirc he said that song was everything he dreamed of and it just poured out of the beetles effortlessly.

Also, weren’t the drums in Strawberry Fields backwards?

The story you're thinking of is about Brian Wilson, the creative force behind the Beach Boys and one of the only real artists of the time who could arguably be considered a peer of The Beatles.

Personally I've never seen a really strong source for that story, only anecdotes. I think it's an oversimplification to say "Strawberry Fields" made Brian Wilson insane. Instead, he was in a mental decline already. The pressure of "Brian Wilson is a genius" was getting to him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Wilson_is_a_genius

There's a similar story with stronger sources, though. If you want to know about Brian's state of mind around that time, listen to his song Heroes and Villains. Basically, Brian worked on this song like it was his magnum opus, trying to reach the level of Sgt. Pepper. Quoting from Wikipedia (sue me):

> For Wilson, the single's failure came to serve as a pivotal point in his psychological decline, and he adopted the song title as a term for his auditory hallucinations.

> In the September/October 1967 issue of Crawdaddy!, journalist and magazine founder Paul Williams wrote that the song "originally had a chorus of dogs barking, cropped when Brian heard Sergeant Pepper, and was in many ways - the bicycle rider - a far different song."[39]

> Wilson held onto the final mix of the song for about a month. On the evening of July 11, 1967, he was told by his astrologer (a woman named Genevelyn) that the time was right for the record to be heard by the public. Without informing Capitol, Wilson called his bandmates and, accompanied by producer Terry Melcher, traveled by limo to personally deliver a vinyl cut of the record to KHJ Radio.[72] According to Melcher, as Wilson excitedly offered the record for radio play, the DJ refused, citing program directing protocols.[77][78] Melcher recalled: "Brian almost fainted! It was all over. He'd been holding onto the record [and] had astrologers figuring out the correct moment. It really killed him. Finally they played it, but only after a few calls to the program director or someone, who screamed, 'Put it on, you idiot!' But the damage to Brian had already been done."[79]

And this is all the tip of the iceberg. To have an even better understanding, you'd need to listen to the Smile! sessions, and the eventual 2004 "completed" recording of Smile!.

Personally, I think Brian was a genius (well, is; he's still alive, though not looking too good these days, sadly). But unlike The Beatles, who were four friends with an unbelievably tight bond (even after their breakup), Brian had no one else in the Beach Boys who could match him. And I think it was a weight on his shoulders, and that combined with the drug use (and likely a stroke at some point, which is obvious if you ever hear him speak post ~1968) brought his downfall.

to be fair Dennis and Carl could put out some amazing work, like the Carl produced all i wanna do or dennis penned Forever. But I don't think it negates your point just wanted to add to it.

I don't know much about the beech boys, but didn't the bassist from the Beatles, once admit to admiring the beech boys' sound?

Yes, Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson admired one another. Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys wrote the amazing "God Only Knows" ... supposedly then inspired the Beatles Paul McCartney to write "Here, There and Everywhere".

Both amazing songs.

I see what you did there ;)

Yes, Paul McCartney is a big fan of the album Pet Sounds. He bought a copy for each of his children to teech them about music. He elaborates about Pet Sounds a great deal in the interview below:

https://www.the-paulmccartney-project.com/interview/paul-mcc...

Poor Brian didn't have a partner like McCartney.

A composer appears to benefit enormously from a "second set of ears". It seems an artist gets too close to their creation and they lose perspective. The naive partner hears it for the first time and sees clearly how a bridge naturally follows.

It’s also proof of the existence of Liverpool. In modern times it’s hard for us to understand how musical that area was in the 1910s-1950s. Paul’s dad was a musician with pretty wide interests, but more to the point, there were music halls everywhere. Regular people just banged out songs on the piano day after day in many of the homes there. Before skiffle and rock ‘n’ roll there was vaudeville, plenty of it. It was an incredibly musical culture.

Does anyone know where I can learn more about this microcosm?

That’s a great question. I had to learn about it indirectly, gathering bits and pieces from novels of the time and offhand mentions in Beatles biographies.

Search for Vaudeville and Music Hall. They were the Victorian precursors of pop, with their own superstars, top-selling writers, and classic songs - now mostly forgotten.

There's quite a bit of Music Hall in McCartney's songs. (Lennon called it "That granny crap.")

One of the reasons copyright exists in the form it does is because many Victorian houses had pianos. Without recording technology there was a huge, incredibly profitable market for sheet music of light classics and music hall hits that could be played at home.

There's also a series of books by Simon Napier-Bell, who used to be a famous (notorious) pop manager in the 70s to 90s. Three of them are hilarious and frequently disturbing autobiographies and comments on the business.

The fourth is Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay, an almost academic account of the music business from the early 18th century.

There are some real surprises, and also a lot that's surprisingly familiar.

Can't wait to read these, thanks. Your answer was so much better than mine!

> The fourth is Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay, an almost academic account of the music business from the early 18th century.

https://unbound.com/books/ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay/

As much as 44 Chapters, where Chapter 1 starts in 1710 ("a law protecting an author’s rights in his written work – the Statute of Anne") and Chapter 2 is already 19th Century ("The Beginning Of Records")

Reading Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay. Thrilling, and all of $4 to purchase on Unbound.

I would say it still is!!

I’m in Liverpool right now for work and live in the city center. There are bars everywhere playing live music, 7 days a week. Everyday is Saturday in Liverpool.

I have never seen anything like it!! Liverpool is a very unique place. Liverpool seems to me to be a blend of poor, downtrodden Englishmen and (presumably) middle class foreign exchange students. A perfect storm of musical creativity.

Now I want to visit Liverpool - that sounds phenomenal for anyone who likes music.

On a semi-related note - I've heard one reason that Sweden[1] produces so much music is music education; nearly every local authority has a municipal music and arts school[2].

[1] https://sweden.se/culture/arts-design/the-swedish-music-mira...

[2] https://eas-music.org/music-education-in-schools-se/

I’ve thought about their composition skills a lot though the years, being a musician myself. I’ve come to the conclusion that they are more than the sum of their parts. After they broke up, each of them were still pretty good and popular artists, but the magic was gone. None of them were particularly virtuosos on their instruments either, but, TOGETHER, there was a catalyst between them that sparked pure songwriting gold, and each of them knew exactly how to add to the song to make it just right. Add to that Martin’s genius of production and his own musical talents, and that’s what made them magical. As I watched in this series kind of fumble their way through some of the compositions, I initially often thought the ideas were less than stellar, but then I witnessed the magic of them building the song, together, eventually molding and shaping it into something beautiful. I’ve been in bands myself and have experienced some of this myself, and also imagine many other bands work that way, but The Beatles had an extra spark most others did not. Only a few other bands in history have had that spark and you could really feel it, e.g., Nirvana, Queen, Led Zeppelin, early Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd. I don’t think we’re likely to ever have that kind of magic in popular music ever again.

Paul was most certainly a virtuosic bass player, and both he and John could be called virtuosic singers. At least by rock music standards.

Hearing actual virtuoso bass players, I'd say Paul isn't really a virtuoso. A lot of his bass lines are very simple. He's more of a piano player than a bass player.

Not sure who you're actually referring to in terms of virtuosos, but I'm assuming you're referring to the likes of Wooten and Miller and Graham and such, but as a band leader I'd pick Paul over any of them because his track record (heh) of elevating the song, even with his distinct simplicity, adds more to the composition (more often than not) than any other. Sure, I'm biased toward a steady diet of Beatles and blues as my musical foundation, but even dipping into jazz, latin, afro-beat, etc, his compositional contributions are second to very few, and to me, that beats out flashy playing (even when it showcases complicated understanding of theory) every single day of the week.

Virtuoso does not mean "plays a lot of notes". Music isn't an olympiad. Paul is virtuosic in his creativity and originality, note choices, rhythms, tone, as well as playing many complex parts in relation to the rest of the song.

I don't actually know what other (classic rock or other) bands are famous for actually writing songs together - that's an interesting question. Pink Floyd? Rolling Stones? Eagles? AC/DC? U2? Aerosmith? Metallica? Bee Gees? Fleetwood Mac? R.E.M.?

There are some amazing pop songwriters and producers though. For example it's hard to beat Max Martin's string of hits (e.g. 25 #1 songs in the US.)

Also many successful singer-songwriters from Bob Dylan (and earlier) up to the current remarkable success of Taylor Swift.

>I don’t think we’re likely to ever have that kind of magic in popular music ever again.

I think there are still very special amazing songwriters to come, the world is ever-changing and there are still stories to tell and songs to tell them through.

The Let it be album is also from this session, thought Abbey road was the album that was released by the Beatles. Let it be was released later (after the band broke up) as a money grab from the studio without autorization from the Beatles (except maybe Lennon). Paul really disliked it because of the bad mixing and post-production applied by Phil Specter.

Some years ago they re-released Let it be, renamed as Let it be Naked. This time it was remixed and authorized by the remaining Beatles and ... it's really good. Much simpler, much clearer and without the soul-less violin sounds from Phil Specter.

I can recommend giving it a listen and compare it to the original Let it be album.

I much prefer the Let It Be...Naked album to the original Let It Be, to the point where I haven't heard the songs from the latter in a long time. In my head at least, the former album is the definitive one.

I like the original more. Maybe just because I got used to it. Mere familiarity effect dominates music.

* Phil Spector.

Discussed at the time (of the article):

The Banality of Genius: Notes on Peter Jackson's Get Back - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30113080 - Jan 2022 (145 comments)

There was nothing banal about it — more illuminating, and authorial. The editing was almost vicious towards Yoko in the the first episode, but perhaps that was just her. And the queer energy all over, MLH and Preston captivated by John, John enjoying the attention and flirting just enough to encourage it. The vanity and conflict. Jackson has a sharp eye and found the magic.

I loved this series a lot. Watching these classic songs just tumble out of them was very magical and electric.

To be honest, I expected to like it more than I did. It just felt like a bit much after a while. I'll give the 2nd and 3rd episodes another go at some point.

It's really long, and at a few points (well, stretches) quite boring. But still very interesting and well made. It's just crazy to see how genius pours out of these lads, and how Paul tries to keep everything together and (spoiler alert?) finally succeeds. Also, the dynamics between the individual members, and with Yoko being the de-facto fifth member (in John's eyes) or just quite a distraction for John and generally nuisance (in the other's eyes) are very interesting to witness.

I agree with all that and I expect I'll get around to watching the rest. I just felt it could have been stronger as a more tightly cut film.

I think they could have made different versions because I know some Beatles maniacs that would have watched the unedited footage on a loop.

The way Jackson structured it (day-by-day) made it very amenable to watching a single episode over many days. My wife and I would watch a day or two per night and it took us a couple of weeks to watch the whole series.

I try not to let my expectations influence how I interpret a work. I don't think it's fair to the work.

Maybe it's because I've loved the Beatles for a long time but I found every second of that film to be completely gripping. I could have watched another 8 hours.

The banality is what made it so fascinating to me. How classic songs, that have been drilled into my mind and into the fabric of culture for decades were just bits and pieces floating in the minds of a small collection of people, decisions and circumstances. They just bounce around and snowball until something comes out.

The end result sounds so utterly perfect that it's jarring and exhilarating to see some bored lads shooting the shit and suddenly a masterpiece just falls out of nowhere. Then they just go home and eat dinner. What the fuck.

I couldn’t have said it better. And we also have to acknowledge the incredible, ego-free work Peter Jackson did because the original films and sound are pretty heinous.

Yep. They come to work in the morning. Go to lunch. Play a bit more. Go home for dinner. It’s not 9-5 but it feels weirdly banal.

Sure some of them are likely on drugs or showed up too late from a hangover. But it’s just so.. banal

The 3rd part is a lot of fun. Billy Preston shows up and they start having a really good time in the studio. Then they decide to give a concert on the roof and the staff work to stall the police.

The thing I loved about it was that it was no different than any other band practice or rehearsal or writing session. The process is pretty much the same from the unknown teen getting started, right up to the mega-famous Beatles.

This was my favorite part, the banality of it. The music they made was so transcendent and impactful, it feels as if it must have been made differently by some super-human geniuses. But all they really did was just kinda screw around until something they liked came out, and then they built on it.

I'll never be a Beatle, but it does feel validating that I can at least attempt to write music in exactly the same way they did, even if the results won't be quite as good.

Taste is the secret in most good art: what to put in and leave out.

Yes, and this stood out to me -- "They were much better at saying what they didn’t want to do than at making sensible plans for what they did want to do."

To me, choosing what not to do when you have ideas pouring out all the time is vital.

This is a neat perspective.

I think it can help for avoiding creator's block (more commonly known as "writer's block," but I'm being more general here).

It's easy to avoid getting started because you don't think you have a good enough idea yet. But when the thinking gets long, try just diving in and making something. Now you have something to react to, and you can often quickly identify things you don't like about it.

Then you think of ways to avoid these things you don't like, and dive back in to make the next something. Gradually you fill in the negative space, and after enough iterations are left with something good.

This has always been my mindset on most areas of my life.

When an opportunity in life comes into view, I always focus on what could be a negative result. My friends say that's pessimism, I say it's trying to avoid some types of potential reality. It has served me well for the most part.

What I loved is the dramatic irony.

Everyone who watches it already knows, note for note, the finished song being crafted. Only they don't. We get to watch the song's creators stumbling towards the light. We feel satisfaction as they approach the "true" sound.

As in a pantomime ("it's behind you!"), John says "attracts me like a cauliflower", and we all silently shout "like no other lover"

Silly ideas can sometimes yield musical dividends. Jack Harkness's theme from Torchwood has a distinct stuttering, marching rhythm; turns out the composer originally scored it for a scene where Jack crashed through a barn wall on a tractor to catch some bad guys and he set the tune to the rhythm of the phrase "here he comes on a ruddy great tractor".

I found their approach to writing lyrics extremely interesting. They're not singing words in the beginning, just syllables and "word shapes". The music is dictating what the words should sound like, and they fill in the meanings behind the word sounds retroactively over time. The lyrics are being molded like a lump of clay where you don't know what you're going to end up with when you first start. Just pushing around clay until it looks nice. Hey, that kinda looks like a nose.

I'm curious what Ringo & Paul's comments on the movie would be.

Independent of the subject matter, the writing is superb. It doesn’t need fancy words because it speaks clearly.

Agree - I'm not a beatles fan but this article was riveting

Another great session of George and John recording Oh My Love [1] shows what I think of as embracing rough but promising ideas along with balanities like tuning guitars, learning chords, etc... The Beatles engaged in this process much more than most musicians, despite it meaning most the stuff they played sounds relatively bad compared to playing tunes they'd practiced a bunch before. Is this due to work ethic or some love of creation? Idk, but it is fascinating to see the sausage get made.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yksV7YVuqdg

https://archive.ph/nHh9U

Yoko Ono is often blamed for breakup the Beatles, but watching Get Back, it seems clear to me that the person who really broke up the Beatles was Brian Epstein. His death — and their grief — hangs over this documentary, especially in the way that McCartney tries to be both band mate and task master in keeping the group together. I have always favored John over Paul, but this made me appreciate Paul despite his faults.

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