10 May 1969
If you’ve been following the plethora of Beatle multimedia product in recent years, you’ll recall how one of the takeaway sequences from Get Back the documentary was Paul writing ‘Get Back’ the song in real time during a jam session, seemingly drawing it down from the ether. Beatles songs occupy such a near-mythical place in our cultural hivemind that there’s a genuine frisson in seeing how one moment ‘Get Back’ didn’t exist, then next moment it did. In other Beatle iconography, ‘Get Back’ was one of the songs they played on the Apple rooftop in January 1969, though I hope it doesn’t spoil the moment for you to know that before law and order intervened they played it three times up there in quick succession.
Not to be on the side of the British constabulary or the Savile Row professional class, but I’m not sure I’d listen to ‘Get Back’ three times in a single sitting from a rooftop outside my window either. Granted, the chorus is a killer and the tight riffing makes the whole thing robust, even borderline cool. Snazzy keyboard playing by Preston too. Alas, this is still Paul as figurehead of ’70s bubblegum schmaltz; his campfire-cowpoke accent is a reflux of that ‘Rocky Raccoon’ twee Americana, the story of Jojo, California and Tuscon, Arizona is the same naff storytelling impulse as on ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’, and its spontaneous composition in the documentary suggest that what sounds like edgy identity drama in the Loretta Martin verse is really just random doggerel. One listen of ‘Get Back’ is plenty for me: two, tops. Then I’m calling the peelers.
This is the penultimate Beatles single to top the Irish charts. In fact, our very next number one of 1969 is Ireland’s final Fab Four chart-topper. Given that historical landmark, no doubt it’ll be something innovative and dignified.
