Back in 2021, fans of The Beatles rejoiced, as Peter Jackson’s eight-hour documentary on the group, entitled Get Back, premiered on Disney+. However, the epic documentary has been divisive, with Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour recently attesting that it was a “hard watch”.
Granted, not everybody has the attention span to watch nearly eight consecutive hours of mostly studio footage, but it is the sort of thing you would imagine Gilmour would adore. Jackson’s film saw hours worth of studio footage from the Let It Be sessions restored to a jaw-dropping quality, providing new insight into the final years of The Beatles.
For the film, both McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, were brought onboard as co-producers, giving Get Back a vitally important seal of approval. Nevertheless, the fact that McCartney, in particular, allowed the film to go ahead is the cause of some shock.
During an interview with Uncut, the legendary Pink Floyd musician voiced his opinions about Get Back, derisively calling it a “hard watch” as a result of, “Paul being domineering and and John ducking back because of the moment he was in at the time and George leaving and coming back”.
It seems, then, that Gilmour’s issues with the documentary are more to do with its content rather than the making of the film itself. Indeed, the documentary is a for some Beatles fanatics, as it details a particularly turbulent period within the band’s history. By the time that Let It Be was coming to be recorded, it was pretty clear that the group could not co-exist for much longer.
Continuing in his love-hate relationship with Peter Jackson’s film, Gilmour said that it is, “Horrible, really,” before qualifying, “I mean it’s lovely for us to watch, but I’m surprised Paul allowed it”. Gilmour’s comments about The Beatles documentary elicits an interesting question about how much Pink Floyd footage is locked away as a result of being too “horrible” for public consumption.
After all, the relationships between band members in the Pink Floyd camp would surely make the conflicts in Get Back seem like school-yard scraps in comparison.
Meanwhile, in the same interview, Gilmour revealed his intentions to return to the road with his new album Luck and Strange.
For his last tour, Gilmour made amendments to his touring band, and this time around, he again wants to surround himself with creatively-rich, young musicians who will be given the platform to express their capabilities. “Yeah, I changed the band around last time for a number of reasons, one of which was it was all too robotic, and some people would have been better off in a Pink Floyd tribute band. So I thought we’d get people who are genuinely creative and give them a little more space. That’s the plan,” he explained.
