Last fall, when it was announced that “Help!” the silly, but fun and colorful 1965 Beatles movie was finally coming to DVD, we were hopeful. We even asked, does this mean “Let It Be” will come out soon? When we went to a screening of the remastered film the publicist told us that the “Let It Be,” “Magical Mystery Tour” and the rest of the outstanding Beatles films were all planning to be rolled out onto DVD with “Let It Be” hopefully aiming for a 2008 release. We were psyched.
But was this wishful thinking? After all, the Michael Lindsay-Hogg directed 1970 documentary famously captured the dissolution and squabbling of the Fab Four on camera.
Of course the album whence it came was released shortly after their break-up in 1970. Most of Let It Be was obviously recorded in 1969, before the release of their true last album Abbey Road, and the difficulties of the Be sessions recorded on celluloid were exactly the reasons why the album was scrapped at the time.
A U.K. source is claiming the release of the DVD has been reportedly cancelled outright by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and perhaps because of all the bickering in the flick.
“There has been talk of ‘Let It Be’ finally being released but now there has been a change of heart. The Beatles are still a massive global brand and it’s felt it won’t be helped if the public sees the darker side of the story. Neither Paul nor Ringo would feel comfortable publicising a film showing The Beatles getting on each other’s nerves.”
The film which features the famous “Get Back” performance on top of the Apple Co. rooftops, hasn’t been available as a decent version on home video (don’t even say DVD) for years and while bootleg’s do exist and all of it is on YouTube, it has become somewhat of a holy grail (for those that won’t bother buying cheap DVD bootlegs online; we sometimes fall into that category).
Marked by tense infighting and breakdown in communication, much of the film shows a disinterested John Lennon spending more time with Yoko Ono than the band. The film studio soundstage where they shot and recorded the album soon became claustrophobic leading Lennon to call it an “insane asylum” (you record an album with cameras on you 24-7 and friends getting on your nerves and see how you like it). George Harrison, himself having many issues with the group actually quit the band at one point during the sessions, but was coaxed back to the group and the Beatles left the sterile warehouse location for their Apple studios without the camera crew to finish the LP. The source adds:
“People like to imagine The Beatles were a happy ship but the reality towards the end was very different as this film shows. There’s all sorts of extra footage showing more squabbles but it’s unlikely it will ever see the light of day in Paul and Ringo’s lifetime.”
A new report in the Chicago Tribune from a few days ago insinuated the cancellation and points to a Fox News report from early last year.
In February 2007, Neil Aspinall, who was running the Beatles’ company Apple Corps and has since died of cancer, told Fox News columnist Roger Friedman: “When we got halfway through restoring it, we looked at the outtakes and realized: This stuff is still controversial. It raised a lot of old issues.”
Are we going to have to wait until their dead to see a proper release of this film on DVD? Shudder the morbid thought.
Watch: “Get Back” on the Apple HQ rooftop
Watch: Paul and George Arguing in ‘Let It Be’
Watch: “Let It Be” film Part 1 of 9 from YouTube excerpt