The thing that amazes me about the Beatles is that they were led by a musical genius. And then a second member of the band achieved the same level of musical genius (some would say an even greater level of genius). And then within a few years, a third member of the band that was just the rhythm guitarist demonstrated that he also achieved an astonishing level of musical genius. Especially for that time, this was incredibly unlikely.
I think Ringo is never given enough credit for his role in the band. While not the flashiest player, he laid down the groundwork of what a pop drumbeat is.
Also, watching Get Back it become painfully apparent that Ringo is the elusive glue person without whom the Beatles probably would have fallen apart years prior.
This is the true role of a great drummer. To play what is needed and nothing more or less. Sometimes to be quiet and stay in the background, sometimes to be loud and take up space, sometimes just to crack a joke and break the tension when things start to get off track.
It really shines through in Get Back - Paul, John and (to a lesser extent) George are flailing about, causing drama but Ringo just patiently sits behind his drums and as soon as anyone starts playing he's there to pick up the beat.
Interesting. The biggest thing I took away from it was how unplanned everything was.
I can no longer listen to a Beatles album and ask "why did they decide to do this, and then that?" as I used to. Now I know that nobody had a plan: they had an infinite series of accidents and then edited -- or not.
It's almost like there's some truth to the "Trying to make dozens of shitty pots actually produces better pots than trying to make a single perfect pot".
In a winner-takes-all game, there's iteration, but there's also a single top act, and a tremendous combination of skill, luck, and manipulation in ending up on top.
It's not as if the team making the most pots always wins. Though the winner often makes a lot of pots.
I wonder though how representative Get Back was for a Beatles recording session. The band was clearly imploding and in contrast to prior albums, they didn't have a lot of songs prepared yet. There are the famous Esher demos that were recorded before The White Album. And even though they are acoustic, a lot of songs seem to be worked out already. Of course, they've put all kinds of extra touches on them in the studio, but they'd work pretty well for "The White Album - Unplugged".
I was surprised how even under the circumstances stuff comes together pretty quickly. Like how McCartney makes up the main melody of Get Back in seconds while jamming, as if he is just picking it out of the air (assuming that it wasn't staged for the camera). Then once Lennon puts his mind to the sessions again, there is clearly a very strong chemistry between Lennon and McCartney where they are just having fun and tweaking and evolving the songs at a rapid pace.
I got a similar feeling from the documentary. Some of those songs seem so perfect, as if they were born that way - but the actual creative process was messy, with various wrong turns it could have taken, fumbling around in the unknown.
I also feel like I understand better how miracles like Sgt. Pepper happened - not by careful planning or having a clear design at the start, but taking the time, day after day, working on ideas, noodling and joking around, sometimes arguing with each other, sometimes discovering happy accidents.. And every take is different!
Listing the Beatles in order of genius is a fun game and endlessly debatable but it’s not clear to me who you are referring to respectively. It reads as if the first two you mention are Paul and John in some order, but that would leave the “rhythm guitarist” to be George, but he is more often described as the lead guitarist. If this was bait, you got me!
Paul was already a musical genius — and the two, Lennon and McCartney, needed each other to feed off of. One pushed the other, completed the other's "middle eight", encouraged, made jealous. John and Paul were, each of them, 90% of an amazing band. It's a beautiful thing they found each other.
