I thought music was less important to me now I’m older – then I saw Get Back

At the heart of the film is the music and, if I’m honest, I think this is the first time that music has ever really moved me, writes Jenny Eclair

I’m seeing the story that surrounds the music and I also know what happens in the end (Disney)

Last week I wrote about being stuck in a culinary time warp. This week, I realise I have been equally useless about music. I stopped listening to new music years ago. I think the last album I downloaded was Adele’s and I don’t mean the new one, I mean the “Rolling in the Deep” one.

Music was once quite important to me. As a teenager it was vital to know your top 20 and every Sunday evening I would listen to the new chart rundown with bated breath. Where would Mud be this week?

As I got older and went to clubs to dance and get off with boys, I liked music I could show off to. Bowie and The Stones and lots of the New Romantic stuff was ideal. In fact, when I was a drama student in Manchester, I’d get into clubs for free because I was good value on the dance floor, ie attention-seeking.

Music has become less rather than more important to me as I have gotten older. I always thought an appreciation of classical music would be a natural part of the ageing process, like clicky knees and acid reflux, but it hasn’t happened. I still find it annoying, which is ridiculous I know.

The idea of sitting and listening to music confuses me. I like stories, theatre and stand-up. On occasion, I’ve been blown away by dance, and I love a good musical, but the idea of sitting silently whilst someone plays music makes me feel panicky. I’m just not that interested.

Then I watched Get Back, the extraordinary Peter Jackson edit of The Beatles rehearsing for a new album and one-off gig, which uses footage originally filmed by Michael Lindsay Hogg back in 1969.

Now I know I’m late to the party here and this eight-hour “documentary of a documentary” has been available on Disney Plus since November, but to be honest, I wasn’t even aware we had Disney Plus, so I stumbled upon it more by accident than design.

I had no idea how moved I was going to be by the content. In fact, I thought I’d probably bail out after 20 minutes. I mean, I quite like some Beatles songs, but I’ve never been a fan. I completely underestimated my emotional reaction to watching the boys at work. Get Back is one of the most moving pieces of film I’ve ever seen and, by the bitter end, I was in pieces.

There is something very poignant about witnessing events that happened more than 50 years ago as if they are unfolding right now. It’s 2022 and here are all four Beatles, alive and young, bickering and yawning in front of us, so real you can almost smell John’s hair when it’s at its most unwashed.

Everything that has ever been said about the demise of The Beatles is being played out in front of us. Sometimes it’s almost too toxic to bear but, equally, there is too much love and respect in that rehearsal room to be able to tear yourself away.

Yes, Yoko marks her man by sitting so close you couldn’t get a cigarette paper between them, but as Paul says on film, the idea that people would believe the band would break up “over Yoko sitting on an amp” is laughable. Only people did blame her, I was 10 by the time The Beatles officially broke up and had already been programmed to loathe her.

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Paul, of course, is the driving force. For any performer who has ever been in a creative situation and felt like they are carrying the entire show, you need to watch Paul, endlessly creating, cajoling and keeping his temper. Meanwhile, the rest of the band, in between flashes of genius and gorgeous scenes of affection, are variously non-committal, bored, tired and fractious. As a bonus, the whole thing is dressed in the height of 1960s fashion. There are even glimpses of real live dolly birds, and George Harrison’s wardrobe is to kill for.

But at the heart of the film is the music; it’s the thing that binds, that gives meaning and, if I’m honest, I think this is the first time music has ever really moved me. Maybe it’s because I’m seeing it as well as hearing it. I’m seeing the story that surrounds the music and I also know what happens in the end. I know that two of these men will not live to see this version of events.

I think I started crying about an hour in and cried on and off until the band walks away from that final rooftop gig, knowing, as a viewer, what those four men didn’t – that it’s over.

So, whilst I still have very little interest in catching up with what’s fashionable in music right now, I’ve promised myself a Beatles binge. I’m going to download the classics and play them en route to gigs. Because I think I get it now and, after all these years, I think I’m finally ready to actually listen.