Today, the Beatles' discography is considered an almost perfect catalog of boundary-pushing pop genius. Recorded over the course of just seven years between 1963 and 1970, the singles and studio albums the Fab Four released remain touchstones for songwriters everywhere and a rite of passage for young music fans the world over. But while it is easy to look back on the music of The Beatles as a singular monolithic success, that wasn't quite how things went at the time, especially as the 1960s came to an end.
From the release of "Rubber Soul" in 1965, The Beatles' songwriting and production values became increasingly experimental and ambitious. Their 1967 LP "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," a concept album based around a fictional alter ego, was considered a landmark in the history of recorded music, while their follow-up double LP "The Beatles," known as "The White Album," was yet another high-minded statement. But with the loss of the band's long-time manager, Brian Epstein, in August 1967, recording sessions were becoming increasingly strained. In response, Paul McCartney, who some fans see as having become the de facto leader of the group, envisaged the "Get Back" project, an attempt to get back to their early methods of writing and recording and rock influences.
But rather than simply an album, "Get Back" was to be a grand TV special, accompanied by a making-of documentary. But as the documentary shows, the project was abandoned, with both the album and documentary of "Let It Be" only being released after the band had already broken up.
