Ringo Starr is certain that Beatles fans will be thrilled with Peter Jackson's forthcoming documentary on the band.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy director is spearheading a three-episode, six-hour documentary using previously-unseen footage from the Beatles' Let It Be album sessions.
The documentary, The Beatles: Get Back, is said to give a more balanced representation of the Let It Be sessions than Michael Lindsay-Hogg's dour 1970 film. Jackson was given access to more than 50 hours of unused footage from the album recording sessions and from the band's famous rooftop concert.
"Peter's still doing it," Starr told reporters of the editing, during a virtual press conference surrounding his new Change the World EP. "He's locked down in New Zealand because of the pandemic. Now the documentary is ... a little longer now. It's great. Peter Jackson is our hero. He's done a great job. I love it, but I'm in it, of course, so six hours is never enough."
The Lindsay-Hogg film arrived after the Beatles had broken up and the film appeared to depict the fracturing of the band and the friendships within. But after viewing the outtakes, Jackson said a much different narrative emerged.
"It would be fair to say that today Let It Be symbolizes the breaking up of the Beatles," Jackson said in a press release. "That's the mythology — the truth is somewhat different. The real story of Let It Be has been locked in the vaults of Apple Corps for the last 50 years."
Starr was never happy with the original film. And neither was Paul McCartney.
McCartney is similarly enthusiastic about Jackson's work. He's admittedly wrestled with his role in the band's breakup and how the Lindsay-Hogg film conflicted with his own memories of Let It Be.
McCartney told Howard Stern that seeing an early cut of Jackson's film lifted a weight from his shoulders.
"It's great. I mean, I'm not bulls----ing," he told Stern at the time. "And you see this relationship between me and John [Lennon], me and George [Harrison], and you'll get it! ...It's so lovely for me because I had kind of bought into the idea that, oh, me and John were rivals and didn't like each other and stuff. But you see the film and it's like, thank god it's not true. The guys, we're obviously having fun together. You can see we respect each other and we're making music together. It's a joy to see it unfold."
The Beatles: Get Back was originally supposed to get released in September 2020. The date was pushed due to the pandemic and is now slated to arrive November 25 on Disney+.
The release of the film will be preceded by the Get Back book on October 12 and the Let It Be special anniversary edition and box set on October 15.
Photo: AFP