The Beatles: Get Back (Book)

What's in the Book

The Beatles: Get Back is a 240-page hardback published by Callaway Arts & Entertainment and Apple Corps on October 12, 2021, moved from its original August 31 date so that it would land shortly before Peter Jackson's Disney+ series of the same name, which premiered over three days from November 25 to 27, 2021. It tells the story of the January 1969 sessions that produced the Let It Be album and built to the rooftop concert on January 30, 1969.

The text is built from transcribed conversations drawn from more than 120 hours of recorded audio, edited by the music writer John Harris into a readable narrative in the Beatles' own words. It is illustrated with hundreds of previously unpublished photographs, most by Ethan A. Russell and Linda McCartney, who both photographed the sessions. Peter Jackson wrote the foreword and the novelist Hanif Kureishi the introduction.

It was the first official standalone Beatles book since The Beatles Anthology in 2000, and the title carries a deliberate echo. The original UK Let It Be LP came out on 8 May 1970 as a box set (Apple PXS 1) with a thick paperback called Get Back, full of Ethan Russell's session photographs. That book has long been a collectable in its own right, and the 2021 hardback is in effect its official, far larger successor.

Writing: The Sessions as a Script

The format is the book's defining choice. Rather than a narrative history, it presents the conversations almost like a play script, arranged chronologically through the month, with short scene-setting passages. You read the Beatles talking to each other, and to George Martin, Glyn Johns, Michael Lindsay-Hogg and the others in the room, as they rehearse at Twickenham Film Studios and then record at Apple's basement studio in Savile Row.

For McCartney fans, the transcripts are revealing. Paul is often the one driving the project forward, urging the others towards a live show, suggesting locations and working through songs. The book captures the moment 'Get Back' emerges from a jam at Twickenham, the work on 'Let It Be' and 'The Long and Winding Road', and the tension around George's walkout on January 10, 1969.

On research, John Harris's editing is careful, but this is an official, Apple-approved text, not an independent history. It presents the sessions in a more balanced light than the 1970 Let It Be film, just as Jackson's series did. Readers who want critical context should pair it with independent Beatles histories.

Photos and Design

The photographs are the strongest reason to buy. Ethan A. Russell's images capture the sessions with a professional eye, from the cavernous soundstage at Twickenham to the cramped basement at Savile Row and the rooftop itself. Linda McCartney's photographs are more intimate, catching the band in relaxed, candid moments between takes.

The large-format design gives the images plenty of room, and the reproduction is sharp enough to pick out details the film moves past quickly: handwritten lyric sheets on music stands, the gear set up in the Apple basement, and the scaffolding-and-planks stage built on the roof at 3 Savile Row. Text and photos alternate through each day of the sessions, so the book reads as a diary rather than a gallery.

For another visual record of the Beatles, told from the inside, Paul's own photo book 1964: Eyes of the Storm covers the start of Beatlemania five years earlier; our review of 1964: Eyes of the Storm explains why it makes a good companion.

Value: Book, Film or Both?

The Get Back book launched at a US list price of $60 and has been discounted regularly since. For a large hardback with hundreds of previously unseen photographs, that is fair value, and it compares well with the 1970 Let It Be box set, which now sells for far more on the collector market.

The key question is what the book adds if you have already seen the series. The film has almost eight hours of footage and sound; the book cannot compete with that. What it offers instead is a slower, reflective way into the same material, with photographs that do not appear in the film and the chance to read conversations you might have missed on screen.

The companion Let It Be Special Edition, released on October 15, 2021, with a new mix by Giles Martin and the previously unreleased 1969 Get Back LP mix by Glyn Johns, is the musical partner to the book and the series.

If you are choosing just one of the three, pick the series, because nothing else captures the sessions as fully. If you already own the series and the Let It Be Special Edition, the book completes the set and is the one you can pick up for ten minutes at a time. Secondhand copies turn up regularly, so there is little reason to pay full price years after release. Check the corners, which take knocks in transit because of the book's weight, and make sure the dust jacket is present and unclipped.

Paul's Songs in the Sessions

One of the pleasures of reading the transcripts is tracking how many of Paul's songs were in play that month, including several that would not be released until much later. Alongside 'Get Back', 'Let It Be', 'The Long and Winding Road', 'Two of Us' and his share of 'I've Got a Feeling', the group ran through 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer', with Mal Evans famously striking an anvil, and 'Oh! Darling', both of which ended up on Abbey Road months later.

Paul also played 'Teddy Boy', which he eventually released on his first solo album, McCartney, in April 1970. Seeing it discussed here, then hearing the finished version a year later, connects the end of the Beatles with the start of Paul's solo career. Our review of the McCartney I II III box set covers that album in more detail.

The transcripts also show how much of Paul's contribution was practical. He counts in takes, suggests arrangements, worries about deadlines and keeps coming back to the question of what the project is for. Whatever you think of his role in the tensions of the month, the book makes it clear how hard he worked to keep the band moving.

The Sessions in Context

The January 1969 sessions began on January 2 at Twickenham Film Studios, with the idea of rehearsing new songs for a television special and possible live show. The cold, early-morning soundstage and the pressure of the cameras soon wore on the band, and George left on January 10. He returned after meetings in which the group agreed to drop the big live-show plan and move to their own studio at Apple.

At Savile Row, with Billy Preston joining on keyboards from January 22, the mood lifted. The sessions produced 'Get Back', 'Don't Let Me Down', 'I've Got a Feeling', 'One After 909', 'Dig a Pony' and much of what became Let It Be, and ended with the rooftop performance on January 30 and a studio performance the following day.

Reading the book with that timeline in mind makes it much more than a photo album. You can follow Paul's efforts to keep the group focused, the way the songs changed day by day, and the relief and joy of the final performances.

The book is also a useful map for the wider Get Back material. Michael Lindsay-Hogg's original Let It Be film, restored and released on Disney+ on 8 May 2024, is the 80-minute version of the same month that shaped the band's reputation for fifty years. The book lets you set the two films side by side and see which conversations each chose to use.

Who It's For

This book is for fans who loved Peter Jackson's series and want a permanent, printed record of it, and for anyone who collects Beatles photography. McCartney fans will enjoy seeing how central Paul was to the sessions, and how much of the Let It Be material he brought in.

It is less essential for readers who want new historical analysis, because it is an Apple-approved text. For an independent account, Doug Sulpy and Ray Schweighardt's Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of the Beatles' Let It Be Disaster (1997), built from the same Nagra tapes, is still the standard reference and reads very differently. For more choices, see our roundups of the best Beatles books and the best Beatles documentaries.