saint-mona

Of course, the remarks Lennon makes could be ironic, self-sardonic witticisms - he was wont to make those.

But I find it interesting that exactly these remarks have been so heavily edited and / or entirely omitted. To me, this signals that the documentarists were aware that what Lennon said, if heard in its entirety, would lead to serious speculation.

Throughout the transcript below, there are some highlights to showcase where the documentary deviates from the original recording. I will explain these highlights:

Blue is when original audio has been left in, but as voiceover, meaning original visual footage is left out

Green means original footage has been moved and edited around

Red means original footage has been left out completely

The amount of highlights give a sense of how insanely heavily edited this moment is.

The 1970 documentary “Let It Be” is also guilty of this, but to avoid confusion, I only directly compare this transcript with the 2021 documentary.

If you watch the documentary, additional footage has also been added to the original recording. I don’t include these additions since this is a transcript of the original conversation, but I do point to moments where significant additions have been made in the footnotes.

(Edit: Added some more thoughts here)

Beatles transcript, original India discussion, Jan 25th, 1969, compared with the 2021 “The Beatles: Get Back” documentary:

Paul, John, George and Ringo are rehearsing, surrounded by sound- and film-crew. Paul is having an inaudible conversation with Ringo.

JOHN: (singing, unintelligible)

PAUL: Oh, I saw that film last night.

JOHN: What?

PAUL: Of us at the Maharishi’s - I’ve got all the film of it-

JOHN: Oh, yeah.

PAUL: And we all saw them(?) together. Incredible. It’s just got a great opening. (Nods at something) Yeah, (inaudible).

JOHN: The helicopter one, up in the sky.

PAUL: Yeah, I noticed you taking it, so I thought, “oh, I’ll get that.”

JOHN: Well that was the idea, you know, ‘cause you said you were making a film.

PAUL: Yeah. But it’s incredible - the opening is great, it’s just(inaudible) (1)

Paul goes on to talk with the others a bit - it’s mainly inaudible. Meanwhile, John talks about the reels.

JOHN: And on each of my two reels, “by John Lennon - Productions” written on those two reels.

SOMEONE: (Inaudible).

JOHN: I’ve had it - he’s got a few reels, too. But these are(?) my reels, luv, “By John Lennon” all through ‘em, with like subtitles. John Lennon’s reel.

SOMEONE (Paul?): (Laughing) Shut up, John. (2)

GEORGE(?): Here’s a little bit, it’s (inaudible) together, and they make a great… (?)

PAUL: Yeah, sure.

SOMEONE: So, uh… Great-

PAUL: (Talks about the film again, directed at John) It’s incredible, you know, to just sorta(?) see us. What we’re doing. It’s unbelievable.

GEORGE: What were you doing?

JOHN: (Teasingly) Yes, what were we doing?

Paul scratches his head and combs his fingers through his hair.

PAUL: Well, uh- I don’t really know, you know, but it’s like- we totally sort of put our own personalities under, for the sake of it, and you’d(?) really see, you know-

Paul pantomimes a stereotypical obedient school-boy.

JOHN: Who was that writing all them songs?

PAUL: (taken out of it) Oh that was uh- that was probably (inaudible)-

JOHN: In your room…

PAUL: Yeah, right. (Laughs and nods at John) I remember, yeah. (Serious again) But just sort of, uh- there’s a shot- there’s a long shot of you walking (points at John)-

GEORGE: (To Paul) Do you regret having gone there?

PAUL: No, no. Oh, no, no. I mean, you know-

GEORGE: Well, I feel as though I (inaudible).

PAUL: No, I just think what we did there-

JOHN: I don’t regret anything, ever… Not even Bob Wooler. (3)

PAUL: (Facing George but looking at John) No, I just think what we did there- we did, we uh, we didn’t take-

Close-up of John - he looks directly at Paul while he begins to fellate the microphone lewdly. (4)

PAUL: We weren’t sort of really truthful. You know. I mean, we could’ve, I mean- Rishikesh(?), you know there’s things like sneaking behind his back and sorta saying, “it’s a bit like school, isn’t it?” But you can see on the film that it is very like school, and that really we shoulda sorta said-

JOHN: (stops mouthing the mic) You wanna call it-

PAUL: Like we needed(?)-

JOHN: You wanna call it, “what we did on our holidays”. (5)

PAUL: (Glances at camera) Well, you know.

JOHN: (Laughs) I bet you’d love(?) (inaudible) to get it over(?).

PAUL: (Looking away) Yup, yeah… (At John again) But it is very like- there’s a long shot of you sort of walking with him, and it’s just not you, you know-

John also pantomimes an obedient school-boy.

PAUL: It’s just- (laughs) Yeah! Sort of all, “tell me, O’ master.” And that-

JOHN: (Amused) “Tell me, old master.”

PAUL: And that thing- Linda remembered that thing you said the other night as well (laughs) about when you went in the helicopter with him- you just thought he might slip you the answer.

They all laugh.

JOHN: I thought he might fly home.

(1) In the 2021 doc, at this point, additional footage is included, where we see the film from the reels with a voiceover of Paul describing them in greater detail.

(2) They’re saying that Paul didn’t film, so John thought to do it instead. At some point, Paul noticed John filming during a helicopter ride and decided to keep the tapes. Someone is confused and asks John whose tapes they were; he then goes on to clarify that they both used the camera, but jokes about his proprietary rights of the bits he filmed.

(3) The incident at Paul’s 21st birthday party, where John beat Bob Wooler in a drunken fit of rage over Wooler insinuating John and Epstein had had an affair on their holiday in Spain - John apologised for it but despite this, it still made the press. In 71, Lennon said this about the incident: “[...] obviously I must have been frightened of the fag in me to get so angry. You know, when you’re twenty-one, you want to be a man, and all that. If somebody said it now, I wouldn’t give a shit. [...]”

(4) In the 1971 film “Let It Be”, this footage is replaced with another clip of Lennon, where he wears a multi-coloured striped shirt - a shirt he did not wear on January the 25th and does not wear in any of the other clips from this conversation (instead, he wears a white t-shirt and vest). The audio has not been replaced, though, and one can still hear him mouthing at the microphone. The original footage is first included in the 2021 documentary series, where you can see from all the highlights that most of the actual conversation that took place is either edited out or moved around. This is significant, because in both films, at this moment, where Lennon refers to the Bob Wooler incident and then fellates the mic, he is directly referring to a significant historical incident in Beatles history - and yet both films choose to reframe this moment to obscure what Lennon is hinting at.