The Beatles: Get Back, the first book to be published by the Beatles since 2000’s Anthology, will be released on Aug. 31, 2021 as a companion to the same-titled documentary film by Peter Jackson, slated to hit theaters on Aug. 27, 2021. According to copublishers Callaway Arts & Entertainment and Apple Corps Ltd., the 240-page book chronicles the Let It Be album sessions in the Beatles’ own words, accompanied by over 200 previously unpublished images by Ethan A. Russell and Linda McCartney.
The book and film originally were slated to be released in September of 2020, the 50th-anniversary year of the album’s release, but were delayed because of the Coronavirus pandemic.
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The Beatles: Get Back contains conversations lifted and transcribed from 120 hours of recordings made Twickenham Film Studios and Apple Studios over three weeks, edited by John Harris. Jackson wrote the foreward, and British screenwriter, filmmaker and author Hanif Kureishi wrote the introduction.
While Jackson’s documentary is culled from some 55 hours of unreleased footage by Let It Be filmmaker Michael Lindsay-Hogg, it reportedly conveys a distinctly different view of those sessions, showing the camaraderie and creative energy that also flowed. Let It Be, in contrast, famously expressed the tension of a band careening toward the end of its existence. The photos by Russell (some of which became Let It Be’s album art) and McCartney (then Linda Eastman; she and Paul married two months later) also capture a range of moods.
The coffee-table book will retail in the U.S. for $60. A trailer providing a brief overview of its content is available here.
