Photo by Linda McCartney/©Paul McCartney

Fans of the Fab Four already have August 2021 on the calendar for the world premiere of director Peter Jackson’s documentary The Beatles: Get Back. Now, the group’s Apple Corps has joined with Callaway Arts and Entertainment to announce a tie-in project sure to get mouths salivating – The Beatles: Get Back, the book.  The 240-page hardcover tome, the band’s first authorized book release since the best-selling The Beatles Anthology, will be released on August 31, 2021 – just four days after the August 27 release of Jackson’s much-anticipated film.

The Beatles: Get Back lavishly chronicles the making of their final album, Let It Be, in the band members’ own words and images of the sessions.  It’s been compiled from transcribed conversations of over 120 hours of studio sessions, and also features hundreds of never-before-published photographs, including images by Linda McCartney and Ethan A. Russell.  Peter Jackson provides a foreword while novelist Hanif Kureishi pens the introduction.

The text of the book has been edited by John Harris from John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s original conversations as captured during the three busy weeks of recording which culminated in the famed January 30, 1969 rooftop concert atop 3 Savile Row in London.  For 21 days, both at Twickenham Film Studios and then at their own newly-christened Apple Studios, The Beatles’ work was documented by cameras and tape recorders.  Like Jackson’s film, the book aims to set the record straight on the group’s dynamic during this historic but reportedly fraught time.  Kureishi writes in his introduction that, “in fact, this was a productive time for them, when they created some of their best work. And it is here that we have the privilege of witnessing their early drafts, the mistakes, the drift and digressions, the boredom, the excitement, joyous jamming and sudden breakthroughs that led to the work we now know and admire.”

The Jackson documentary is a new look at the sessions utilizing more than 55 hours of unreleased, original footage shot by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg in 1969.  That footage has been restored along with 120 hours of audio recordings, much of them unheard.  In addition to Linda McCartney and Ethan Russell’s images, the book also includes numerous, unseen high-resolution film frames from the restored footage.  Nicholas Callaway, Founder and Publisher of Callaway Arts & Entertainment, states in the press release, “The Beatles gave my generation their genius and their joy and they changed the world through their art. The creativity and inspiration expressed in this landmark book and in Peter Jackson’s film are as important and relevant today as ever.”

The Beatles: Get Back, the film and book, are both due in August 2021.  If you can’t view the above YouTube trailer, click here!  As always, watch this space for any further Fab-related news!  We’ll update with pre-order links for the book as soon as they are available.