Ouch

Peter Jackson's recent documentary The Beatles: Get Back shows hours of footage shot as the band prepared its final album, Let It Be. The film was shot at the time and only a very truncated version appeared, but Jackson took the many hours available and created a far more complete picture in his eight-hour documentary.

Contrary to the widely-held opinion that John Lennon's second wife, Yoko Ono, broke up the band because of her intrusive presence, Jackson suggests that she didn't have that much impact at all. Although she's frequently around during recording, writing and the rest of the process, she's not pushing her ideas or whatnot into the discussion. 

At least one article I read shows that the band broke up not because of anyone's significant other, but because as the four members grew older they found that they had less and less to say together. Their respective muses no longer pulled in the same direction and in order to follow them, "The Beatles" had to become John, Paul, George and Ringo once again, separated from their common milieu. Given the leeway to exercise their own creativity with, say, solo albums or working with other bands, perhaps they could have stayed together when the ideas or the mood struck. That option, for whatever reason, wasn't explored or maybe wasn't even considered possible.

Other reviews have said different things. Amanda Hess, writing at the New York Times, suggests that Ono is actually engaged in her own work of creativity as a performance artist. By being ever-present but always silent, she was offering commentary on how women were marginalized by the rock music culture. Hess thinks this is of a piece with Ono's public comments on that matter and the dedication she puts on her song "Potbelly Rocker."

Folks, can, of course, think what they want about Ono's artistic ability. The idea that she broke up the Beatles overlooks the robust ability of all four men, especially Lennon, to be arrogant elitist asses all on their own. For her 1971 "show" at the Museum of Modern Art, Ono had released flies on the museum grounds which the public was invited to track as they dispersed across the city. I think that says most of what needs to be said about her work (The flies were also sprayed with her perfume to carry her scent, but in reality liquid sprayed on insects often suffocates them).

But the article subhead says that in Jackson's documentary, "Ono is a performance artist at the height of her powers." That's just mean.