If you’re going to spearhead making a six hour documentary about The Beatles, you’re going to have to be a pretty big fan. Peter Jackson certainly is that, and the Disney+ documentary series The Beatles: Get Back is a testament to that love. The accomplished director of The Lord of the Rings certainly had his favorite Beatles song going into the production, but making the new Disney+ documentary has caused him to have a new appreciation for the songs on the Beatles Let it Be album, so much so he says his current favorite Beatles song is the somewhat surprising, but no less amazing, “Dig a Pony”
The Beatles: Get Back focuses on the Fab Four and the creation of the Let it Be album. To put the documentary together Peter Jackson watched and listened to hundreds of hours of audio and video. Being that deep in this one single album is the sort of thing that you’d think would either make a person fall deeply in love with the music, or never want to hear it again. I recently spoke with Jackson and he told me that making The Beatles: Get Back gave him a new appreciation for the songs, including making him a massive fan of one song that he’d never really cared for previously. He explained...
The thing with the Get Back project is, so many songs that I haven't paid much attention to in my 40 years of Beatle fandom, I absolutely adore and love now. A song like 'Dig a Pony', which to me, if you asked me five years ago to listen, that would be down in the bottom 10% of Beatles songs. I never make any effort to listen to ‘Dig a Pony.’ But I absolutely adore that song now. I love it. I love it to death.
Every Beatles album includes at least a couple of songs that have become standards. Let it Be actually has several. If somebody told you their favorite Beatles song ever was “Across the Universe” or “Let it Be” or “The Long and Winding Road” or “Get Back” you probably wouldn’t be that surprised, but “Dig a Pony” is a somewhat unusual choice.
“Dig a Pony’ may be Peter Jackson’s current favorite Beatles song, he told me that his traditional answer to that question has been “Penny Lane,” but the truth is that Jackson really loves all the music that you’ll hear in The Beatles: Get Back. After watching all the footage and seeing all these songs being created, he finds them all quite special. He continued...
At the moment I have a love affair with all the Get Back songs right now because you see them being born and you see them being worked on. You see them take their shape and they get there so how can you not love that? it’s fantastic.
The first episode of The Beatles: Get Back arrived on Disney+ on November 24 and the next two parts will be released on the following two nights. Making for three nights of appointment television for any serious Beatles fan.
