Ringo: There were eight of us who didn’t see any point. Paul: I don’t really see any point anymore. But that was then, and now, there seemed to be true consensus on staying put at Twickenham or nearby - and that included the better halves. His desire to stay in England was a true constant in January 1969, and he only briefly toyed with the idea of traveling a few days earlier. “We should do it here,” said Ringo, again. We should cancel that 18th date, ‘cause it should definitely be the 19th already, ‘cause we’re going to lose today.” “We’ve got to stop the clock while this is all going on. Paul continued, laying out the actual logistics. “Then we send the guys off to Africa,” Michael chimed in, to laugher. … Then we’ll say that we don’t come in next week and we sort of chuck it. “And something will have happened, definitely. “I think we see the end of this week out,” he said. Paul shared his hopes the current state of limbo would only be temporary. “If we were going to take a ship’s pool on what our communal life is going to be in the next two weeks, what are we all betting?” Michael, in his imitable way, asked Paul and Ringo. This initial sequence first appeared on film in the 2021 Get Back docuseries.
Having recapped the previous day’s difficult meeting that saw George Harrison ultimately walk out in large part due to the disruptive dynamic between John and girlfriend Yoko Ono, the present conversation only looked ahead. Of the missing half, one member had already decisively quit while another was frustratingly unreachable. The rhythm section was in tow relatively early that Monday. And that’s why the Beatles were at Twickenham Film Studios to start 1969, after all: to stage a show. That Paul, with a comparatively quiet Ringo Starr, would even waste time debating with Michael speaks to the confidence the band had to to see out this project. And unlike Picasso, here the creative powers continuously bargained with the director. The endgame for the Beatles’ documentary of the creative process was unclear even as the documentary was underway. “And these songs are going to be our paintings at the end of it.” “They don’t sort of fast-cut the paintings,” Paul said to Michael. One of several films considered a reference point in the early afternoon of January 13, 1969, “Le Mystère Picasso” was mentioned by Paul as an inspiration to Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who was in the midst of directing what became known as the Beatles’ Get Back project. (The documentary was broadcast on BBC-2 in May 1968, as well, but Paul was in New York at the time). Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and a very short walk from other frequent haunts like the Saville Theater and the Bag O’Nails. But odds are Paul saw it sometime between late January and March 1967, when the film was shown at the Academy Two in the West End, about 2 1/2 miles from where the Beatles were recording Sgt. It was screened in Liverpool in June 1958, when Paul turned 16 and was nearly a year into his creative partnership with John Lennon.
Paul McCartney had a few occasions to come across the film. In the film, Picasso produced several completed paintings, and we catch occasional glimpses of him at work, creating art out of nothing in an spartan studio while holding an occasional dialogue with the film’s director. Pablo Picasso’s paintings and his exhaustive creative process were the focus of the film, his hand usually invisible as it brushed across a transparent screen, at times in black and white, and at others in vibrant color. It was a declaration: This film was over. At the conclusion of the 1956 French documentary “ Le Mystère Picasso,” the grand old painter splashed his iconic signature on a print and announced (translated to English), “That’s the end.” He wasn’t bargaining with director Henri-Georges Clouzot, himself considered a master in his field.
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