E12 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MAY 15 , 2022
ARTEDUARDO OLMEDA/ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAMET he Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s “Get Back to Let It Be” exhibit, focused on the Beatles’ last studio album, is not a retrospective — it takes up just 2,500 of the building’s 55, 000 square feet of gallery space.
interest in the band and that’s
wonderful, but that area is the
best thing they’ve ever done.”The Beatles: Get Back to Let It Be
at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in
Cleveland through March 2023.
rockhall.com.“It’s brilliant that a child can go
in there and play with other musi-
cians or, on his own, try guitars
without any interference and
with a lot of encouragement,”
Johns said. “Obviously, the re-
lease of the film has introduced
and reignited a lot of people’sknown as “The Garage.” There,
visitors can pick up guitars or
basses or sit behind a drum set
and play to a prerecorded song.
There is also a large room where
museum staffers offer to pick up
instruments and jam with anyone
who asks.album “Let It Be” and performed
live in front of an audience for the
last time on the roof of the Apple
Corps headquarters in London.
On display are the red raincoat
Ringo Starr borrowed from his
then-wife, Maureen, for the roof-
top show; two pages from pro-
ducer Glyn Johns’s diaries; and
Lennon’s Epiphone Casino guitar.
Michael Schmauder, the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame’s lead pre-
parator, created a copy of Apple
Corps’ front door.
The show also features the
photography of Ethan Russell,
who shot the cover image of both
“Let It Be” and the Who’s “Who’s
Next” album and was the official
photographer for the Rolling
Stones. Over the years, Russell
has had a strained relationship
with the Beatles, who blocked
him from selling the images he
took of them. But he’s pleased to
have been included in Jackson’s
film and also the hardcover book
devoted to “Get Back.”
“I wasn’t consulted on any-
thing, but having my name on the
title of the book, that’s almost
worth the price of admission,” he
said. “Peter Jackson, Ethan Rus-
sell. That’s a nice billboard.”
The artifacts are special, but
they aren’t what dominates the
show. That would be the music —
and the visual explosion on the
screens. The sound hits as soon as
you near the entrance. There are
three cylindrical rooms showing
different sections of the “Get
Back” footage, and in those dark-
ened chambers, visitors tend to
gather. Each room plays footage
from a different location covered
in the “Get Back” docuseries. The
loops get longer as you go, from
three to five and finally 10 min-
utes for the final space, which
features the rooftop concert.
Having multiple closely
packed spaces wired for sound
posed a challenge for the design-
ers. Johns solved some of that
when he visited and walked
through “Get Back” before it
opened to the public.
“There wasn’t really any isola-
tion between the individual
rooms and they had sound going
in more than one,” he said. “So I
went and looked and they had
speakers up very, very high and
the walls of the rooms didn’t go all
the way up to the ceiling. We
moved those speakers to the floor
so it wouldn’t bleed quite so
much.”
Johns admits he didn’t feel a
chill when he walked by Lennon’s
glasses or Starr’s drum set on
display in Cleveland. He has seen
them before, in context, when he
worked with the band. But he’s
impressed by the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame’s Level 2 space,looked at Mueller’s Beatles shirt.
“Is this just the today shirt or
do you really love the Beatles?” he
asked her.
She professed her true love.
That earned her a coin.
Martinez and Mueller are a
perfect example of the challenge
of doing anything Beatles. How
do you cater to both the band’s
die-hards, the folks who can
break down every demo on the
“White Album,” and the newcom-
ers who wouldn’t know the differ-
ence between John Lennon’s
Rickenbacker and a Black &
Decker weed whacker?
The museum does seem to ac-
knowledge the limited scope of
the exhibit — it takes up just
2,500 of the building’s 55,000
square feet of gallery space
spread out over seven levels — by
not charging a special fee above
general admission.
“Our point at the outset was
not to make this a retrospective
exhibit,” said Craig Inciardi, the
museum’s curator and director of
acquisitions. “We did not want to
dilute the story whatsoever.”
Inciardi understands how to
bring rock into museum galleries.
He and “Get Back” exhibit design-
er Daniel Kershaw teamed up for
“Play It Loud: Instruments of
Rock and Roll,” a show at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York City that drew more
than 600,000 people in 2019. The
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has
worked with the individual Beat-
les and estates in the past, but this
is the first time representatives of
the entire group cooperated for a
single show, he said.
The 18 objects selected are
meant to cover the period in 1969
when the Beatles recorded the468-minute documentary series
directed by Peter Jackson and
aired by Disney Plus last Novem-
ber.
“It was like they were playing
for me,” she said after watching
Paul McCartney and John Len-
non trade verses during the roof-
top performance of “I’ve Got a
Feeling.” “I could feel their pas-
sion and what they’re feeling, and
it was definitely very emotional
for me.”
Martinez, a huge Queen fan,
even planned to build a Beatles
playlist on Spotify for the trip
home to Fort Wayne, Ind.
Then there was Colleen Muel-
ler, 48, who wore a Fab Four
T-shirt, a Beatles purse slung over
her left shoulder, and an Apple
Watch loaded with multiple im-
ages of the mop tops. Did she
expect this exhibit to be a little bit
bigger than the corner of the
museum’s lower level? Sure. Was
she disappointed? Not at all.
Especially after her exchange
with museum staffer Bill Curto
near the exhibit’s entrance.
Curto’s jacket pocket was jin-
gling with about two dozen col-
lectible Beatles coins. They were
minted in the early 1960s by a
company in New Jersey for a
promotion, but kept from being
distributed when the band found
out they had been made without
permission. For years, the coins
were in a warehouse until some-
how making their way to Yoko
Ono. She, in turn, gave them to
the Rock Hall around its 1995
opening and said they could be
distributed any way the institu-
tion found fit.
On this Sunday morning, Curto
BEATLES FROM E1
At new Beatles exhibit, ‘it was like they were playing for me’
APPLE CORPS
TOP: From left, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon in “The Beatles: Get
Back,” the docuseries by Peter Jackson that was the basis for the e xhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame. ABOVE: Lennon, Starr and McCartney with Beatles assistant Mal Evans and Yoko Ono,
Lennon’s partner, in January 1969. McCartney’s shirt and Lennon’s guitar are in the exhibit.LINDA MCCARTNEYAnnounce your Engagement, Wedding or Anniversary in The Washington Post’s
Sunday Arts & Style Section. (Birthdays, Graduations & other Special Events
have moved to Thursdays.) You may provide text and photos. Color is available.
Many packages include keepsake plaques of your announcement.To place an order and for more information, including rates:
Contact The Weddings DropBox at: [email protected]
Or call 202.334.5736, toll free 877.POST.WED, fax 202.334.7188All materials must be received by Monday at 1 p.m.
Declare Your Love!
Engagements | Weddings
Anniversaries
To placean announcement:
email:[email protected]
phone:202-334-5736
fax: 202-334-7188