Abbey Road was the final album recorded by the Beatles. Photo / Supplied
Abbey Road was the final album recorded by the Beatles. Photo / Supplied
Disney has relaxed its rules to accommodate the Beatles' "scouse swearing" in a forthcoming documentary, its director has revealed.
Kiwi director Peter Jackson has made a series for Disney exploring the creation of the band's 1970 album Let It Be using footage taken during recording sessions.
Jackson claimed he persuaded the family-oriented corporation to relax its rules on bad language to accommodate the Liverpool-born Beatles' "scouse" taste for swearing.
Jackson, best known for directing The Lord of the Rings trilogy, said: "We had to have a discussion with Disney about swearing.
Kiwi director Peter Jackson, seen here on the set of The Hobbit with Martin Freeman, directed the new series.
"The Beatles are scouse boys and they freely swear, but not in an aggressive or sexual way. We got Disney to agree to have swearing, which I think is the first time for a [Disney+ show]."
He told the Radio Times: "That makes them feel modern, too. People did swear in the Sixties, but not when they were being filmed."
To produce The Beatles: Get Back, a three-part series being released on Disney+ across three nights from next Thursday, Jackson trawled through 57 hours of footage, recorded in January 1969, which show John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr making the album that would become their final release as a group.
The casual swearing in these sessions would appear ill-suited to Disney's attitude to adult content. Alan Horn, the company's film chief, said in 2019 that language such as the F-word would be unacceptable in Disney productions. Also, Bob Iger, the company's former CEO, outlined a policy in 2015 "to prohibit smoking in [its] movies".
Horn reiterated this in 2019, saying that certain films could not be made under the Disney label "because the characters smoke cigarettes".
Despite this, Jackson described his forthcoming documentary as "a film about chain smokers with guitars who play songs".
The footage suggests the Beatles' break-up was less tumultuous than it had previously been portrayed. Photo / Supplied
The recording of Let It Be in 1969 is remembered as a fraught time for the band, who split up before the album's release in May 1970. However, Jackson was surprised by how amiable the band were in the footage, saying: "There's not a single angry word spoken."
He added that he respected the band even more for their attitude in the sessions, which Lennon remembered as being like "going through hell".
While Abbey Road was the final album recorded by the Beatles, Let It Be, which had the working title of Get Back, was the band's last release.
McCartney said he was pleased that footage from the period preceding the Beatles' break-up was less tumultuous than it had previously been portrayed.
He added: "These are four mates giggling about the impossibility of it all. That was the Beatles. That was us."
