7 Insights you can learn about creativity from the Beatles

If you’ve begun watching the new film about the Beatles, called The Beatles: Get Back, you probably already sense that you can learn a lot about creativity.

 

Image of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, and George Harrison in the studio filmed in the move The Beatles: Get Back. Screenshot from trailer.

The film, which launched on Friday, is a marathon.

 

Director Peter Jackson, famous for his Lord of the Rings trilogy, culled 60 hours of footage that had been hidden away in a vault and previously unseen into a nearly eight-hour film.

 

Yes, eight hours!—in an era of 140-character tweets and 30-second TikTok videos!

 

The film takes us on a journey with John, Paul, George, and Ringo, along with a cast of entertainment industry characters, to develop new songs for an album, a TV show, and a performance within a month.

 

We as viewers are flies on the wall watching this process unfold. 

And it’s not always pretty.

 

Creativity is a loaded word. Some people choose to think that they are not creative (not true). Others associate a creative state with nirvana (it’s not).

 

Everyone has the capacity to be creative, whether you’re an artist, a teacher, a business executive, a nonprofit leader, a student, an athlete, a new parent, or anything in between.

 

At the same time, the creative process has highs and lows. We have a brilliant idea. We rush to execute it. But then we get stuck. Or lose our way.

 

We may give up.

 

Or we push through and find a new solution and a new path forward.

 

And this process is even more complex when we’re collaborating.

 

For the Fab Four, their relationship was on rocky ground at this point in their careers. Their lives were more complex—new interests, romantic partners, and goals.

 

We can see the strain on their working relationship. And initially the creative output is not terribly robust.

 

And a few things they do to get it back:

 

• Keep creating. Paul McCartney constantly makes music. When he gets stuck on the lyrics, he hums the melodies until the words come to him or to one of his partners, usually John Lennon.
• Create a lot. Stay in the habit of creating and don’t assume the first thing you create is the only way to go. 
• Improve as you go. The Beatles constantly tweaked lyrics and chords and transitions and rhythms and sounds until they got it right.
• Be silly. A high degree of silliness takes place during the Beatles’ collaboration which gets them laughing and into new frames of mind. The Beatles riff, improvise, rearrange other tunes, and slowly make progress.
• Communicate. While we cannot fully know the dynamics causing their relationship strain, we do see the musicians making an effort to meet, talk, and compromise until they reach a resolution.
• Discipline. Paul talks a lot in the first part about the need for focusing, setting goals, making a schedule. He’s the driving force for discipline. (Though he’s also, it seems, trying to work through and avoid the tension among the band.)
• Time. Unencumbered time can be the fuel for creativity. Yet, too few of us are taking the time and space we need to do the thinking and letting go necessary for ideas to come to us. I don't mean that in a woo-woo way. When our schedules are overbooked, we can't hear the little voice inside shouting to get our attention with a great idea or solution to a creative challenge.

We’re only about half-way through the entire Get Back marathon. On one hand, it seems ridiculous to watch this process. It’s a little tedious. And long. On the other hand, wow! What a thrill to step into their world and watch the songs most of us know and love being made.

 

Questions for you:

Do you have a creative process? Are your expectations of yourself and your own creativity realistic? Do you know what to do to get things back on track when things go astray? Are you making time and space in your calendar for thinking or freeing your mind so ideas have an open field in which to land?