Peter O’Brien

On January 7, 1969, The Beatles got together at a barren cavernous studio in London. The deadline for their 12th studio album, Let It Be, was fast approaching. And in a matter of minutes, Paul McCartney improvises and creates one of The Beatles all-time classic songs, Get Back: This is one of the greatest “fly on the wall” glimpses of the creative process I've seen. Takeaway 1: In the clip, we see Paul McCartney’s creativity steadily increase. There’s a scientific explanation for this. Dr. Andrew Huberman talks about how the brain circuits involved in creativity take time to turn on. In fact, brain circuits related to stress and agitation turn on first. I've heard him use 3 analogies to explain this. 1) It’s like swimming in the ocean—you have to wade through some seaweed and other muck to get to the clear water. 2) It’s like trying to lift your max on the bench press—it takes time to work up to that weight. 3) It’s like your best creative work is on the other side of a door at the top of a staircase—it takes time and effort to get up the stairs and through that door. In other words, Dr. Huberman says, you become more creative the more you create. Takeaway 2: In many interviews, I’ve heard McCartney talk about his songwriting process and how The Beatles used time as a filter for what songs made it onto an album. When The Beatles were starting out, McCartney explains, “there was no recording devices…There was no such thing as cassettes or anything to put the idea down on, so you just had to remember.” He said they began to realize this was actually a good thing. “We said, ‘if we forget it tomorrow, it’s no good.’ How can we expect the public to remember it if we can’t, and we only wrote it yesterday? So we realized that we were writing songs that were memorable not because we wanted them to be memorable, but because we had to remember them.” - - - Similar to the way, in the clip, McCartney sort of mumbles and blurts out words and sounds, and then eventually, “Get Back” emerges, John Legend says: “Most of my songs start with a ‘mumble track.’ It’s just me humming and mumbling nonsense. And then the mumbles start to suggest different tones and rhythms, and then eventually, the lyrics emerge.” Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!