Beatles album of the week: Let It Be

[AKA]

Paul had an idea to record an album called Get Back. This was a back-to-basics sort of thing, with little-to-no overdubs. He wanted to recapture the raw feeling of the first few Beatles LPs. He also wanted the sessions filmed, for a television special to coincide with the release of the album. This would show the world what the recording process was like for The Beatles. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out this way.

The Beatles began rehearsing for the album/special at Twickenham Film Studios on January 2, 1969. After a month, the sessions were abandoned and the tapes were shelved for over a year.

The next year, John and George recruited veteran producer Phil Spector to go through the tapes and make an album out of them. On May 8, 1970, a month after the breakup of the band was officially announced (and two weeks after the release of Paul’s first solo LP), the result of Spector’s work was released. Retitled Let It Be, the album contained twelve tracks:

Side One:
Two Of Us (Lennon/McCartney)
Dig A Pony (Lennon/McCartney)
Across The Universe (Lennon/McCartney)
I Me Mine (Harrison)
Dig It (Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starkey)
Let It Be (Lennon/McCartney)
Maggie Mae (Traditional)

Side Two:
I've Got A Feeling (Lennon/McCartney)
One After 909 (Lennon/McCartney)
The Long And Winding Road (Lennon/McCartney)
For You Blue (Harrison)
Get Back (Lennon/McCartney)

Here's Richie Unterberger's review of Let It Be from The All Music Guide:

The only Beatles album to occasion negative, even hostile reviews, there are few other rock records as controversial as Let It Be. First off, several facts need to be explained: although released in May 1970, this was not their final album, but largely recorded in early 1969, way before Abbey Road. Phil Spector was enlisted in early 1970 to do some post-production mixing and overdubs, but he did not work with the band as a unit. And, although his use of strings has generated much criticism, by and large he left the original performances to stand as is: only "The Long and Winding Road" and (to a lesser degree) "Across the Universe" and "I Me Mine" get the wall-of-sound treatment. The main problem was that the material wasn't uniformly strong, and that the Beatles themselves were in fairly lousy moods due to intergroup tension. All that said, the album is on the whole underrated, even discounting the fact that a substandard Beatles record is better than almost any other group's best work. McCartney in particular offers several gems: the gospelish "Let It Be," which has some of his best lyrics; "Get Back," one of his hardest rockers; and the melodic "The Long and Winding Road," ruined by Spector's heavy-handed overdubs. The folky "Two of Us," with John and Paul harmonizing together, was also a highlight. Most of the rest of the material, by contrast, was going through the motions to some degree, although there are some good moments of straight hard rock in "I've Got a Feeling" and "Dig a Pony." As flawed and bumpy as it is, it's an album well worth having, as when the Beatles were in top form here, they were as good as ever.

Previous albums:
Please Please Me (1963)
With The Beatles (1963)
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
Beatles For Sale (1964)
Help! (1965)
Past Masters Volume One (1988)
Rubber Soul (1965)
Revolver (1966)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
Yellow Submarine (1969)
The Beatles (1968)

See also:
Past Masters Volume Two (1988)
Abbey Road (1969)

Beatle Facts

[AKA]

Paul McCartney wasn't satisfied with what Phil Spector did to Let It Be (more on that later). In fact, he downright hated the added orchestrations on "The Long And Winding Road."

The remaining Beatles (including George, who gave his thumbs-up on the project before his death in 2001) okayed a "de-Spectorized" version of Let It Be.

Let It Be... Naked was produced by Paul Hicks, and released on November 18, 2003. It contained eleven tracks:

1. Get Back (Lennon/McCartney)
2. Dig A Pony (Lennon/McCartney)
3. For You Blue (Harrison)
4. The Long And Winding Road (Lennon/McCartney)
5. Two Of Us (Lennon/McCartney)
6. I've Got A Feeling (Lennon/McCartney)
7. One After 909 (Lennon/McCartney)
8. Don't Let Me Down (Lennon/McCartney)
9. I Me Mine (Lennon/McCartney)
10. Across The Universe (Lennon/McCartney)
11. Let It Be (Lennon/McCartney)

Here's Stephen Thomas Erlewine's review of Let It Be...Naked from the All Music Guide:

Of all the Beatles albums, none has garnered as much controversy and speculation as Let It Be. Released as their final album in May 1970, the record began its life as a back-to-basics affair called Get Back, which was intended to show the Beatles as a stripped-down rock & roll band after the excesses of Sgt. Pepper and The White Album. They weren't just going to record an album — they were going to tape a documentary of the rehearsal and recording of the album, which would conclude with their first live performance since 1966. To facilitate filming, the band abandoned the home turf of Abbey Road Studios and hunkered down at Twickenham Film Studios, where Michael Lindsay-Hogg filmed endless hours of the band jamming, bickering, recording, and fighting. Throughout it all, the Beatles recorded so much material — with much of it being no more than sloppy rehearsals and unfinished takes — that neither the group nor its longtime producer, George Martin, had any desire to cobble together a releasable album, so the task was handed over to engineer Glyn Johns. As the group was recording Abbey Road, Johns crafted a Get Back sequence that captured the raw, unfocused nature of the sessions by splicing conversational asides between new songs, revived songs, covers, and brief, jokey tunes. This pretty much mirrored the feel of the Get Back sessions, and the record got fairly close to release — including an airing of an acetate on a Boston radio station — before it was scrapped at the last minute. Soon, the Get Back project mutated into Let It Be as Phil Spector, who had been working with John Lennon on solo projects, was brought in to finalize the project. By and large, he retained the original spirit behind the project, right down to the inclusion of dialogue and jokes, but he did overhaul three songs significantly, most notoriously Paul McCartney's "The Long and Winding Road," which he wrapped in syrupy strings and choirs. This is the version of Let It Be that was released as the Beatles' final album, and McCartney made his displeasure with the final product, particularly "The Long and Winding Road," known. Over the years, fans pined for an official release of Get Back while McCartney rumbled about revising Let It Be (even after a string-less "The Long and Winding Road" appeared on 1996's Anthology 3), and when the Beatles announced the release of Let It Be... Naked it seemed that the desires of both camps would finally be satiated. Unfortunately, that wasn't quite the case.

As the title should make clear, Let It Be... Naked is not Get Back. Where Get Back was designed to be deliberately loose, complete with ragged performances and spoken asides, Naked is a deliberately professional piece of work, with all of the rough edges smoothed down. Consequently, it's not so much an archival release, but more like the audio equivalent of George Lucas' Star Wars special editions, complete with controversies along the lines of Han Solo not shooting Greedo first. Let It Be is recognizable in its Naked form, but it's been cleaned up, mixed up, and altered, gaining the superb "Don't Let Me Down" at the expense of "Dig It" and "Maggie Mae," as the song sequence has been shuffled and the dialogue has been cut out completely (perhaps Paul wasn't too keen on John's mock "and now we'd like to do 'Hark the Angels Come' preceding "Let It Be"). Those are merely the obvious changes, too. Throughout the record, there have been edits, splices, and polishes, some of which are a little disarming, such as the lack of the coda on "Get Back" (including no "hope we passed the audition" from John) and a different guitar solo on "Let It Be" (a solo different than either the single or album version). Most of the changes are subtle — a correction there, an added lick here — but they usually can be felt, even if the overall sound of most of the tracks hasn't changed all that much. The exceptions, of course, are the three songs Spector overhauled: McCartney's "The Long and Winding Road," Lennon's "Across the Universe," and George Harrison's "I Me Mine." Paul's song does indeed sound better and less saccharine in this arrangement, and it is a marked improvement. John's tune — now in its third distinct incarnation, the most of any Beatles song — is also different and an improvement, benefiting from the simpler arrangement, but it isn't a revelation along the lines of "Road." George's song is fine in this version, but in Spector's hands, it felt like a harbinger for All Things Must Pass, and is arguably just as good on the original album as it is here. The rest pretty much sounds very close to how it did on the original album, only with much better fidelity — so much better that it raises the questions why the Beatles' entire catalog hadn't been remastered yet (ideally, it would be released as hybrid SACDs mastered with DSD, much like how the catalogs of the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan were).

So, the big question: was the whole Let It Be... Naked endeavor worth it? The answer is, yes...kind of. There's little question that this was an avenue worth pursuing, since neither Get Back nor Let It Be really were finished, and both fans and the band desired to set the record straight. But Naked doesn't set the record straight; it further clouds the waters by presenting a third version of the sessions, one that is no more accurate than the original album. It could be argued, in fact, that without Lennon's wiseass remarks and larks like "Dig It" it feels less like the sessions, which were ramshackle (in fact, they were directionless, as the bonus "Fly on the Wall" disc reveals). But it is also true that Naked is a finished album, with polished intros and outros, and is overall slightly stronger on a track-by-track basis. These changes make it a sleeker, slicker album, but it's hard not to miss the off-the-cuff aura of Let It Be, which contained more character and revelations than this revised version. After all, even with the changes and edits, the biggest differences boil down to the resequencing, the lack of joviality, and the de-Spectorized three. And since Let It Be was initially an unfinished album, cobbled together by associates of the Beatles, not the bandmembers themselves or their producer, it doesn't make a great deal of difference if the order is changed, especially since this was also mixed and produced by associates of the band, not Paul himself, and the main takes are those on the original album, which themselves weren't all that different than what was on Get Back. It all boils down to interpretations of an unwieldy session that was abandoned out of frustration at the end. This is a valid, entertaining interpretation of the Let It Be sessions. But, contrary to the sticker selling the album, this is not necessarily "Let It Be...as it was meant to be. The band's cut from the original sessions." The dogged seriousness of Naked contradicts the let-it-all-hang-out intent of the sessions or the warts-and-all Let It Be film. Though it is still faithful to much of the feel of Let It Be, the presentation of Naked, including the slight bits of modern-day editing, reveals that it is revisionist history, not the final word. Which doesn't hurt it as a record — these are great songs, after all — but it is a bit disappointing that this long-awaited project wasn't executed with a little more care and respect for the historical record.

[AKA]

Original Get Back cover art:

[Penny Lane]

Get Back Loretta!

[AKA]

Alternate versions of songs from Let It Be and Let It Be... Naked (these will look different than usual, as these are mostly rehearsals and have no take numbers):

Beatles:
"Two Of Us"
-January 24, 1969 (G.B.No. 23.36) - The Beatles Anthology 3

"Dig A Pony"
-January 22, 1969 (G.B.No. 22.51) - The Beatles Anthology 3

"Across The Universe"
-"Wildlife Version" (same take as album version, but sped up slightly with added sound effects), 1968 - Past Masters Volume Two
-Take 2, 1968 - The Beatles Anthology 2

"I Me Mine"
-January 3, 1970, take 16 (pre-Spector edit extension) - The Beatles Anthology 3

"Let It Be"
-Original single version (with different guitar solo and sans Spector tinkering on hi-hat), 1969 - Past Masters Volume Two
-January 25, 1969 (G.B.No. 25.44) - The Beatles Anthology 3

"I've Got A Feeling"
-January 23, 1969 (G.B.No. 23.36) - The Beatles Anthology 3

"One After 909"
-March 5, 1963 ("false starts" version combinging takes 3, 4 and 5) - The Beatles Anthology 1
-March 5, 1963 (edit of takes 4 and 5) - The Beatles Anthology 1

"The Long And Winding Road"
-January 31, 1969 (G.B.No. 31.20; same recording as album version, but without Spector tinkering) - The Beatles Anthology 3

"For You Blue"
-January 25, 1969 (G.B.No. 25.19) - The Beatles Anthology 3

"Get Back"
-Single version (same recording as on album, but with added coda at the end), 1969 - Past Masters Volume Two
-January 30, 1969 (on the rooftop) - The Beatles Anthology 3

"Don't Let Me Down"
-Single version, 1969 - Past Masters Volume Two

Solo:
"Let It Be"
-Live; Miami, 1989 - Paul McCartney - Tripping The Live Fantastic
-Live; New York City, 2001 - Paul McCartney - The Concert For New York City
-Live; venue unknown, 2002 - Paul McCartney - Back In The U.S., Back In The World

"Maggie Mae"
-Home recording, 1979 - John Lennon - The John Lennon Anthology

"The Long And Winding Road"
-Live; venue unknown, 1976 - Paul McCartney & Wings - Wings Over America
-Studio recording, 1984 - Paul McCartney - Give My Regards To Broad Street
-Live; Rio de Janeiro, 1989 - Paul McCartney - Tripping The Live Fantastic
-Live; venue unknown, 2002 - Paul McCartney - Back In The U.S., Back In The World

"For You Blue"
-Live; London, 2002 - Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr - The Concert For George

"Get Back"
-Live; Tokyo, 1990 - Paul McCartney - Tripping The Live Fantastic

[Jrnygrl]

Let It Be!

[AKA]

Guest musicians on Let It Be:
Billy Prestion - electric piano on "Dig A Pony," "Let It Be," "I've Got A Feeling," "One After 909" and "Get Back;" organ on "I Me Mine," "Dig It" and "Let It Be."

[AKA]

Let It Be vs. Let It Be... Naked

Here are my thoughts, song-by-song.

Get Back
Why do both album versions not include the coda? How very, very lame. At least with the Let It Be version, you get the ad-libbing from the rooftop thrown in, complete with John's famous "I hope we passed the audition" quip. For me, though, the single version from 1969 wins, hands down. Honorable mention: the rooftop version from The Beatles Anthology 3.

Dig A Pony
They both cut John's "all I want is you" from the beginning, but I hear that's due to that portion of the multi-tracks being damaged. Whatever. Even though they used pro-tools on John's vocals (a practice I detest), the Let It Be... Naked version is the winner here.

For You Blue
Not much difference between the two, but I like the new mix better. There's just a lot more clarity, and I like how the piano has been brought up in the mix.

The Long And Winding Road
For Let It Be Phil decided to and add strings and a choir. This was also the version of the song that was released as a single (in the U.S. only). Paul absolutely hated what Mr. Spector did to his song. For Let It Be... Naked, producer Paul Hicks went with a version from the same day. The Let It Be version makes me want to hit the "skip" button on my player, but the new version is very good. I especially like the fact that you can actually hear Billy's keys. Another point awarded to Let It Be... Naked.

Two Of Us
There really isn't much difference between the Let It Be and Let It Be... Naked versions of this song, besides the mix. But I like the new remix much better.

I've Got A Feeling
The Let It Be... Naked version has much more punch. It also brings out a lot of things Spector buried.

One After 909
See "I've Got A Feeling."

Don't Let Me Down
They used the two rooftop versions for this, seamlessly edited together. This is due to the fact that John mucked up the lyrics in two different spots during both run-throughs. Great effort from the Let It Be... Naked folks, but I'm going to have to go with original "Get Back" b-side version. I'm glad it has been added to Let It Be... Naked, though. It's a much better representation of John than "Dig It" or "Maggie Mae" (which are not heard on the new album).

I Me Mine
I never like artificial lengthening. Ever. If the song is 1:36, let it be 1:36, for god sakes. I feel the same way about the album version of "Taxman". So, for "I Me Mine," it's all about the version on The Beatles Anthology 3.

Across The Universe
On the "Wildlife" version, it was sped up. On the original Let It Be album, it was slowed down. The recording is presented here at its correct speed for the first time since its 1968 recording, but some weird reverbing has been added to the end, as has an electric processing on the tamboura that sounds awkward to me. For me, nothing beats the version on The Beatles Anthology 2.

Let It Be
Ah, yes, the coveted title track. I hate the echo Phil added to cymbals on his version, but I love the guitar solo used there. At the same time, the guitar solo on the new version is suberb, as well, but there are key guitar spots missing toward the end. I NEED to hear a guitar riff between "Shine until tomorrow/Let it be" and "I wake up to the sound of music" For me, the original George Martin single version wins, hands down.

[Brian]

Let It Be.

[Steve M.]

"Let It Be" is actually the best song on the album of the same name, but "Across the Universe:" came out slightly better in postproduction, so I give that song the nod.

I think Phil Spector added all those strings to "The Long and Winding Road" because Allen Klein told him that Apple was going to release it as a single in the U.S. on account of it being the perfect swan song single for the American market, so Spector concocted a version that would give you the idea of the Beatles riding off into the sunset or whatever. That's my theory, anyway.

"Naked" comes across slightly better than the original 1970 release, and I'm glad it doesn't have "Maggie Mae" on it. (That ditty isn't even in the movie!)

[AKA]

John and George tried to keep the release dates of Let It Be and McCartney (Paul's first solo album) as far apart as possible, to prevent oversaturation and sales conflict. Here's a letter they wrote to Paul:

March 5!

Dear Paul,

We thought a lot about yours and the Beatles' LPs – and decided it’s stupid for Apple to put out two big albums within 7 days of each other (also there’s Ringo’s and Hey Jude). So we sent a letter to EMI telling them to hold your release date til June 6th (there’s a big Apple-Capitol convention in Hawaii then).

We thought you’d come round when you realized that the Beatles’ album was coming out on April 26th.

We’re sorry it turned out like this – it’s nothing personal.

Love,
John and George

A Mantra a day keeps MAYA! away

[AKA]

Paul's reaction to hearing Spector's version of "The Long And Winding Road":

14th April, 1970

A. Klein, Esq.,
Apple Corps Limited,
3 Savile Row,
LONDON, W.1.

Dear Sir,

In future no one will be allowed to add or subtract from a recording of one of my songs without my permission.

I had considered orchestrating "The Long And Winding Road" but I decided against it. I therefore want it altered to these specifications:

1. Strings, horns, voices and all added noises to be reduced in volume.

2. Vocal and Beatle instrumentation to be brought up in volume.

3. Harp to be removed completely at the end of the song and original piano notes to be substituted.

4. Don't ever do it again.

Signed,
Paul McCartney

c.c. Phil Spector
John Eastman

[musicradio77]

"Let It Be' was the first and only Beatles album produced by Phil Spector. The album recorded a year after it was shelved., so they gave it to him to make the finished album. The bootlegs are the lost sessions on "Let It Be". I have the album "Get Back to Toranto" on tape. The long version of "Dig It!" might be in a number of bootlegs. I love the song "Get Back". It came out in '69 before the album was released a year later featuring Billy Preston on piano. Remeber Billy Preston? He did so many songs in the 70's including "It's the Way God Planned It", "Outta Space", "It Will Go 'Round in Circles", "Nothing's for Nothing" and "With You I'm Born Again" featuring Syreeta. "Let It Be" was a classic album. I have the movie on VHS. I also love the title song and "The Long and Winding Road".

[Steve M.]

The original Get Back tapes were produced by George Martin, with Glyn Johns as a balancing engineer - sometimes taking on Martin's role as a producer. Martin was not present at every session; when the single "Get Back" came out, the record didn't carry a producer's credit because of the confused roles of Martin and Johns. Phil Spector reworked the Get Back tapes, reproducing them for disc. So it essentially took three producers to get this LP finished!

(Four, if you count Paul Hicks and Let It Be. . .Naked.. )

[AKA]

George Martin also produced the "Let It Be" single, which has a significantly different mix than that of Spector's tinkered album version.