The Beatles - Let it Be

By 1969 psychadelia was waning in the UK. In no time flat what was psychadelia had for the most part been adopted into progressive rock and the youth were following the establishing blues/hard rock sound of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. While the White Album had a less psychedelic feel than say, Revolver or Magical Mystery Tour did it was still a high production work. The Beatles were drifting apart under their own experimentation and wanted to ‘get back’ to the tight-knit rock group they were in the early 60’s.

The ‘Get Back’ sessions took place in January 1969 and were built around stripped back rock and roll with no overdubs. This obviously changed when Phil Spector got involved but more on that later. There is a mammoth bootleg archive called A/B Road which has about 90 hours of session material from these sessions (No, I’m not reviewing that), but it is worth noting exactly what the band was playing in between takes: Mostly the older material from the Liverpool and Hamburg days. Little did they know that these sessions would nearly tear the band apart. George left the band on the 10^th of January to rejoin on the 15^th under the condition they ditch the cold Twickenham rehearsal studio and use their own Apple studios in Saville Row.

The sessions continued with Billy Preston handling the keyboard for the rest of the sessions and the project culminated in the rooftop concert, the last public performance the band ever made. Apart from the issue of Get Back/Don’t Let Me Down the album was shelved after a couple of work prints. After John had left the band the final touches were made by George, Paul and Ringo. Eventually Phil Spector got involved to produce the final master. The album ended up as being one of the most overproduced pieces of crap ever made. Don’t get me wrong, the songs themselves are great, we’ll get to them in a minute, but the production does ruin them. Paul McCartney publicly said that the Spector version was in no way indicative of his original concept of an intimate and soulful ballad. The one thing I really do like about the Spector mix is the added studio chatter which makes it feel a little more live.

In 2003 the album was remixed as Let It Be... Naked; essentially a De-Spectorised version of the album from the Saville Row multitracks. It’s actually a tougher call to pick my preferred version than you would think from the Spector bashing just before. You see, the lack of studio chatter makes the songs themselves sound less spontaneous than the Spector mix did, even though the production on the songs themselves is a lot better.

However what the world really needs is for the film to be released on at least DVD.

For You Blue
Don't Let Me Down