‘Let It Be’: The Beatles’ naked version is far better than the single
Paul McCartney is often labelled as the man who broke up The Beatles for good after he filed a lawsuit against the other members of the band in 1970 to try to release them from their recording contracts. However, while the group was falling apart around him in 1969, McCartney had been doing his best to come up with an idea to keep them all working together.
No other band has ever had—or will ever again—the cultural impact that The Beatles did. No other band has fit so much creativity and exploration into such a short amount of time. Only seven years separate their first and last albums, but it seems they managed to fit a million different lives, innovations, and worlds into those short years.
Work on The White Album in 1968 showed to the group that as they had each grown, they had begun to grow apart. Tensions flared throughout the sessions, even leading Ringo Starr to quit the band for a period. For their next album, McCartney thought that what they needed to get back to their best was to get back to basics.
Let It Be was conceived as an album that would return the group to their core relationship as a rock and roll band like they had been in Hamburg, at the London Palladium, or Shea Stadium.
In fact, it was those performances that were to be a driving force in their return to life as a simple band of musicians. The idea was to unshackle themselves from all the innovative studio tricks they’d invented and huge, sprawling orchestras or embellishments that had adorned their recent, groundbreaking work and just be The Beatles again.
More tension arose during rehearsals, though, as displayed in Peter Jackson’s finely (and finally) restored film Get Back (this time George Harrison quit the band), but they still managed to write a new album’s worth of material and at the end of rehearsals, performed their now legendary rooftop concert. Despite the tensions between them, when the group came together to perform, they were still the best band in the land.
Unhappy with the final mix on their new recordings as presented to them by engineer Glyn Johns, the band moved on to a new project, their magnum opus, Abbey Road.
By 1970, it was John Lennon’s turn to walk out of the group, but the rest of the band returned to the material they had started and abandoned a year earlier. George Martin was initially brought back in to work on the mix, adding strings to some songs, before Lennon returned to the fold and recruited Phil Spector to produce the final version of the album.
Having been conceived two years earlier by McCartney as a stripped-down, back-to-their-roots affair, the album was now being worked on by one of the heaviest hands to ever work a mixing desk. Surprisingly, though, Spector didn’t give the album the full “Wall of Sound” treatment he is so famous for. Spector added a lot of studio dialogue and chatter between the band and tracks, layering instruments and adding other sound effects.
The finished album, which was released a month after the final break up of The Beatles, topped the charts (of course) but was a commercial failure. McCartney wasn’t impressed by the album either, especially with the embellishments that had been added by Spector. In 2003, with a blessing from George Harrison given shortly before his death, McCartney did what he had always wanted to do and stripped the album back, re-releasing it as Let It Be…Naked.
Freed from the overdubs and distractions of the Spector release, some of the tracks are given a new freedom to breathe and stand by themselves. The naked versions go a long way in capturing the powerful aura and energy that emanated from each member of the band, letting us hear their playing without all the extra noise that had grown to surround and suffocate them, but some of the songs now feel exposed without all those extra effects. In those instances, the Naked versions could well have been referred to as The Emperor’s New Clothes remixes.
‘Across the Universe’, which had been much improved and perfected by Fiona Apple in the intervening years anyway, feels flat without the additions from Spector and a song like ‘The Long and Winding Road’ screams out for the extra impetus provided by the sweeping, cinematic orchestral accompaniment, which suits it perfectly.
The title track, though, has its own internal power and doesn’t need any extra help making its point. The newly naked remaster highlights the band’s strengths: their extraordinary musicianship, sensibilities, and overwhelming ability to craft the perfect, historic, and enduring song. Highlighting the unmatched abilities of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, this song is one where Phil Spector really should have just “Let It Be”.
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