01	Get Back						02:34
	02	Dig A Pony						03:38
	03	For You Blue						02:27
	04	The Long And Winding Road						03:34
	05	Two Of Us						03:21
	06	I've Got A Feeling						03:30
	07	One After 909						02:44
	08	Don't Let Me Down						03:18
	09	I Me Mine						02:21
	10	Across The Universe						03:38
	11	Let It Be						03:53
	12	Fly On The Wall						21:55

The Beatles - Let It Be : Naked

Released: 2003
Label: Apple/Parlophone/EMI Records
Cat. No.: 07243 595714 2 3
Total Time: 35:03 / 21:56


Reviewed by: John "Bo Bo" Bollenberg, November 2003
Most of you probably know that Let It Be was never really intended to be a full-fledged Beatles album. The idea was that a documentary would be made that would give an insight as to how the Beatles worked, how they created new songs and how in the end they recorded it all for posterity. Recorded at Twickenham Film Studios in January 1969, the material was not issued until the next year, when the four Beatles had definitely decided that it was all over. 1969 saw the release of Abbey Road instead. However, when Let It Be was released, you could buy the "normal" release, or you could pay _1 extra for probably one of the first limited editions ever released. That limited edition was packaged in a large box and contained a thick book containing loads of stills taken during the filming. At one point John Lennon was noted saying: "Let It Be was the worst piece of crap we ever recorded, so it's amazing to see what producer Phil Spector did with it to come up with the eventual album."

33 years after its actual release, Let It Be : Naked is released, explained by a record company executive as being a token of "respect" for The Beatles, having been given the green light by Apple Corps. I'm afraid that we have to translate the word "respect" in big dollar signs because if they tackle this album they can take on every single official album the Beatles have ever released. Let It Be however seemed to be an easy target because it was the only one produced by an external producer, that being the rather extravagant Phil Spector. Getting rid of Spector's production and going back to the bare bones, so to speak, has some reviewers labelling the new Let It Be as being The Beatles' perfect garage album. For my taste, the songs on this album still remain a long way removed from authentic garage sounds, as they are still too sophisticated, even with practically no arrangement. The Beatles remain true genius even when they only tackle a handful of chords.

So what you get now are the original recording sessions as produced and supervised by The Beatles and George Martin. Remixed and produced again in the Abbey Road studios the warmth of the analogue recordings is more apparent, whilst tape hiss has disappeared completely. When you put your headphones on and you close your eyes you are there yourself, in Abbey Road studios during the recordings in January 1969. So this newly released album kind of acts as a time machine, because even although visuals are not contained within this package, you can clearly imagine what it was like so many years ago. For sure the people who worked in the studio in 1969 can be seen as true magicians, knowing the limitations of the recording techniques back then. Today of course you can go as mad as you like, as everything has drastically developed, yet the eleven songs contained on this disc remain timeless. They could have been written and recorded yesterday, although I'm convinced that no one on the whole planet has the slightest bit of creativity and genius that these four musicians had. I'm convinced a superior God was responsible for putting them together in the first place, resulting in the best band the world has ever witnessed.

The band then switched to further rehearse and record their new material at Savile Row, London where on 30th January '69 they played an unannounced lunchtime concert on the roof of the Apple Building. It turned out to be their last concert together : ever! Four songs on this album were taken from that session. In the end, Glyn Johns compiled the album Get Back, which had to match the nature of the documentary, but in the end it was never released. That's when these shelved recordings came into the hands of Phil Spector who added two more tracks to the original list. These songs are now omitted from Let It Be : Naked to really focus on what really happened in January 1969. The Abbey Road magicians have altered some mistakes, such as Lennon's vocal blunder during the second verse of "Don't Let Me Down" or his inaccurate bass playing on "The Long And Winding Road." The way the arrangements have been stripped down results in Let It Be being the logical album in between the White Album and Abbey Road. However, it doesn't come easy once you have known and loved certain songs and its arrangement for more than thrty years. We all know that Paul McCartney has never liked the choirs and strings that Spector added to "The Long And Winding Road." Getting rid of this "over-production" makes it difficult to enjoy the same song the way you have done for over three decades. A song like "Dig A Pony" then again proves the kind of direction Harrison was about to take for solo purposes, making the album a true hodgepodge of ideas. By getting rid of the Phil Spector production, Billy Preston's contributions also are more highlighted, delevering indeed a different end result at times.

With a total playing time of a mere 35 minutes, EMI has decided to include a bonus disc. Fly On The Wall is as its title implies - you feel as if you're a fly on the wall in the studio whilst The Beatles are recording their music. The 21-minute long track is compiled out of bits and pieces of recording and narration. No fewer than 21 musical snippets are used, accompanied by 14 bits of conversation. Personally I would have loved to have seen the Let It Be film added as a DVD. When Let It Be was issued on vinyl in May 1970, the limited run contained that lavish book. It would have been nice to repeat this offer these many years later, replacing the book and its stills with the actual moving pictures as recorded in January 1969 on DVD. A missed opportunity? However, although a lot of Beatles enthusiasts will probably be thrilled with this new release, finally being able to replace their dodgy bootlegs by the "real thing," I do hope that EMI/Apple will not treat every single Beatles output the same way, because if they do, they will damage the Beatles legacy forever. Maybe they should have left the original recordings alone and taken the title literally: Let It Be. Indeed!

More about Let It Be : Naked:

Track Listing: Get Back (2:34) / Dig A Pony (3:38) / For You Blue (2:28) / The Long And Winding Road (3:34) / Two Of Us (3:21) / I:ve Got A Feeling (3:31) / One After 909 (2:44) / Don:t Let Me Down (3:19) / I Me Mine (2:21) / Across The Universe (3:38) / Let It Be (3:54)

Bonus Disc: Fly On The Wall (21:00)

Musicians:
John Lennon - guitars, vocals
George Harrison - guitars, vocals
Paul McCartney - bass, vocals
Ringo Starr - drums, vocals

Guest:

Billy Preston - keyboards

Contact:

Website: www.thebeatles.com
Note: will open new browser window

Discography

Please Please Me (1963)
With The Beatles (1963)
A Hard Days Night (1964)
Beatles For Sale (1964)
Help! (1965)
Rubber Soul (1965)
Revolver (1965)
Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
White Album (1968)
Yellow Submarine (1969)
Abbey Road (1969)
In The Beginning: Early Tapes (Circa 1960) (1970)
Let It Be (1970)
1962-1966 (1973)
1967-1970 (1973)
Live At The Hollywood Bowl (1977)
Live! At The Star-Club In Hamburg, Germany (1977)
Beatles Rarities (1979 (UK)/80 (US))
The Beatles Conquer America (1985) [boot]
Past Masters Volume 1 (1988)
Past Masters Volume 2 (1988)
Unsurpasssed Demos (1993) [boot]
Get Back Sessions (1993) [boot]
Shea!/Candlestick Park (1994)
Live At The BBC (1994)
Anthology 1 (1995)
Anthology 2 (1995)
Anthology 3 (1996)
Decca Tapes [boot]
Ultra Rare Trax/Back-Trak/Unsurpassed Demos [boot]
Live In Tokyo [boot]
1 (2000)
Let It Be ... Naked (2003)









Let It Be... Naked
Date of Release Nov 17, 2003
Genre Rock

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 here's Hark the Herald 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. - Stephen Thomas Erlewine


1. Get Back
2. Dig a Pony
3. For You Blue
4. The Long and Winding Road
5. Two of Us
6. I've Got a Feeling
7. One After 909
8. Don't Let Me Down
9. I Me Mine
10. Across the Universe
11. Let It Be

2003 CD Capitol