Beatles: Let It Be

Beatles: Let It Be

1970

Apple  Records
Format I Own it on: Vinyl and Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Two of Us  2. Dig a Pony  3. Across the Universe  4. I Me Mine  5. Dig It  6. Let It Be  7. Maggie Mae  8. I've Got a Feeling  9. One After 909  10. The Long and Winding Road  11. For You Blue  12. Get Back

This is a new phase Beatles album...One not quite as good as the others...

Released in 1970, this is the final Beatles album, but in reality it was largely recorded prior to "Abbey Road" and shelved cos...Well, a quick viewing of the accompanying film well tell you all you need to know... I personally thinks it gets a bit of a bum rap...Sure, it's a fairly lackluster farewell (and the overblown Phil Spector production touches probably didn't help either) buuut if you think of it as a quick n' dirty follow-up to the White Album it actually kind of works....A lot of it shares that album's loose, off the cuff presentation (between song chatter, jokey song fragments) but yea...Coming hot off the heels of career-highlight "Abbey Road" probably didn't help its reputation any....

Phil Spector and his big, murderous wig were brought in after the fact to spruce up the unfinished material, but he wasn't given much to work with. Basically, the extent of his input is adding orchestration and choirs on the slower material, which pretty much destroys "Across the Universe" and "The Long and Winding Road" (the latter of which wasn't so hot in the first place).  To his credit, it does work beautifully on the artificially extended "I, Me, Mine." 

Listening back to "Let it Be" it really is hit or miss...They add a few new classics to their repertoire;  the eulogistic title track gives us Ringo's most thoughtful drumming and really makes a case for Billy Preston's  inclusion as the fifth Beatle...

 (Billy Preston had the most significant afro in music history...It's so super-dense...Like the core of a Neutron Star or something...)

"Get Back" is loose and groovy, as is Harrison's "For you Blue" which turns a standard blues progression into playful pop.  I'm also nuts about Lennon & McCartney's close harmonies on "Two of Us." Its "just the two of us" imagery made all the more poignant by the band's dissolution. again, as highlighted in the film:

Pictured above is the CED (Capacitance Electronic Disc) of the movie...I think this was the last time it was released here in the U.S...Do you guys remember these things? They were like video discs but they were housed in big plastic cases and when you cracked them open there was a big, black record inside...

 They were kind of like records in the sense you had to flip over the movie halfway through...And if it was a really long movie it would come as a double album! And best of all, they skipped sometimes! Movies skipped! I remember at the time these were in direct competition with Videocassettes and Betamax, but this one lost pretty early...I remember around 1988 or so my Dad brought home like 200 of these things one night...I think the story was someone had a video store or something and when the format died, they sold off the movies and my Dad bought a ton of them. This was one of my favorite summers ever! I spent the entire summer watching them all! The most memorable ones in the pile were...

The Warrior and the Sorceress

 To this day I still hear people going on and on about the girl with three boobs in "Total Recall." Now don't get me wrong, that was awesome, but check out the cover to this movie...The woman in this movie had not one...not two...not even three...but four cans!  My eleven year old mind was blown!

Neil Young: Rust Never Sleeps

I used to love this one and watched it all the time. As I've mentioned before, I'm a Star Wars fanatic and this had frickin' Jawas on the cover...Close enough for me! I didn't know who Neil Young was at the time and I didn't care...All I wanted to see was the Jawas, but eventually I grew to love the music and I'm proud to say, Jawas introduced me to the music of Neil Young. I can recall back in the day (before internet) I would try and explain this movie to people I'd tell them "DO you remember the movie where Neil Young was really  tiny, and he was surrounded by giant instruments and Jawas were his roadies..." and people were convinced I was making it up. Even after the internet was invented it took forever for this movie to rate a mention...But eventually it was re-released to DVD and I finally had proof, dammit...

It Came From Hollywood:

I watched this 10 billion times! I loved it! It was mostly a compilation of choice scenes from low budget Z-movies, but check out that cast! It featured everybody that meant anything to me in the 80's! Dan Aykroyd! John Candy! Gilda Radner! Cheech & Chong! Hell yes! And most importantly, it introduced me to the films of Ed Wood! I rented a videotape of this a few years back from Casa Video in Tucson and was surprised that I still knew every scene...

Wait, what was I originally talking about? Oh yea...The "Let It Be" movie! I actually loved it and wish they would give it a proper dvd or bluray release.  I actually didn't find it as tense or as big a bummer as it was made out to be...I watched and saw the bickering but ultimately had to shrug my shoulders and say "Is that it?!?!" Man, you should check out the arguments in my band when we record an album! Making a record is always a heated and emotional experience....Sheeyyiiiiit...I don't consider an album complete until every band member has quit or been fired at least once!




The record was later re-released in 2003 as the two-disc "Let It Be...Naked," which seems a little easier on my ears...the updated version strips away most of the Phil Spector overdubs, deletes a couple of tricks and adds the wonderful "Don't Let Me Down" single that should have been on "Let It Be" all along...Even "The Long and Winding Road" is even a bit more tolerable in this stripped-down form.  The biggest improvement has to be "Across the universe." As much as I love the World Wildlife Fund version, this might replace it as the ultimate take.

On the downside I really miss "Dig It." Am I the only person that loved that song?! I mean, they put it on disc 2 (hell, they even extend it) but you have to fast forward through so much studio banter just to get to it...Oh yea...Disc 2 is pretty much all talking...Interesting once, but I can't imagine anybody rocking this disc too often...

So let's mourn the untimely demise of the world's greatest band by gathering together and listening to "Across the Universe." Enjoy...