Let It Be [Vinyl LP]

My favorite song here is Long and winding road, a song apparently inspired by a road in the Mull of Kintyre. Paul McCartney originally offered the song to Tom Jones, who had previously covered some other Beatles songs, but Tom politely declined thinking the song was not likely to be a big hit. Tom regretted his decision after seeing the Beatles take it to number one in America. In Britain, the Beatles did not release their version as a single so it became a minor hit (and the only hit) for Ray Morgan, about whom I know nothing else.

Get back and the title track were both huge Beatles hit on both sides of the Atlantic and, like Long and winding road, are well up to the standard expected of the Beatles. Of the other songs, I particularly like Across the universe (the only other track here to make it on to the Blue album 1967 to 1970), One after 909 (which I didn't really appreciate until I heard Willie Nelson's cover - and I still prefer that to the original), Two of us (the opening track) and the traditional Maggie Mae. The other songs are fine but not as brilliant as we'd come to expect from the Beatles.

If, by some fluke, this is the first Beatles album you hear, you'll be wondering how anybody could criticize it. If, on the other hand, you've heard some of their other albums, this one may come as a huge disappointment. The reality is that it's definitely worth a listen (indeed, several listens), but if you haven't got the other Beatles albums buy them first.

The culprit who is fingered for this disaster (a Beatles album that is not "great" qualifies as a disaster), is Phil Spector, who was brought in to do some post-production mixing and overdubs. But the only song that really got the legendary "Wall of Sound" treatment was "The Long and Winding Road," with "Across the Universe" and "I Me Mine" only getting a touch of the same. That is not much to hang Spector as the primary culprit. The biggest sin here is that he did not work with the Beatles the same way that George Martin always did and the responsibility for so many of the songs being sub-standard has to fall on the Beatles who wrote them. Personally, I never liked "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road" half as much as "Hey Jude" (it was like comparing all of Led Zeppelin's ambitious songs to "Stairway to Heaven" in the next decade).

It helps a little bit to recall that the idea here was that the Beatles were performing these songs live (who can forget the famous rooftop concert), in another attempt to get excited about their music. Sometimes I just think of "Let It Be" as the anti-Sgt. Pepper album, because whereas that classic Beatles album has a superb sense of construction from start to finish, the songs on this one seem to be arranged in a haphazard fashion (e.g., "Dig a Pony" followed by "Across the Universe"). I know this seems a strange thing to say after "The White Album" and side 2 of "Abbey Road," but both of those albums still have cohesiveness even when they are splicing unfinished songs together that this one is totally missing. Maybe on a subliminal level the group was telling the world "You WANT us to break up, because this is what you get from here on out."

The bottom line is I still listen to this one from time to time, but still a lot less than any other Beatles album (yes, I listen to "side 1" of the "Yellow Submarine" soundtrack more than "Let It Be"). Besides, everybody knows it is not a real Beatles album if George Martin is not the producer. When "Let It Be...Naked" came out in 2003, having mixed out Spector's contributions, deleted the bits of conversation, cut a couple of songs ("Dig It" and "Maggie Mae"), added "Don't Let Me Down," and resequenced the tracks, it just struck me as too little too late. At best it was a marginally better album. No wonder "Abbey Road" is considered the "last" Beatles album. It is not just because it was recorded after "Let It Be," but because it lets the Beatles go out on a much higher note (plus "The End" gets to serve as a benediction of sorts).