NY Times on Beatles Remix/New Album

[DudeAsInCool]

Album Review | 'Let it Be...Naked': Getting Back to Essentials, Beatles Refuse to Let It Be

November 6, 2003

By ALLAN KOZINN

Of all the Beatles recordings, none has a history as

fraught as "Let It Be," and on Nov. 18 Capitol Records will

add another wrinkle to the story, with the release of "Let

It Be . . . Naked."

One thing listening to the new album makes clear is that it

won't end the debate - a perennial among Beatles fans since

the original "Let It Be" album was released in 1970 - about

how the album was meant to sound. There is, it turns out,

both good news and bad. In purely sonic terms, "Let It Be .

. . Naked" is a real treat. Remixed from the original

multitrack session tapes, these performances have a warmth

and fullness that makes the sound on the original album

seem flat and squashed. The most notable difference, and

the one that occasioned the remix in the first place, is

that the lush choirs and orchestrations that Phil Spector

larded onto the songs "Let It Be," "The Long and Winding

Road" and "Across the Universe" have been shorn away,

leaving the unadorned performances that the band originally

meant to release.

There are other assets. The acoustic guitars on "For You

Blue," "Two of Us" and "Across the Universe" have a lovely

bloom. And when the band goes electric, in "Get Back," "Dig

a Pony" and "I've Got a Feeling," the sound is clean and

sharp.

The drawbacks have a good deal to do with the differences

between this album and the versions of "Let It Be" to which

listeners have become accustomed. But they go deeper than

that. They raise a more purely historical question: What

kind of album did the Beatles have in mind when they

recorded this material? To these ears, it wasn't "Let It Be

. . . Naked."

A bit of history. During the "White Album" sessions in

1968, tensions within the group were beginning to run high,

and much of that two-disc album is a compilation of

individual projects. Each of the Beatles ran his own

session for his own songs, and they called one another in

only as needed.

John Lennon in particular was beginning to pull away from

the group, having become more interested in collaborating

with his new love, Yoko Ono. George Harrison had other

interests, from Indian music to collaborations with Bob

Dylan and Eric Clapton, both of whom, he observed, had a

respect for his musicianship that he didn't feel in his own

band. Ringo Starr had quit the Beatles briefly during the

"White Album" sessions, at least partly because he

discovered that Paul McCartney had redone some of his drum

parts. Only Mr. McCartney - now Sir Paul - was thoroughly

keen on immediately getting back to work after that album

was released.

One thing the Beatles agreed on was that a new direction

was needed - or, really, an old one. Since "Rubber Soul,"

in 1965, their studio work had become increasingly complex,

and involved building songs by recording the basic guitar

and drum tracks first, then overdubbing the bass, solos,

vocals and other instruments. What they proposed for "Let

It Be" was going back to the process they had used in the

sessions for their first album, "Please Please Me," in

1963: playing their music live in the studio, with the

tapes running.

At that time, though, the Beatles were still playing

concerts (they retired from the stage in 1966), and had a

polished repertory to record. But beginning in late 1964,

they tended to bring unfinished ideas into the studio,

using the sessions to turn them into completed songs. "Let

It Be" would incorporate this process in an unusual way.

The sessions were filmed for a proposed television special,

and as originally envisioned the rehearsals would make up

the first part of the show, with a one-off live performance

of the new material as its conclusion.

It was to be, as trumpeted in the advertisements for "Get

Back," the first single from the sessions, "The Beatles as

Nature Intended." And in a way, that's what it was,

although the concert ended up taking place on the roof of

Apple, the Beatles' offices and recording studio on Savile

Row, and the television special was released as a feature

film instead. What also happened was that the bickering

started anew; this time Harrison quit for a while.

When the sessions ended, neither the Beatles nor their

producer, George Martin, could face wading through the

tapes to assemble an album. That task fell to Glynn Johns,

who assembled an album drawn from the sessions' finished

recordings, and originally to be called "Get Back."

Included in his version were pre- and postperformance

quips, meant to convey the off-the-cuff nature of the

sessions.

Mr. Johns ended up making three versions of the "Get Back"

album, none of which received unanimous approval from the

group members, who were busy fighting among themselves.

Meanwhile the film was finished, and with Lennon's and

Harrison's approval - although not, it seems, Sir Paul's -

Mr. Spector was brought in to make a finished soundtrack

album. He added the choirs and orchestrations to a handful

of tracks. When it turned out that Lennon's "Across the

Universe" and Harrison's "I Me Mine" were to be included in

the film, an unreleased 1968 recording of "Across the

Universe" was exhumed from the files and given the Spector

treatment, which included slowing down the recording and

burying it in sonic mush, and the group was brought in to

record "I Me Mine" afresh.

That recording lasted less than two minutes, but Mr.

Spector extended it by repeating some of its verses. He

also brought members of the group in for guitar and drum

overdubs, effectively getting them to violate their own "no

overdubs" and "no editing" rule for this project. He did

retain the between-songs chatter and left other songs

alone.

When Apple announced its plan earlier this year to bring

out a restored, un-Spectorized version of the "Let It Be"

album, collectors assumed the new version would be one of

the "Get Back" albums prepared by Mr. Johns. But "Let It Be

. . . Naked" sweeps away all this history, the Johns

versions as well as the Spector mixes.

Instead of suggesting an informal session in which the

Beatles play their new songs, chat and run through oldies,

"Let It Be . . . Naked" treats the album as if it were

"Rubber Soul," or"Please Please Me." Gone are the count-ins

and comments, the oldies and jams. Instead each song begins

and ends cold, a finished, polished production.

That can be disconcerting. "Get Back," for example, lacks

the coda that had been edited onto the version released as

a single, and in losing the applause (it was a rooftop

take) and the postperformance comments, the song fades

abruptly. Nor has the "no editing" rule been restored. "I

Me Mine" is extended here as well, and some songs - most

notably "Let It Be" - involve editing between multiple

takes.

Given all that, it's difficult to think of this new version

as the belated, definitive version of "Let It Be." It

isn't, in fact, "Let It Be . . . Naked" at all, but "Let It

Be" with a fig leaf.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/arts/mus...d2d770dbb0a52e3