A blogging comrade recently mentioned a Beatles podcast where the presenters led off their series with a negative review of Help! In my response, I observed that I tended not to write negative reviews, especially of beloved albums. Overnight, several things have caused me to reflect on that pronouncement. I detected the cloying scent of not only pomposity but, as John might have sneered, instant karma.

First up is the announcement of an expanded box set edition of the famous Beatles Red and Blue compilations, up from two double albums to a pair of triples*. Connected with this lavish re-issue is the revelation of a release date for “Now And Then”, a “final” Beatles single based on a John demo, new Paul bass and Ringo drums, and some George AI magic. Are you excited? Are you recalling “Free As A Bird”?  Isn’t it time to just let it be?

(See the POSTSCRIPT below for a brief reflection on ‘Now and Then’)

The other thing I recalled was the time I wrote an unvarnished review for Discrepancy Records. It was for another Beatles re-issue.

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LET IT BE: AN EPITAPH

The story of Let It Be, the last Beatles album, is so full of acrimony and disappointment you could make a film about it. Someone has already? Twice? One miserable, one cheerful? Oh, OK. 

Maybe a book, then. 

Any book about Let It Be would be a sizeable tome where the first half simply corrected misconceptions and myths about this full-stop in the life of the world’s most famous band.

For instance, the timing of the album. The recordings that became Let It Be are commonly referred to as the ‘Get Back’ sessions and occurred after The Beatles (aka The White Album) and before sessions for Abbey Road (the last album recorded). It was Paul McCartney’s idea to return to the band’s roots, creating the simpler, more direct music of their youth. The band came on board, also agreeing to proceedings being filmed with the goal of presenting a multi-media package: album, film, live concert. In the end, the film was a portrait of disharmony, a study in disinterest, while the concert was a brief blast on top of the Apple building on a freezing January day in 1969.

After recordings finished—and despite what re-writing history might seek to portray, they were not harmonious; George stormed off on one occasion, went home, wrote ‘Wah Wah’; read the lyric— the musicians were united on one thing: they didn’t think much of the recordings. So the tapes were shelved for months while the much more satisfying Abbey Road was recorded (and released) and the no-longer-fab four went about other projects such as Ringo’s acting career and Paul’s first solo album. Regardless of the band’s disengagement, however, the film ground through post-production and was scheduled for release in May 1970. 

Eventually, someone remembered there needed to be an album to go with the film. 

The tapes were retrieved, overdubs added (contrary to the original vision of an ‘honest’ stripped back record) and a hotchpotch of old songs, new songs and snippets was readied for presentation to a world eager for more Beatles. Trouble was, it wasn’t really an album. ‘Dig It’ is fifty seconds from a twelve minute jam around John rapping. ‘Dig A Pony’: fun but very lightweight. ‘For You Blue’ is an undistinguished blues. As for ‘Maggie Mae’, it is an incomplete scrap of a bawdy song about a Liverpool prostitute, the inclusion of which (and its positioning) serves only to undermine Paul’s ‘Let It Be’. As for the other key song—’The Long And Winding Road’—its superb McCartney melody is redolent with sadness and is accompanied by a touching lyric… but the recording was a demo, with just Paul on piano and John on bass. Casually played bass. Bass with bum notes. Something would be needed to cover Lennon’s mediocre playing if the demo was to be salvaged.

In March 1970, John, impressed with Phil Spector’s work on the Plastic Ono Band album and ‘Instant Karma’ single, asked the American producer to ready the material for release, despite George Martin having already supervised mastering of the album. This, it must be stressed, was without the knowledge of Martin or the other Beatles. George Harrison was planning his debut album, Paul—having been secretly recording for months—was on the brink of releasing his, Ringo’s LP was ready to roll too. Later, Martin observed that he produced Let It Be and Phil Spector over-produced it, a barb difficult to deflect. So what did the ‘Wall of Sound’ man do? 

Spector remixed a number of tracks, extended Harrison’s ‘I Me Mine’ by simply copying across a large chunk to the end, and most contentiously, added strings and choirs to ‘Let it be’ and ‘The long and winding road’. Here lies one of the many ironies of Let It Be. Lennon facilitated Spector’s syrupy strings covering his own ordinary playing on McCartney’s memorable song. Kind of says it all, really. 

So much more could be written about Let It Be and the process that produced it. About the original dodgy lyrics to ‘Get Back’ that still seem dodgy today; about Mother Mary not referencing a religious text but a dream Paul had where his dead mum (Mary) appeared and told him to chill. About how Phil Spector did not write the orchestrations, only commissioned and conducted them. How the countless hours of film footage were eventually reduced to 80 minutes, which Paul, George and Ringo watched but which John and Yoko chose not to preview. How until the last minute, the whole thing was called ‘Get Back’. About how none of the Beatles attended either the New York or the Liverpool film premiers. How the film won an Oscar for best ‘Original song score’, the award being accepted on their behalf by Quincy Jones. How reception of Let It Be was decidedly lukewarm, with one reviewer labelling it ‘a cheapskate epitaph, a cardboard tombstone, a glorified EP.’ The general consensus was that it was uneven, under-whelming and certainly over-produced.

Yet Let It Be has retained a place as a loved Beatles album, despite it being their least interesting LP, musically speaking. Successive generations have clutched its patchy glories like a threadbare security blanket. The last Beatles album. It should have been Abbey Road, a fitting send off in every respect, but instead it is the desperately flawed Let It Be. We overlook the faults, paper over the cracks. We do not wish to see our idols tarnished. Perhaps that’s why there is a new film arising from the Twickenham Studio ashes. Maybe that’s why Giles Martin sought to refresh the sound of the album for its belated fiftieth anniversary, and did a sterling job… within the constraints of the source material. It could be there is still a real hunger to somehow raise from the dead Paul’s original get-back-to-basics idea; think about 2003’s Let It Be… Naked and now another crack at a Get Back album in the current deluxe edition. Then there is our appetite for projects shining new light through old windows; we don’t demand dazzle, just the warmth of an old lover, gently reheated. These, in combination, could explain Pitchfork’s 9.1 out of 10 rating for the 2021 deluxe re-issue.

In the end, our desire for more John, Paul, George and Ringo is a cultural echo of Beatlemania fuelled by a yearning for an expansive, more exciting time when pop music soared higher than an Apollo space rocket. Icarus forgotten, people truly believed something could go up and not come down. Today, we’ll celebrate accept any little lift we can extract from the storied, lighter-than-air past.

REFERENCES

Lewisohn, Mark (1988) The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. Hamlyn/EMI, London, UK.

Lewisohn, Mark (1992) The Complete Beatles Chronicle. Chancellor Press, London, UK.

Macdonald, Ian (1995) Revolution In The Head. Pimlico, London, UK.

Nelson, Elizabeth (16 October 2021) The Beatles Let It Be (Super Deluxe). Accessed 28 November 2021. <https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-beatles-let-it-be-super-deluxe/>

Wikipedia (29 November 2021) Let It Be (1970 film). Accessed 30 November 2021. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_It_Be_(1970_film)#Release>

* It must be said that the inclusion of extra George Harrison songs is a worthwhile and overdue expansion.

© Bruce Jenkins.

Originally published at Discrepancy Records, December 2021

Reprinted with kind permission and a new preamble and postscript

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POSTSCRIPT

So the so-called last Beatles single, ‘Now and Then,’ has dropped and is… OK. A pleasant late-Lennon song of yearning tinged with regret, it has had layers of production added to thicken everything on its rather thin bones. But pretending this is The Beatles is less valid than calling Ringo’s Ringo the last Beatles album because Lennon, McCartney and Harrison all appear alongside the long-suffering drummer. At least on Ringo everyone was alive and doing their thing in real time.

Ringo’s drums on ‘Now and Then’, by the way, are a modest highlight.

Alexis Petridis wrote an excellent piece in The Guardian where he muses about all the kerfuffle and wonders if it is an elderly Paul laying some ghosts. Why not? He’s earned that right and no-one is forcing us to listen.

And if nothing else, it has produced the quote of the year from Oasis’ Liam Gallagher. Here’s the context and its marvellous punchline (also from a Guardian article):

Liam Gallagher appeared to have had an early listen to ‘Now and Then’, writing on X on Thursday morning: “Absolutely incredible biblical celestial heartbreaking and heartwarming all at the same time.” When asked by a fan if he was worried he wouldn’t like the song, Gallagher replied: “The Beatles could shit in my handbag and I’d still hide my polo mints in there.”

I suppose the very least one can say is that ‘Now and Then’ is better than the previous two posthumous releases. John doesn’t sound quite so much like a ghost.

That qualified endorsement should be taken as a warning. If the ‘new’ single sells shedloads—and it obviously will—expect to see a AI assisted re-mixes of ‘Real Love’ and ‘Free As A Bird’ , perhaps in time for next Christmas.

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