“Let It Be” Album - “Speaking words of wisdom”

After delays of well over a year, the final studio LP from the Beatles was issued on this date in 1970 in the UK (10 days later in America) along with an accompanying film. Since the band already split up, none of them even bothered to attend the movie premiere. At first after the White Album, they considered doing either a show from Mt. Everest or a live TV gig via satellite from an ocean liner in the middle of the Atlantic. Then the idea, mainly Paul’s, became a back-to-basics album along with a film documenting the process from conception to recording. Instead, it highlighted strains leading to implosion of the greatest rock band ever. The group spent all of January 1969 in the studio (during which George briefly quit and allegedly got into a fistfight with John) culminating in the Apple rooftop concert. Billy Preston was brought in to smooth things over, which seemed to help. Two prior attempts by Glyn Johns at assembling the LP were rejected. “Abbey Road” was even recorded and issued in the interim, after which John secretly left the group in September ’69.

Finally in March 1970 Lennon and Harrison invited Phil Spector to make sense of the tapes. He went wild, adding strings and backing singers, etc., reminiscent of his Wall of Sound productions; it sort of defeated the stated purpose of a stripped-down record. Sir George Martin and McCartney were left out of the loop. Martin half-jokingly said the credits should’ve read, “Produced by George Martin, over-produced by Phil Spector.” The omission of “Don’t Let Me Down” from the album was baffling. Spector also included snippets of random studio banter between some tracks, also somewhat puzzling. The 2003 “Let It Be...Naked” remix was more bare-bones and probably closer to the original concept. After he quit, Paul blocked release of “The Long And Winding Road” as a single in the UK. Some of the LP’s songs are classics, one or two are clunkers, and a few are in between. Altogether it didn’t quite turn out how the Beatles’ swan song should be remembered.