The Beatles - Let It Be

I guess I forgot to read the memo where Let It Be is supposed to be a very devisive and much maligned record. I love it, and by that I mean that I love the original version, not the bitter “I’ll show those guys” mix that McCartney authorized under the title Let It Be…Naked which is just as guilty of the things that he complained about (mainly how his opinion wasn’t taken into consideration) as the original mix.
And while he may have a point about the mix of “The Long And Winding Road,” and it may indeed be better on his authorized Naked, it’s still not the version we’ve grown accoustomed to, so to paraphrase McCartney himself, let it be.
Naked sounds like a deliberate album, never mind the timing or financial motivation, while Let It Be sounds more like its original intention: a ramshackle attempt at getting back to where you once belong. Its also accurately provides a snapshot into the band’s fractured relationships at the time. Complete with inside jokes, bickering, and a complete lack of leadership, Let It Be gives fans a glimpse into the inner workings of rock’s greatest band of all time coming a part at the seems….and it’s fascinating.
Musically, the barely rehearsed feel of songs like “Dig A Pony,” “Two Of Us,” and “Get Back,” sound great, to the point where any other band released them, we’d be talking it up like it was their crowning achievement. But since it is the Beatles, the unfinished quality and the studio banter that segues some of the tracks together, there’s a lot of criticism and how incomplete it all is.
Fuck yes it’s incomplete! Let It Be is the bastard child that was maligned by George Martin, ignored by the band, and dressed up by Phil Spector who, to be completely fair, left most of the warts and all in the mix, with the exception of the total wax job he did on McCartney’s beloved “Long And Winding Road.”
The thing of it is, Sgt. Pepper’s and Abbey Road both sound like McCartney blueprints, so its telling at how, after thirty years, the fact that his input wasn’t saught out.
If you ask me, I’d say that Let It Be as it stands and as it was originally issued, serves as a fine document to the Beatles inner workings and is a worthy edition to their catalog; there are times when I place it higher than some of the band’s more acknowledged classics.
It’s an album that works well as the band’s final offering because it demonstrates the Beatles were exactly that: a band, complete with flaws, egos, and off-days. But they were a band whose “off days” were head and shoulders above their competition.