Engineer Glyn Johns attempted to make something of the sessions by assembling an LP titled Get Back with Let It Be and 11 Other Songs, but there was little enthusiasm for it. Lennon later deemed the whole thing “the shittiest load of badly recorded shit—and with a lousy feeling to it—ever.” The Beatles put Get Back on ice and returned to their tried and true recording formula to make Abbey Road, an album everybody likes a lot more than they probably would have liked Get Back.
By the time Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s film, now titled Let It Be, was released in May 1970, The Beatles were all but caput. The film still needed its obligatory soundtrack, and Glyn Johns made another pass at assembling a releasable album, but the group rejected that one too. Rough and ramshackle, the recordings needed the touch of a producer with lusher sensibilities, and though the obvious choice would have been The Beatles’ long-time producer George Martin, manager Allen Klein instead slid the tapes to Phil Spector. After hearing Spector’s version, Lennon “didn’t puke” and gave the Let It Be soundtrack album the OK. Paul, however, may have puked after hearing all the strings and choirs Spector slathered over tracks such as “I Me Mine”, “The Long and Winding Road”, “Across the Universe”, and “Let It Be”. He shouldn’t have had any issues with the simple power of “Dig a Pony” and “I’ve Got a Feeling”—two of the group’s very best later-day rockers—or the beauty of “Two of Us” and “For You Blue”, though.
Consequently, Let It Be has long been the most controversial of all The Beatles’ albums. Paul attempted to strip away Spector’s embellishments with a version ill-advisedly titled Let It Be…Naked released in 2003, but after living with Spector’s contributions for so long, I think that remix sounds unfinished. Sometimes it’s best just to let it be, which is what George Martin’s son Giles basically does with his new remix of The Beatles’ final album. Acknowledging that he has less dominion over a project produced by Phil Spector than he does over one produced by his dad, Giles Martin approached this latest deluxe reissue with an even lighter hand than he’d brought to his generally faithful remixes of Sgt. Pepper’s, The Beatles, and Abbey Road. For the most part, he brings a bit more clarity and draws a few background elements further into the foreground. The most prominent change I noticed is that John is now much more audible as he doubles Paul’s “Oh yeah” and “Oh no” at the beginning of “I’ve Got a Feeling”.
Personally, I like the original mixes of The Beatles' albums just because they’re what I’m used to hearing, so I don’t mind at all that Giles’s revisions are barely discernible. I do think a bit more adventurousness would have been great when it came to selecting outtakes and rehearsals, most of which are versions of songs that ended up on Let It Be and Abbey Road. The Get Back sessions were so undisciplined that they yielded more outtakes and jams than the sessions for any other Beatles album. According to The Beatles Bible, The Beatles toyed with more than 400 different songs during the sessions, including such interesting items as The Who’s “A Quick One, While He’s Away”, Bo Diddley’s “Bo Diddley”, Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street”, Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue Got Married”, The Rolling Stones’ “Lady Jane”, Louis Armstrong’s “Hello, Dolly!”, Donovan’s “Happiness Runs”, The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Daydream”, Chuck Berry’s “Almost Grown”, and “Hava Nagila”. They also revisited a bunch of their own oldies, such as “Lovely Rita”, “Norwegian Wood”, “The Inner Light”, “Love Me Do”, and “Help!” I realize that most of these must have been jokey passes lasting no more than a few seconds, but it still would have been fun to hear some of them. Such widely bootlegged treasures as “Watching Rainbows” and “Mean Mr. Mustard/Madman” would have actually been valuable for their relative musical quality. So would an absolutely lovely group version of “All Things Must Pass” that may be the best Beatles outtake that has yet to see official release. In fact, I was disappointed when I first heard George’s solo version on All Things Must Pass because it sounded so unlike The Beatles’, which I’d heard before it. Bizarrely, the version of “All Things Must Pass” included on this Special Edition is not that version—it is a very rough and incomplete alternate take. With this new box set, I assume the door has closed on any of these tracks getting a life outside the bootlegs.
The most historically valuable addition to this Special Edition set is the first official release of Glyn Johns’s version of the Get Back album, complete with the original artwork (later repurposed for the Beatles 1967-1970 comp) and the liner notes Tony Barrow wrote in ’69. This album of shaky rehearsals surely would have baffled Beatlemaniacs had it been released fifty-two years ago. Hearing it today, it sounds as groundbreaking in its own way as Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s, and Abbey Road were, but Get Back would have been revolutionary for very different reasons: it’s complete lack of polish, professionalism, and self-consciousness. Plus, its no-frills mix of “The Long and Winding Road” and middle-ground edit of “Dig It” (three and a half minutes longer than the snippet on Let It Be but mercifully shorter than the original twelve-minute jam) are the definitive versions of those tracks. The alternate tracks that would have been included on Glyn Johns’s 1970 go at Get Back—scaled-back mixes of “Across the Universe” and “I Me Mine”—are included on a 12”, 45 RPM E.P. with Giles Martin’s remixes of “Don’t Let Me Down” and the single version of “Let It Be”.
While there are pluses and minuses to the music selections in the vinyl Special Edition of Let It Be, the packaging is nothing but pluses, especially when weighed against The Beatles’ other recent deluxe box sets. The heavy duty, die-cut box makes the records more accessible than the clamshell boxes used for “The White Album” and Abbey Road did. Unlike the vinyl “White Album” box (but like the Abbey Road one), no tracks have been omitted in the transition from CD to LP, which is appropriate in the first year that vinyl has outsold compact discs since 1987. Unlike any previous vinyl version of a Beatles deluxe box set, the hardback book included with the CD edition is included. It’s a nice one, full of photos and in-depth track-by-track notes. Giles, Paul, and Glyn all contribute interesting essays. The 180-gram vinyl is pressed as it should be: quiet, flat, and with well-centered spindle holes.
