Paul McCartney has got his wish - 'Let it Be', the last Beatles album, has been shorn of Phil Spector's ornate embellishments and released as it was meant to sound, writes Brian Boyd.
Twelve thousand, seven hundred and thirty seven days after The Beatles began recording the Let It Be album, it is to be finally released the way they wanted it. Let It Be . . . Naked may be 34 years after the original event, but for the two remaining Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the "de-mixed" album remains a creative vindication. The original 1969 album was recorded as the band were falling apart - often turning up at the studio at different times to play their own parts. With no one really at the helm of the group, hundreds of hours of tape was handed over to legendary producer Phil Spector to turn into an album.
All four Beatles, at differing periods, expressed themselves unhappy at what Spector did to their work. McCartney, in particular, was so angered over what Spector had done to his piano ballad, The Long And Winding Road (Spector filled it out with banks of lush orchestral strings), that to this day he still refuses to talk to Spector. While most albums are remixed, usually with extra music layered on to the original work, this "de-mixed" work sees the two remaining Beatles and a group of studio engineers going back to the original album master tapes and removing all of Spector's ornate embellishments. The album, which includes the songs Across The Universe, Get Back and Let It Be has also had its track-listing altered; out go Dig It and Maggie Mae, plus a lot of background dialogue, and in comes Don't Let Me Down, originally just the b-side to the Get Back single.
The 1970 album was released as a soundtrack to accompany the Let It Be film. This de-mixed album not only loses the orchestrations and choirs put on by Spector but, thanks to new digital technology, now has a much purer and cleaner sound.
"What you're hearing now is the sound the four of us made in the studio," says Paul McCartney in the album's accompanying press release, "but when the album came out the sound of the songs had been changed in the studio to suit the 'soundtrack' element.
"We've just gone back, taken off all the 'extras' and now it sounds exactly as it was in the room at the time - you're right there."
Ringo Starr is similarly enthused by the de-mix, saying: "It sounds bloody great without Phil" - quite possibly the last thing Spector needs to hear as he waits to see if he is going to be charged with the murder of an actress in his house earlier this year.
Although the last Beatles album released, Let It Be was recorded before Abbey Road, which was released in September, 1969. The idea behind Let It Be was that the band would write a complete album, rehearse it and then perform it live in front of a large audience.
The entire project was to be filmed. What the resultant film actually captured was not so much The Beatles recording and playing a new album, but more a documentary of a band falling apart. With John Lennon lost to heroin, Yoko Ono sitting threateningly beside him at all times, George Harrison no longer able to conceal his dislike of McCartney and Starr sullen and withdrawn, the Let It Be sessions effectively broke up the band.
"We were being constantly filmed or taped and all these tensions were being laid bare, there was no way they could be disguised," says McCartney in the press pack, "it was painful for us and I think it did contribute largely to the break-up. There were arguments, there were disagreements, but at the same time there were lots of friendly moments. It's the opposite of a holiday where you forget the rain and remember the great bits you had, with this I think we all just remembered all the bad times - particularly because they were caught on camera."
It was during the making of Anthology in the mid-1990s that the three remaining Beatles agreed, in principle, to go back to the Let It Be tapes and bring out a version they could all be happy with. If the band hadn't been breaking up, with individual members already eyeing up their solo careers, they would have worked harder on the finished product the first time around, but it was around this time that lawyers entered the fray, and with the Apple corporation falling down around them, the four band members had other concerns than how their album should be mixed.
Thirty four years later, with two of the band dead, McCartney bumped into the director of the Let It Be film, Michael Lindsay-Hogg. "At the time there was talk of the film Let It Be being released on DVD" says McCartney, "and the more I thought about it the more I realised that the music used in the film is unadorned; there is no Phil Spector.
"It's not that I hated what Phil Spector did to the music on the album, I just didn't like it. When I heard the songs as they were in the film, I thought 'Wow, it's almost scary, it's so bare', I really liked it. This is us, no frills, no artifice. Why don't we put the album out again, but this time 'naked'? It just seemed so obvious."
To give you some sort of idea of how de-mixed the naked album is, consider that three of the songs that Spector produced, Across The Universe, The Long And Winding Road and Let It Be, feature lavish orchestral and choral overdubbing, including 18 violins, four violas, four cellos, a harp, three trumpets, three trombones, two guitarists and 14 singers. All have been erased from this new release. Now, Across The Universe features only Lennon's voice and guitar, a bit of tamboura from Harrison and Starr keeping time on a bass drum. Similarly, Let It Be and The Long And Winding Road are stripped right back to piano and vocal.
For Naked, two Abbey Road producers, Allan Rouse and Paul Hicks, were charged with the history-revising task of making the album sound the result of four musicians in a studio with all extraneous details removed.
Some of the tracks, such as Get Back and For You Blue, haven't been radically altered, but thanks to new technology they sound a lot clearer and a lot punchier than before.
"You're actually right there with the band now on Get Back and For You Blue" says Ringo Starr, "and The Long And Winding Road blew me away without the strings. There's nothing wrong with Phil's strings but it's been 30-odd years since I've heard it without all that and it just blew me away. Let It Be is just an incredible track too and now you realise why we called the album after that song."
"There will always be sour memories of the Let It Be album," says McCartney, "it was my favourite group in the world breaking up. But what is great and what is a great memory is the music we made. And now, in its unadorned form, there it is exactly as we made it."
Although the release of Naked will doubtless prompt many Beatles fan to wonder what other tracks could be improved/altered if McCartney and Starr went back to the original master tapes, the two remaining group members say that nothing else in their catalogue will be changed - ever. They stress that the particular situation surrounding the recording of Let It Be meant that it came out in a way they were always unhappy with.
This unprecedented musical move could have major implications. Will other bands re-visit their back catalogue to tidy up messy mixes and if they do so will it be for purely creative reasons or financial ones? Either way, 33 years after they broke up, The Beatles are still musical pioneers.
Let It Be . . . Naked is released on November 17th