which is an anagram of Biettle.

Let it Be is an amazing LP. Incredible to think that it wasn’t even available for years and years. why? Possible because Mcartney hates it, and maybe always will..or has he mellowed now? I think the album is unfairly criticsised (damn i hate having to spell that word – i always get it wrong). i must take more time with my spelling , and with my typins. i am a shit typist,..see what i mean ? ‘typins’..?? what’s that?

Touch typos.

The song Let it Be obviously appears on the album of the same name – i say ‘obviously’, the Laibach cover of the album omits the title track – and i think it’s great song, at least the 1970 / 1969 versions by the band are. Cover versions of it since then, including ones by Mcartney, seem somehow limp in comparison. Lennon’s post Beatles critique of the song was ruthless. he was more than happy to give sole ownership of the song to Paul, and asked what was mcartney thinking when he composed it…as if the religious element of it is somehow too over the top and makes it somehow not a Beatles song i.e. outside the Beatles oeuvre. (odd when you consider the breadth and variety of their compositions genrally). He even said that Paul was trying to emulate the success of Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge over troubles waters – a similar gospelly feel anthem of around the same time – but John’s comments were often mixed up and these are no exception; after all, Let it Be whilst being very much a gospel tune was recorded many months BEFORE Paul Simon’s song!! Apart from that, the comments made by Lennon could be seen as hypocritical coming as they do from a man who wrote Across the Universe, a song whose chorus features a phrase in the dead language Sanskrit; a song which, similar to Let it Be, had its origins on sleep/dream related matter; a song which while not as religious in its sound as LIB is certainly the most spiritual composition the Beatles ever recorded- J’ai guru deva being a mantra – and a song which even appears on the same LP as Let it Be!

But why did Mcartney hate the album, and why do a lot of the public go on about it like it’s dogshit compared to the rest of the band’s canon?

I mean, with a band that becomes loved , or even owned, by so many people it is common to imagine yourself, a random member of the pubic (No-el), as like a fifth member of the group, as an authority, as someone who’s opinion matters. Like, you’ve heard all the other records, you’ve read all the books, you’re aware that the album had a different evolution to the rest of their ‘electronic noise’…thus you start saying negative things about it…especially when you learn that dear old George Martin did not get the same producer credit as he got on everything else, and that the villainous american Phil Spector came over and in to over see the tapes. But the thing is you weren’t there! had this been the last album by an obscure group people, listeners, would have heard it and probably liked it, and probably not delved into any of the behind the scenes shenanigans. There are always behind-the-scenes shenanigans with anything , if you look for them…especially it seems with records, oh and with films too- not so much with paintings. So Paul didn’t like – apparently – the stuff added by spector in the production: the choirs, the orchestral stuff…but come on! It does improve some of the tracks, there’s no question about it, i mean spector was clever: e.g. he seemlessly doubled the length of I,Me,Mine (a great Harrison track), he cut bits of vocal out of Dig a Pony making it a cleaner song (and my favorite). and as for the spoken bits of dialogue in between tracks, which were all expunged for the Mcartney sponsored Let it Be Naked version, i think they add so much life an humour to the record. I mean Lennon’s final comment : ‘I hope we pass the audition’ is pure comedy, and has passed into legend. the spoken bits make it a wholly different record to anything else they’ve done, that and the fact that some of the tracks were recorded purely live.

But everyone loves the beatles, so everyones thinks they know them, and then start empathising with them. Or are they empathising with an accepted narrative, one created by the press. Through this they begin feeling sorry for Mcartney who over the years has become seen as the one who held the group together at the end, who so much resented what he perceived as outside ‘interference’ by spector that he used it as evidence in a court case to dissolve the Beatles partnership. Thus is projected this whining ‘ i was wronged’ image. But imagine how George harrison must have felt, he was wronged on a regular basis especially during the let it be sessions, so many of his songs being rejected. I;m saying ‘it’s relative;, especially with family. I mean, according to Lennon Mcartney was regularly favoured by George Martin for the latter part of the 60s – IF you believe what you read – Paul’s songs getting more attention than the other’s. Of course Lennon whines as well, but Lennon is his own hardest critic, and was brutally honest about his own work before saying ‘my stuff unconsciously perhaps did not get the same respect by Martin as Pauls’ stuff’ or worms to that effect. there’s different sides to all this. not just two.

Mcartney is now seen as the one who kept the band going through the tough times at the end -de facto leader. Over the years he somehow earned the right to revise the LIB album and re-release a revised version not only cutting out the studio chatter but also minus 2 original tracks, (Dig it and Maggie Mae). But hold on: many people have said that the White album (a double album) from 1968 has a lot of shit songs on it, and i would concur, and even the Great Mr Martin said it should have been released as a single album. so why is Paul not bothered about that ?

And why is it there’s this trope that Paul – especially at the end – was the one who wrote the best songs of the group and therefore…therefore what?

Lennon was the leader of the group for the first part of the 60s, and he still had equal footing towards the end. Yes the LIB LP was originally intended as a straight back to the roots no frills no ‘double tracking’ no orchestration album, but things evolve. as mcartney once said of another recording ‘it’s a process’. And this idea that the added instrumentation and voices somehow stains or dirties the record is ridiculous, i mean Sgt Peppers, Abbey Road, Revolver …they all utilised the studio, they all had extreme effects added to the music, to the point of being pretentious. In comparison to those previous records LIB is actually subtle and relatively untouched. I mean there are a handful of tracks on it which preserve their live, one take, feel.

And Lennon did like what Spector did to it, as did Harrison. Lennon publicly acknowledge what good work PS did on it. and i agree….Spector’s produced version of Let it Be song, compared to Martin’s single version, is in my opinion better, with real rocking guitars and horns. it bites.

Okay so Paul’s mawkish ballad Long and Winding Road (which is it has to be said an amazingly poetic song) had the lush strings added….but FFS when this version was released as a single in the states in 1970 it went to number one!! what more can you ask than that? Oh yes but Spector added the stuff without Paul’s permission! OKay, but then She Said She Said on Revolver was apparently recorded after a row within the group leading to Mcartney fucking off from the studio before it was laid down…No one goes on about that. Long and Winding Road is an incredible song, but it would be mawkish with or without Spector’s added touches. It’s like the precursor to the power ballads of the eighties…

and why did the revised ‘naked’ version have to cut out the studio chat ?? Oh wait, let’s look at that for a second…because 99 percent of it all came from John’s mouth??…was that something to do with it? and if so is that a fair bone of contention? well let’s face it Lennon was the funniest, being more or less a ‘goon’ wannabee, a comedian manque, he was milliganesque, he was fucking funny, not just funny but witty, more so than the others. he was a brilliant punster, could take a newspaper headline and turn it around there and then.

Is the perceived resentment against this album something to do with the fact that it was more John’s record, in the end, than Paul’s!? Oh you bounder you cheat…that’s not following the narrative. The narrative dictates to us that only Paul brought a lot of really good songs to the recording session – and they WERE good – Two of Us, Get Back, LIB and LAWR – while John was stringing out on heroin, dysfunctional, and unable to compose anything good at the time i.e. the start of 1969. He was knackered after going through a divorce, a drug bust, and the recording of the mammoth White album 2-3 months before. That’s the accepted narrative. But hold on…Dig a Pony , in my opinion is a brilliant song, and a NEW composition. (I can’t understand why people have a dig at digapony – it’s musical structure while eccentric is totally original, it’s mixture of soul and surrealism is unlike anything else, and its breezy rooftop delivery is something else..oh yeah and its false start is again an example of dropping a comedy sketch in to a rock song), this was a John contribution as was the great Don’t Let Me Down – but that was feted to end up on a B side and on the compilation album Hey Jude in Jan 1970 rather than in Let it Be album in May 1970. Across the Universe is, as already implied, a sublime John song. But detractors of the LP go on about how this was a song from 1968 which was never perfect bla bla bla, and the fact is Spector took the original tape of the 1968 performance bla bla bla. OKAY already! and then they have a go at One after 909, another John song (mainly John) because it came from 1957, one of his earliest compositions…Oh no John didn’t bring much to the table. well hold on, look at previous albums: Michelle, Follow the Sun, When I’m 64, to name but three, are all Mcartney songs written either before he joined the band or when they were in their infancy.

Let it Be? I wish they would