Album Reviews
View Well, it was too good to be true—somebody apparently just couldn't Let It Be, with the result that they put the load on their new friend P. Spector, who in turn whipped out his orchestra and choir and proceeded to turn several of the rough gems on the best Beatle album in ages into costume jewelry.
Granted that he would have preferred to have been in on the project from its inception rather than having it all handed to him eight months after its announced release date (in which case we would never have been led to expect spontaneity and his reputation would still be intact), one can't help but wonder why he involved himself at all, and wonder also, how he came to the conclusion that lavish decoration of several of the tracks would enhance the straightforwardness of the album.
To Phil Spector, stinging slaps on both wrists.
He's rendered "The Long and Winding Road," for instance, virtually unlistenable with hideously cloying strings and a ridiculous choir that serve only to accentuate the listlessness of Paul's vocal and the song's potential for further mutilation at the hands of the countless schlock-mongers who will undoubtedly trip all over one another in their haste to cover it. A slightly lesser chapter in the ongoing story of McCartney as facile romanticist, it might have eventually begun to grow on one as unassumingly charming, had not Spector felt compelled to transform an apparently early take into an extravaganza of oppressive mush. Sure, he was just trying to help it along, but Spectorized it evokes nothing so much as deweyeyed little Mark Lester warbling his waif's heart out amidst the assembled Oliver orchestra and choir.
"I Me Mine," the waltz sections of which reminds one very definitely of something from one of The Al Jolson Story's more maudlin moments, almost benefits from such treatment—it would have been fully as hilarious as "Good Night," after all, had Spector obscured its raunchy guitar with the gooey strings he's so generously lavished on the rest of it. As he's left it, though, it, like "Winding Road," is funny enough to find cloying but not funny enough to enjoy laughing at.
Elsewhere, Spector compounds his mush fixation with an inability to choose the right take (it is said that nothing on the "official album" comes from the actual film sessions, mind you). Inexplicably dissatisfied with the single version of "Let It Be," for instance, he hunted up a take in which some jagged guitar and absurdly inappropriate percussion almost capsize the whole affair, decided that it might be real Class to orchestrally embellish the vocal, and thus dubbed in—yes!—brass. Here the effect isn't even humorous—Spector was apparently too intent on remembering how the horns went on "Hey Jude" to listen closely enough to this one to realize that they're about as appropriate here as piccoloes would have been on "Helter Skeltre."
Happily though, he didn't impose himself too offensively on anything else, and much of what remains is splendid indeed:
Like John's "All Across The Universe," which, like "Julia," is dreamy, childlike, and dramatic all at once and contains both an unusually inventive melody and tender devotional vocal.
Like the two rough-honed rockers, the crudely revival-ish "I've Got A Feeling" and "One After 909," both of which are as much fun to listen to as they apparently were to make. "C'mon, baby, don't be cold as ice" may be at once the most ridiculous and magnificent line Lennon-McCartney ever wrote.
Like John's crossword-puzzlish "Dig a Pony," which features an urgent old rocker's vocal and, being very much in the same vein as such earlier Lennonisms as "Happiness Is a Warm Gun," nearly makes up for the absence of "Don't Let Me Down" and "The Last Dance." And especially like everyone's two favorites, "Two of Us." which is at once infectiously rhythmic and irresistibly lilting in the grand tradition of "I'll Follow the Sun," and the magnificent chunky, thumping, and subtly skiffly "Get Back," which here lacks an ending but still contains delightful comping by John and Billy Preston.
All of these are, of course, available on the bootleg versions of the album, a further advantage of which is their pure unSpectoredness and the presence of various goodies that didn't quite make it to the official release.
Musically, boys, you passed the audition. In terms of having the judgment to avoid either over-producing yourselves or casting the fate of your get-back statement to the most notorious of all over-producers, you didn't. Which somehow doesn't seem to matter much any more anyway.
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Review 1 of 3
kmbalk writes:
Let it Be is an incredible piece of music by the masters. It shows an attempted return to the rock that made The Beatles famous in the first place (and with a little twist to it too). Lennon said they "couldn't play the game anymore...It'd come to a point where it wasn't creating magic." McCartney said that by then The Beatles "couldn't play and then everything would sort itself out." Harrison said his experience with Let It Be was "unhealthy and unhappy." Ringo said "it was very strange. The days were long and boring". But whatever came out of those 'long and boring' days, it was magnificent.
The Beatles began recording for the new album, then titled Get Back, on January 2nd 1969. The whole of January 1969 for the Beatles was probably the most chaotic and h**l-on-earth days of their lives up to that point. Many factors helped this: The broken relationship between the four at the time, Yoko Ono (at the time Paul, George and Ringo didn't want her in the studio), and the cold and trapping atmosphere of working at Twickeham Film Studios. "Magic Alex had a studio ready for us so we wouldn't have to go to Twickeham," says George Harrison. "But it was horrible. Speakers all around the room, 100-watt amps, little lights flickering on and off. The only good thing was like a radio coming out of a toilet or something." Another miserable event that occured was the movie. Michael Lindsay Hogg was directing a documentary about the making of the album. It was an idea worth working on...the public would be pleased. But as much as the movie was pushed to greater lengths by the crew and Paul himself, this was not the right time to film The Beatles. "They filmed Paul and I having a round," rembers George Harrison in the recent documentary The Beatles Anthology.
Another thing pushing the band was a fat businessman who, since he heard The Beatles, wanted so badly to manage the group. His name was Allen Klein, who also managed the Rolling Stones and Donovan. John, George and Ringo didn't mind this and in fact wanted his management. Paul, on the other side of the table, wanted Linda Eastman's (who he would marry that year) father. Whoever won this battle, it wouldn't even matter cause by the end of the Let It Be sessions every thought and idea would be broken.
The most important day of all this was January 30th, 1969. The day the Beatles performed on the rooftop of Apple. It was a sunny day, and the people of England below were pleased. Well, most of them. One called the cops and everything was shattered. "I always feel let down about the police," remembers Ringo. "I thought 'Oh great! I hope they drag me off!'. It would have been really great. Instead they just came bumbling in: 'You gotta turn that sound down." "It would've been a good ending," Paul says jokingly. "BEATLES BUSTED ON ROOFTOP GIG!"
It was a year later, after the many events that led for John to leave forever in September 1969, that the final steps in the Let It Be story were completed. And it's probably the most mindblowing thing: Everything is breaking, and The Beatles demise is a slow and painful one and the next LP (Let It Be it is now called, not Get Back) is due out soon. And a man comes in and rearranges the whole thing:
Phil Spector.
He was the king of the 'Wall Of Sound'. One of the greatest producers who's ever lived. "He was eccentric," said Ringo. Phil Spector added strings to 'I Me Mine', 'Let It Be', and 'Long And Winding Road'. Paul hated it, along with George Martin. Ringo loved it. It's the climax, probably, of the whole Let It Be story.
Now, since I'm done talking about what happened in the making process, let me talk about the music itself.
'Across The Universe' is a poingant guitar ballad with great lyrics.
'Get Back' was a great butt kicker.
'Let It Be' was a sad song of goodbyes.
But to me the one song that is the heart of the whole thing is 'I Me Mine'. It sums up the demise of the greatest band that ever was in just 2:26.
Mar 27, 2008 19:39:34
Review 2 of 3
Vameon writes:
The beatles go out with a bang, this album is one of the greats from the always perfect beatles.From get back to across the universe, there is beautiful song to rock great and the lyrics to each song blew me away.They give you nothing but great songs the whole album, then finish it off with let it be?Can it get any better people?
Feb 2, 2008 01:50:25
Review 3 of 3
dennis23 writes:
I like the Spector version just fine. It may not be the Fabs "sound" (as Macca put it),but in a way it sort of caps Spectors career as a producer. I have grown to love the "Wall of Sound" and I think it is oddly fitting that these two giants of pop music would end up together-even in the screwy way they did.
Lennon was right on in crediting Spector for rescuing Let It Be. Spector is one of a kind and a genius with a truly signature sound and how many producers can that be true of...not many.(Butch Vig,anyone?)
I love ya Macca and I love LIB...Naked,but the original is really good,too.
Jan 16, 2008 15:22:50
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