Cover Story: Buried Treasure: The Story of the Beatles' Lost Tapes

Today, Lennon and McCartney's disinterest in Harrison's writing seems pigheaded and defensive. One of the best officially unreleased moments from the entire Let It Be month is a complete January 6th performance of Harrison's "All Things Must Pass," rendered in the garage-church style of Bob Dylan and the Band on the 1967 Basement Tapes. Harrison had spent Thanksgiving 1968 in Woodstock, New York, with Dylan, who became a lifelong friend, and the backwoods spirituality of Dylan's music in '67 and '68 would be as seminal an influence on Harrison's solo work as his lifelong practice of Indian meditation and chanting. The Beatles immediately connected with "All Things Must Pass" (McCartney's soaring falsetto in the chorus is the reason why God made bootlegs), then left it at the side of the road along with other Harrison songs: "Isn't It a Pity," "Hear Me Lord" and "Let It Down."

"It's nothing new, the way things are," Lennon said in a 1969 interview, without apology. "I'm more interested in my songs, Paul's more interested in his and George is more interested in his, that's always been. It's just that usually, in the past, George lost out because Paul and I are tougher."

Harrison just waited for his freedom. He took those four songs with him, out of the Beatles, to his 1970 solo masterpiece, All Things Must Pass, where he gave them the craft and audience they deserved.

There has been no public Statement from the Beatles' company, Apple, about the recovery of the Let It Be Nagra tapes near Amsterdam, or any plans for their release. Ono is open to the latter. "If they are going to be around as pirate tapes," she says, "maybe it should be done right in the future."

It will be a very distant future. The tapes' sound quality is variable, bordering on primitive; they will require major surgery to stand up to digital-era expectations. And it will be difficult to soften or edit out the frustration embedded even in the most fascinating music on those reels. Apple is likely to shelve this material for some time, at least for extensive study.

The Let It Be LP had its own hard road to release. In March 1969, Johns compiled two different acetates of material for the Beatles to evaluate. (One of those acetates made it to the Boston radio station WBCN, which aired it in its entirety.) Johns' May '69 Get Back test pressing was rejected by the band; they also turned down a second disc with a new track lineup in January of '70. In February, Lennon invited Phil Spector to review the tapes. Spector had produced Lennon's single "Instant Karma!"; with the Let It Be movie slated for May, Spector had two months to make silk out of year-old rawhide.

Spector pulled a meager ten songs from the Apple sessions and rooftop concert for Let It Be. Lennon's nonsensical two-step "Dig It" was pruned to fifty-one seconds. Spector filled out the LP with a 1968 Lennon outtake, "Across the Universe," and Harrison's "I Me Mine," both topped with mountains of brass and strings. Since the January 1970 master of "I Me Mine" (done without Lennon, who was vacationing in Denmark) lasted only a minute and a half, Spector stretched the track by repeating the first verse. He also infuriated McCartney by pouring orchestral schmaltz all over "The Long and Winding Road." McCartney later used the word "butchery."

Press reviews fell on both sides of the fence: The New Musical Express called Let It Be "a cheapskate epitaph." Rolling Stone praised the rough stuff, such as "I've Got a Feeling" and "One After 909," but gave Spector "stinging slaps on both wrists." Still, Spector and the Beatles walked off with the 1970 Academy Award for Best Original Song Score.

Lindsay-Hogg spoke freely about the agony of making the film. "It was a terribly, painfully frustrating experience," he told Rolling Stone in July of '70. "It's not that I don't like them. I do. It's just that when we were trying to make the film, every day there was a different one to hate." In turn, his most damning review came from the Beatles themselves. On May 20th, 1970, Let It Be premiered in London. None of the ex-Beatles bothered to attend. The dream was over.

The magic is not. The Nagra reels are not the guts of a Great Lost Beatles Album. But they are a revelation: the sound of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr as ambitious, arguing, fatally human musicians, the four behind the myth. If you ever get to hear these tapes, be prepared for the worst0 — and the best.

[From Issue 916 — February 20, 2003]