Let it Be

A couple of weeks ago I was on a break at my gig.  As I was sitting at the bar I noticed that the club was playing the Beatles final record, Let It Be.  (It’s actually their 2nd to last record, having been recorded several months before the 1969 release, Abbey Road, but it was the final record to be released –  early in 1970.)

I was listening rather intently and gradually I began to realize something:  Let It Be is essentially a steaming pile.  It’s as if the Beatles through a bunch of paint against a wall and whatever stuck was what they would release.  Add in the fact that they basically hated each other by then and you have one unhappy product.  Lennon already had one foot out the door and Harrison actually quit in the middle of the sessions.  (The other members cajoled him into coming back after a few days)

Yet…the album has some really good moments.  Forget the title song, which has become a standard.  Actually, don’t forget it. — it’s a good song with a nice guitar solo to boot.  For me, though, what’s always attracted me to this record is the bare bones, stripped down aura of I Dig a Pony, One After 909, and I’ve got a Feeling.  They’re fun to listen to and suggest that the boys had come through their psychedelic period with their love for classic rock n roll intact.  Across the Universe, over produced as it was, is a lovely song, and Get Back is great too.

Even John Lennon, for all of his cynicism about the Beatles, didn’t hate it.  He had this to say in a 1970 Rolling Stone magazine interview in defense of the album’s producer, Phil Spector:  “He was given the shittiest load of badly-recorded shit with a lousy feeling to it ever, and he made something of it.” 

Well…it’s sort of positive.