Oscar Buzz: Who's ahead in this year's key races?
Leona Naess - "All is Fair"
the everybodyfields - "Worth Keeping"
Album Stream: Listen to Mindy Smith's Christmas album My Holiday
Right around the time The Beatles crafted such pop classics as "Penny Lane," "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" in 1967, the band had fully immersed itself in its newfound experimentation with psychedelia and avant-garde pop. The result? A long-rumored 14-minute track entitled "Carnival of Light," which up until recently had been nothing more than a ghost in the minds of Beatles fans.
Just days after Activision officially announced Guitar Hero: Metallica, MTV Games announced an even bigger coup of its own: its Rock Band developer Harmonix is working on a title built around The Beatles' entire music catalogue, and it's slated to hit in time for next Christmas.
Scenario: You’re walking around a damp London garage and you stumble across 64 unmarked, rusting film canisters with music footage from the '60s. You’re thinking, at best, maybe we’ve got some Animals’ b-sides here or some live cuts from Donovan. Maybe even some rare Kinks footage. What you’re probably not expecting is an intimate, revealing conversation about the meeting and songwriting process of arguably the most famous band in the history of the world.
The Beatles and Cirque du Soleil are coming together (again) right now. Well, June 24, anyway. That is the release date for the new feature-length documentary about Cirque du Soleil’s “LOVE” show, set to the Beatles’ album of the same name, which has been showing at Las Vegas’ Mirage Hotel since 2006.
Cirque du Soleil teamed up with Apple Corps Ltd. to make the 84-minute DVD, entitled All Together Now, in hopes of giving viewers an inside look at the partnerships and creativity that went into the much-acclaimed production.
The project was initially borne of George Harrison’s friendship with Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte. The documentary includes film from the earliest meetings between the two companies’ creative teams, as well as footage of Ringo Staff, Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison discussing the best way to express in movement the words and music of the Beatles. Since the process was obviously not a perfectly smooth one, the arguments that arose are in the film as well.
The film also features Sir George Martin and his son, Giles Martin, the show’s musical directors, as they transform the Beatles’ individual songs into 90 minutes of constant soundtrack. They were working on the show’s music in London’s Abbey Road Studios while the show was coming into focus in Montreal.
In addition to the main feature, the DVD also contains these bonus features:
“Changing The Music”: a behind-the scenes look at the decision-making process for the “LOVE” concept and music production
“Music In The Theatre”: a look at the process of creating the “LOVE” show’s unique audio design
“Making ‘LOVE’”: a backstage pass to explore the design of “LOVE,” including the art direction, costumes, props, screen imagery and the use of The Beatles’ voices in the “LOVE” stage production and its soundtrack
Related links:
TheBeatles.com
CirqueduSoleil.com
The Beatles on the All Music Guide
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.
Remaining members of the Beatles are suing Fuego Entertainment over the Star Club recordings that were acquired through the company’s British promoter Jeffrey Collins, as previously reported.
Several years ago, Collins was put under three years of probation for violation of New Jersey’s anti-piracy laws with other recordings, according to Billboard.com. The agency that manages the Beatles’ legacy, Apple, considers the release to be nothing more than a crude bootleg. The company’s representatives fear that these recordings would water down memories of the band.
“Whatever it is they claim to have, it’s a bootleg tape and there was no permission from The Beatles to record it, and Fuego doesn't have permission from The Beatles to exploit it,” said New York attorney Paul LiCalsi to the Miami Herald.
This is not the first time that a dispute has been rooted in these recordings. In 1991, Sony Music Entertainment tried to distribute The Beatles Live at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962—Vol. I and Vol. II before a cease and desist order caused execs to back away from the project.
Fuego Entertainment was issued a similar order after the company announced on Jan. 10 that it would be releasing the songs, and made a few available for streaming when fans registered with the Fuego Plus website. The company charged forward with promotion, with a press release that carried an air that these recordings were a new discovery. Jeffrey Collins appeared on The Today Show in early February and continued to pursue publicity for the album, Jammin’ With the Beatles and Friends, Star Club, Hamburg, 1962, before a court order forced Fuego to stop promotion and remove the clips.
“Don’t claim that these were just bootlegged,” Hugo Cancio, president of Fuego, said to the New York Times. “It’s not like today, that you just go in with a phone or BlackBerry and you record.”
“The world deserves to hear these tracks,” Cancio added. “The fact is that we have it, they don’t, and that is what’s bothering them.”
Although that may be the case, the premise for Apple’s battle against Fuego is that at the time of the concert the Star Club recorded, the Beatles had already signed with EMI, legally prohibiting any third-party recordings.
Apple Corps also stated that the company has violated copyright in more blatant ways as well, including using a lengthened “T,” much like in the Beatles logo.
In related Beatles news, longtime friend and marketing manager of the band, Neil Aspinall, passed away Sunday night in Manhattan. He was 66. He left no memoir, taking many of the Beatles’ secrets to the grave. Aspinall had just stepped down from leading Apple Corps last April after 40-plus years of managing the band. Recent projects that he spearheaded include Love for Cirque du Soleil, two volumes of the Capitol Albums and a remixed version of Let it Be.
Related links:
TheBeatles.com
FuegoEntertainment.net
Paste: Beatles digital pirate prosecuted, still no sign of...
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.
Prepare yourselves. Guitar Hero may be getting even more, well, heroic.
To which particular heroes do we refer? The Beatles, of course. They're heroic in the world of music if anyone ever was. To that end, rumors have been circulating that a Beatles-themed version of Guitar Hero may be in the works. Sony/ATV Music Publishing, which has the rights to a good chunk of the Beatles' musical output, seems to be interested in striking up a deal with Activision, GH's creator, DigitalMusicNews.com reports. This comes in the wake of last month's announcement that an Aerosmith-branded version of the game would soon hit stores.
Naturally, we're keeping up on all things heroic, such as the moment we saw ourselves in Guitar Hero III, or the time we brainstormed other possible musical-intstrument-Hero options, so we'll keep you posted as news on this develops.
You said you wanted a revolution....
Related links:
GuitarHero.com
Paste: News: Guitar Hero III in stores this weekend
Poll: What song would you like to play in a future Guitar Hero sequel?
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.
In an age when many artists (even ones we never talk about) have begun to release music solely through digital outlets, and almost all release digital versions of their recordings in addition to CDs and vinyl, The Beatles remain the highest profile group to not have any of their work available digitally. A search on iTunes reveals various tribute acts or collaborations in the "artist" column. None of the real stuff—any of their 13 actual LPs, dozens of compilations, plentiful box sets, a live recording or two—can be purchased this way. Even the official Beatles online store, Beatles.FanFire.com, only offers opportunities to order the CD online for delivery.
Fans, craving digitally-acquired music, and understandably used to immediate download gratification ("Same day shipping??! But that could take DAYS!"), have taken the matter into their own hands, obtaining the recordings through less-than-legal means like P2P sharing and BitTorrent file swapping.
Unfortunately for the larger operations that facilitate the unauthorized conversion of copyrighted files into MP3s, Beatles song trading doesn't go unpunished. A man who owned a website in Brazil that sold pirated versions of Beatles tracks was recently sentenced to 18 months in prison, according to the IFPI. The organization's Brazilian Anti-Piracy Unit spent five months investigating the site, which was offering MP3 compilations for the equivalent of about $7.
One of classic rock's other final holdouts, Led Zeppelin (who will not be performing at Bonnaroo), made its catalogue available digitally in November. What's more, Paul McCartney's June solo album Memory Almost Full was his first to release physically and digitally.Talks of the Fab Four's works following suit have been going on for at least a couple of years, but no product has emerged from the flying rumors yet, due in part to the now-resolved trademark argument between Apple Inc. (of iTunes, iPod, iEverythingElse...) and Beatles label Apple Corps.
The resolution, made a year ago, means the digital releases will find their way to your iTunes and several other digital retailers soon. But "soon" is the most we can give you for now, as Neil Aspinal, the head of Apple Corps., told Fox News last February that the tracks are being remastered, and that they'll be released online after that. Probably all at the same time. At some point.
Related links:
Beatles.com
Paste: Review: The Beatles - Let It Be...Naked
Apple.com
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.
Back in the day, The Beatles conquered planet Earth with their catchy, well-crafted tunes and their boyish good looks. Today, saying that they have been successful is a rather massive understatement, as their music has found its way into the amniotic fluid of pop culture. But, wherein lies the challenge when you’ve already reached the vast majority of the world?
When it comes to The Beatles, the answer to that question is space. Indeed, the iconic band's music has been selected to be sent out into the final frontier.
Yesterday at 7p.m., for the first time ever, NASA beamed out a radio song into the celestial unknown. Appropriately, the musical gem that was been selected for this journey was none other than the Beatles’ “Across the Universe.”
“Send my love to the aliens,” was the message Paul McCartney sent to NASA regarding the project. Unfortunately, any existing E.T. life will have to have to wait 431 light years before they can hear the sweet sway of the tune, seeing as its destination (Polaris, AKA: The North Star) is so far away.
Meanwhile, on the terrestrial side of the atmosphere, the group is being further immortalized by the legendary Stax Records. On Feb. 26, the label will put forth Stax Does The Beatles. The cover album features the likes of Booker T. & the MG’s, Isaac Hayes, The Mar-Keys and an unreleased version of the late Otis Redding's rendition of “Day Tripper.”
Related links:
TheBeatles.com
Stax50.com
Paste: Yoko Ono unveils Icelandic tower in honor of John Lennon
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.
Before Beatlemania hit the U.S., before their debut album Please, Please Me even saw daylight, John, Paul, George and Ringo took the stage at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany. The show itself was small, with only 20-30 people in attendance. After 33 years, Fuego Entertainment has purchased these exclusive recordings for distribution from producer Jeffrey Collins, who discovered the lost tracks in his personal collection.
“I'm extremely excited about this acquisition and the future release of this historical Beatles album,” said Hugo Cancio, president and CEO of Fuego Entertainment. “They are one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed music groups in the history of popular music.”
Circa 1962, the recordings were made right before the band signed with EMI. Of the 15 songs, only seven were later released. The show was one of many recorded at the Star Club as a means of marketing the venue as well as the bands themselves. Not to be confused with the previous Star Club bootlegs, this show preceded that performance. It was also the very first time Ringo Starr took the stage as one of the Fab Four.
The tracks include live versions of “A Taste of Honey” and “Hippy Hippy Shake,” the latter of which includes Tony Sheridan. The tapes also include covers of Maurice Williams’ “Do You Believe” and Hank Williams’ “Lovesick Blues.” Kingsize Taylor’s band, The Dominoes, also makes an appearance, backing tracks such as “I Saw Her Standing There,” “Money” and “Twist and Shout.”
The album will be released as an Echo-Fuego joint venture, and a date should be announced soon. Without a doubt, the release of these recordings will be highly anticipated as they are a snapshot of the earliest days of the Beatles’ legacy. A preview will be posted in the near future at Fuego Plus online.
Related links:
Fuego Entertainment
The Beatles’ Tartan Tour Footage
Beatles Themed Hotel Opens in Liverpool
Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.
Tom Snyder was never the hippest looking guy. With his perfectly parted hair, sharp suits and well-annunciated voice, he'd have made a solid stand-in for Tom Brokaw on some square nightly news program. But on his Tomorrow Show, Snyder was frequently a few miles ahead of the curve. From 1973 to 1982, The Tomorrow Show featured some of the era's most cutting edge performers, including The Clash, Public Image Limited and a baby-faced U2. Snyder was always there to keep things topical, frequently wrangling compelling interviews out of taciturn or bitterly sarcastic rock stars.
The Shout! Factory has compiled some of Snyder's work before, but on April 1, the label will put out Tomorrow Show interviews with three of the Fab Four on a DVD entitled John, Paul, Tom & Ringo. Included in the package is John Lennon's final televised interview, originally filmed in 1975 and rebroadcast on December 9, 1980, the day after he was shot dead. If you think that Lennon's mystique has diminished at all over the years, just check out the going rate for a lock of his hair these days.
Also included in the 2-DVD package are chats with Paul and Linda McCartney (shot in 1979) and Ringo Starr (1981). We're unfortunately one Beatle shy of a cycle, however: the collection contains no George Harrison material. Well, he always was the shy one.
Related links:
New York Times: Tom Snyder obituary
Paste: John Lennon reissues review
YouTube: Tom Snyder best-of video
Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.
One might think Yellow Submarine was the Beatles' only full-length cartoon, until one sees a shrunken Paul McCartney floundering around an ashtray in the Liverpudlian four's second feature film, Help!. Zanily directed by Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), Help! presented the group as endearing caricatures of themselves, acted out in a giggling, pot-fueled haze (according to the Beatles Anthology). Live action though it was, the loony slapstick, sight gags and puns didn't even pretend to ground the James Bond parody in reality. For example, it concludes with a dedication to Elias Howe, "who in 1846 invented the sewing machine."
Priceless, right? Fortunately, it is infact a purchasable product. On October 30, The Beatles-founded Apple Corps Ltd will release the goofy 1965 film on a two-disc DVD that includes a 30 minute behind-the-scenes documentary. A simultaneously issued deluxe box set features a reproduction of Lester's annotated script, a poster and a 60-page book of photographs and production notes. Click here to view the most recent trailer, and look down below for an older one.
The film includes the songs "You're Going to Lose That Girl," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," "Ticket to Ride," "I Need You," "The Night Before," "Another Girl," and, of course, "Help!"
Related links:
Beatles.com
Paste - Paul McCartney Walks the Fine Line Between Chaos and Creation
IMDB: Richard Lester
Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.
In the record industry's perpetual endeavor to remarket and “reenvision” any decent music to whatever demographic hasn’t bought it yet, V2’s Little Monster Records is set to release yet another Beatles album, All Together Now, aimed toward kids who were born three generations after The Fab Four released their last album.
This time out, though, V2 has instilled some hipster pedigree into its latest youth-oriented cover album. According to Pitchforkmedia.com , Grandaddy front man Jason Lytle, 80’s femme rockers The Bangles, Marshall Crenshaw, Rachael Yamagata and New York Dolls’ guitarist Steve Conte have all banded with a group of anonymous child vocalists to sing The Beatles. The album, which also comes with a storybook, is currently available at Barnes & Noble but will gain wide release this May.
Tracklist:
1 - Magical Mystery Tour [Featuring Steve Conte]
2 - Hello, Goodbye [Featuring Steve Conte]
3 - Love Me Do [Featuring Marshall Crenshaw]
4 - All You Need Is Love [Featuring Jason Lytle]
5 - Good Day Sunshine [Featuring The Bangles]
6 - All Together Now [Featuring Chris Maxwell]
7 - I Want to Hold Your Hand [Featuring Chris Maxwell]
8 - Birthday
9 - And Your Bird Can Sing [Featuring Steve Conte]
10 - Here Comes the Sun [Featuring Rachael Yamagata]
11 - Yellow Submarine
Above: George Harrison directing operations on Plymouth Hoe in 1967
Archival footage of The Beatles in Devon has been unearthed after being stored in the BBC's film library for years. The Beatles visited Plymouth for a concert in 1963, and to film their 1967 movie, Magical Mystery Tour.
Footage from the visits has been shown previously on TV, but some of the film remained unused and stored in the BBC's library in Plymouth.
During the 1963 visit, Ringo Starr, John Lennon and George Harrison answer reporters' questions. And in 1967, Paul McCartney tells the press he's not fed up with them—even though they follow him everywhere. He also explains why The Beatles were filming Magical Mystery Tour in Devon and Cornwall—because the area is "nice."
The old black-and-white film shows fans pursuing the Fab Four as they walk along the Hoe in Plymouth, and the group on the bus that's featured in Magical Mystery Tour.
source: BBC News
Probably the most famous set of recording studios in the world, Abbey Road is now 73-years-old. Best known as the place The Beatles and Sir George Martin created some of the finest pop music ever, it was actually transformed from a private residence to a classical studio by Captain Osmund ‘Ozzy’ Williams. Aptly, the first session at the new HMV Studio (as it was known then), saw Sir Edward Elgar conduct the London Symphony Orchestra in his composition “Land Of Hope And Glory,” but it also hosted everything from Glenn Miller’s final recordings to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon and, more recently, Oasis.
During the ’60s, Abbey Road’s Studio 2 became synonymous with The Beatles. “It was where they first started,” says Geoff Emerick, the band’s legendary engineer. “It was like home to them.” Emerick started at Abbey Road when he was 16 and says the technical training he received was second to none. There he worked with producer Martin as a recording and mixing engineer on The Beatles’ final session and, arguably, finest album, Abbey Road. “George and I had a really good working relationship,” says Emerick, who’s now writing an autobiography about his years with The Beatles. “And because we’d worked together so often, towards the end we didn’t used to say a lot in sessions because we could read each other’s minds.”
Originally titled Everest after the cigarette brand Emerick favored, Abbey Road was eventually named after the leafy street on which the ‘EMI Studio’ is still situated. The record is Martin’s favorite by The Beatles and, during the sessions, he utilized the studio’s brand-new 8-track recording capabilities to capture the band’s increasingly complex compositions, including side two’s epic medley. The result: a musical masterpiece that will forever be a benchmark in rock ’n’ roll.
To read about other classic sessions and the studios that shaped them, take a look at our feature, Just For the Record.
The future seemed limitless. The day The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show was also my parents’ 10th wedding anniversary, and all was right with the world. I was eight- and-a-half-years-old and newly alive to the power of music, having just acquired my aqua transistor radio for Christmas. The radio dial was mine. My precious copy of Meet the Beatles was as yet unscratched from countless plays on the cheap portable turntable. And my parents were still happily married. They went out to dinner on their 10th anniversary and left a 15-year-old babysitter named Susan in charge of us kids. And Susan wanted to see The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. That was okay with me.
“Who’s your favorite Beatle?” Susan asked me as I did my homework, just making conversation. I thought it was very cool of her to ask. Not many high-school sophomores at the time would have swapped musical notes with a 3rd-grader. But it was a question that had been much on my mind of late, and even in 3rd grade the battle lines were being drawn. Weeks before The Beatles arrived in the U.S., the radio airwaves were filled with Beatles music, and my classmates and I debated the relative merits of The Greatest Beatle. Ringo was an early frontrunner, probably because of his name, but others thought he just looked goofy, and that it wasn’t that hard to be a drummer anyway. Most of the girls in my class wore “I Love Paul” buttons on their St. Matthew Elementary School uniforms. I wasn’t altogether sure what role Paul played in the band, but he had a nice smile and he seemed like a good bet at the time. But ever the non-conformist, I spent my allowance on a big “I Love George” button at the Super Duper supermarket and proudly wore it to school the week before The Beatles touched down in New York.
So I showed Susan my “I Love George” button, and it turned out that she loved George, too. The evening was going swimmingly. We anxiously waited for eight o’clock to roll around. I couldn’t tell you exactly what songs The Beatles played, although I remember that they played four or five. “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” were undoubtedly two of them. I remember hordes of screaming young women on TV. I thought for a while that the lovely Susan might join them in our living room. I made a mental note that Paul was definitely the guy who elicited the most screams, and briefly considered the merits of purchasing an “I Love Paul” button to augment my earlier choice.
Seven months later my next-door neighbors invited me to accompany them to Public Auditorium in Cleveland to see The Beatles. We paid our $4.50 apiece apiece and sat in the next-to-last row of the balcony. We couldn’t really see much. We couldn’t hear much, either, except the sound of a couple thousand screaming fans. But it didn’t matter. I don’t know what possessed a middle-class suburban family to pile into the station wagon and drive to Cleveland with the nine-year-old kid next door, but I will be forever grateful to The Walkers, wherever they may be. I saw The Beatles, live and in person. You may kiss the official Beatles-Fan-Club ring.
Looking back now it all seems so hopelessly naïve. “All you need is love,” John Lennon told us a few years later, and I wanted desperately to believe him. I wanted my parents to believe him, too. Wanted them to remember what it was like on their 10th anniversary when they still loved each other. Wanted the adultery and the alcoholism to just go away. I never really wanted to learn about the harsh realities of a world where you often need a whole lot more than love, where you need grace and forbearance and the ability to forgive unlovable people. I didn’t want to have to fathom the utter nobility and futility of those sentiments or ever think about the fact, as John Lennon found out, that sometimes you need a bulletproof vest a lot more than you need love.
But I don’t think I understood anything about that on Feb. 9, 1964. It was a special night and I got to stay up late and watch Ed Sullivan. I sat in front of our black-and-white TV in my red choochoo-train pajamas and wore my “I Love George” button and munched on popcorn.
Today would have been my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. My mom committed suicide twelve years ago. My dad lives with a stripper. John and George are in their graves, and Ringo still can’t play the drums. But for a moment, 40 years ago, the future seemed limitless, and we all watched the world change forever. In the end, it didn’t matter who was the greatest Beatle. All of those buttons got it exactly right.
Let It Be is the orphan of The Beatles’ 13-album canon. It’s the record they couldn’t be bothered to finish, the one fans have argued about for decades.
In January 1969, the band spent the entire month attempting to realize Paul McCartney’s vision for a live-in-the-studio album, while a film crew documented the proceedings. What the cameras captured was the collective misery of a great band on the brink of dissolution. Apart from a handful of inspired moments—including a thrilling, police-interrupted 42-minute performance on the roof of Apple headquarters—the sessions were unremittingly grim, so The Beatles hastily abandoned the project, soon thereafter beginning work on Abbey Road, their final album. Engineer Glyn Johns twice attempted to salvage the original “warts and all” premise under the working title Get Back, but both versions were rejected by the group. More than a year after the sessions, John Lennon asked Phil Spector to clean up the Get Back material once and for all. Spector’s “re-production,” which involved string and choral arrangements on three tracks, came out as Let It Be in May 1970, eight months after the release of Abbey Road.
The less than definitive circumstances surrounding the as-released Let It Be album left the door open for a reconsideration, and widely circulated bootlegs of Get Back provided further fuel for the argument that the record was never properly finished. The appearance of the Anthology series and the Yellow Submarine Songtrack in the late ’90s—endeavors that demonstrated it was possible to rework archival material without compromising it or rewriting history—inevitably led the Beatles organization back to the original tapes from which Get Back and Let It Be had been assembled. These tapes would be scrutinized and worked on by the same team of engineers who’d done such a careful job on the preceding archival projects.
Though McCartney’s longstanding dissatisfaction with Let It Be’s original release provided the impetus for reapproaching the material, neither Paul nor fellow surviving Beatle Ringo Starr was involved. The studio team approached the project as if it were an altogether new album—“and therefore there was no reference made to the old album, because there was no point,” co-producer Alan Rouse explained, while his partner Paul Hicks added that the aim was simply “to make it sound as good and raw as possible.”
Let It Be… Naked is a reinterpretation of these 34-year-old recordings, employing modern-day aural conventions. The sound is dry, as opposed to Spector’s heavy use of echo; the stereo spectrum is balanced, unlike the then-common separation of instruments to the left and right channels; and the spacing between tracks varies according to “feel,” in contrast to the standard three-second gaps of the period. While these adjustments will affect the listener subtly, other aspects will hit the ears of those familiar with the original album far more forcefully.
The first time you hear this new version, you’ll be struck by the absence of the Spectorian strings and chorale on McCartney’s “The Long and Winding Road,” Lennon’s “Across the Universe” and Harrison’s “I Me Mine”; you’ll surely note the disappearance of George Martin’s brass arrangement on “Let It Be,” as well as the replacement of Harrison’s overdubbed guitar solo from the Spector version with the original live-in-the-studio solo; you’ll be thrown off by the dumping of the tag on Paul’s “Get Back,” removed because it had been tacked onto the actual performance in the first place; and you’ll notice that several songs, including “The Long and Winding Road” and “Two of Us,” are quite different, the former because it’s another take altogether and the latter because it combines the two takes from the legendary rooftop performance.
The album has been resequenced as well. It begins with the propulsive, theme-defining “Get Back” (which closes the earlier LP); places “Two of Us” and “I’ve Got a Feeling,” with their disarming Lennon-McCartney vocal interplay, side by side at the center; adds Lennon’s stirring “Don’t Let Me Down,” recorded during the sessions but absent from the original album; and builds to a big finish with “Across the Universe” and “Let It Be.”
Naked is the result of these myriad decisions—decisions record producers make during every project. Did Rouse, Hicks and third partner Guy Massey make better decisions in 2002 than Spector did in 1970? Should the project have been undertaken in the first place? These are the fundamental questions every reviewer of this album has been compelled to answer, so I’ll give it a shot as well: yes and yes.
The experience of music may be largely subjective, but it can hardly be disputed that Naked packs more punch and offers greater clarity than the original LP. The most dramatic improvements are “I’ve Got a Feeling,” which crackles with spontaneous energy, and “Across the Universe,” which brings the extraordinary plaintiveness of Lennon’s vocal and guitar into sharp focus. As a whole, the new version of Let It Be flows beautifully and credibly conveys the feeling of a band in a room—of this band in a room—faithfully honoring McCartney’s original concept. The only serious misstep is the title, which unintentionally sabotages the validity of the undertaking; perhaps they should have called it Just Let It Be. In any case, this is the Let It Be I’ll be listening to from now on.
Let It Be is the orphan of the Beatles’ 13-album canon. It’s the record they couldn’t be bothered to finish, the one fans have argued about for decades.
In January of 1969, the band spent the entire month attempting to realize Paul McCartney’s vision for a live-in-the-studio album, while a film crew documented the proceedings. What the cameras captured was the collective misery of a great band on the brink of dissolution. Apart from a handful of inspired moments—including a thrilling, police-interrupted 42-minute performance on the roof of Apple headquarters—the sessions were unremittingly grim, so the Beatles hastily abandoned the project, soon thereafter beginning work on Abbey Road, their final album. Engineer Glyn Johns twice attempted to salvage the original “warts and all” premise under the working title Get Back, but both versions were rejected by the group. More than a year after the sessions, John Lennon asked Phil Spector to clean up the Get Back material once and for all. Spector’s “re-production,” which involved string and choral arrangements on three tracks, came out as Let It Be in May 1970, eight months after the release of Abbey Road.
The less than definitive circumstances surrounding the as-released Let It Be album left the door open for a reconsideration, and widely circulated bootlegs of Get Back provided further fuel for the argument that the record had never been properly finished. The appearance of the Anthology series and the Yellow Submarine Songtrack in the late ’90s—endeavors that demonstrated it was possible to rework archival material without compromising it or rewriting history—inevitably led the Beatles organization back to the original tapes from which Get Back and Let It Be had been assembled. These tapes would be scrutinized and worked on by the same team of engineers who’d done such a careful job on the preceding archival projects.
Though McCartney’s longstanding dissatisfaction with Let It Be’s original release provided the impetus for reapproaching the material, neither Paul nor fellow surviving Beatle Ringo Starr was involved. The studio team approached the project as if it were an altogether new album—“and therefore there was no reference made to the old album, because there was no point,” co-producer Alan Rouse explained, while his partner Paul Hicks added that the aim was simply “to make it sound as good and raw as possible.”
Let It Be… Naked is a reinterpretation of these 34-year-old recordings, employing modern-day aural conventions. The sound is dry, as opposed to Spector’s heavy use of echo; the stereo spectrum is balanced, unlike the then-common separation of instruments to the left and right; and the spacing between tracks varies according to “feel,” in contrast to the standard three-second gaps of the period. While these adjustments will affect the listener subtly, other aspects will hit the ears of those familiar with the original album far more forcefully.
The first time you hear this new version, you’ll be struck by the absence of the Spectorian strings and chorale on McCartney’s “The Long and Winding Road,” Lennon’s “Across the Universe” and Harrison’s “I Me Mine”; you’ll surely note the disappearance of George Martin’s brass arrangement on “Let It Be,” as well as the replacement of Harrison’s overdubbed guitar solo from the Spector version with the original live-in-the-studio solo; you’ll be thrown off by the dumping of the tag on Paul’s “Get Back,” removed because it had been tacked onto the actual performance in the first place; and you’ll notice that several songs, including “The Long and Winding Road” and “Two of Us,” are quite different, the former because it’s another take altogether and the latter because it combines the two takes from the legendary rooftop performance.
The album has been resequenced as well. It begins with the propulsive, theme-defining “Get Back” (which closes the earlier LP); places “Two of Us” and “I’ve Got a Feeling,” with their disarming Lennon-McCartney vocal interplay, side by side at the center; adds Lennon’s stirring “Don’t Let Me Down,” recorded during the sessions but absent from the original album; and builds to a big finish with “Across the Universe” and “Let It Be.”
Naked is the result of these myriad decisions—decisions record producers make during every project. Did Rouse, Hicks and third partner Guy Massey make better decisions in 2002 than Spector did in 1970? Should the project have been undertaken in the first place? These are the fundamental questions every reviewer of this album has been compelled to answer, so I’ll give it a shot as well: yes and yes.
The experience of music may be largely subjective, but it can hardly be disputed that Naked packs more punch and offers greater clarity than the original LP. The most dramatic improvements are “I’ve Got a Feeling,” which crackles with spontaneous energy, and “Across the Universe,” which brings the extraordinary plaintiveness of Lennon’s vocal and guitar into sharp focus. As a whole, the new version of Let It Be flows beautifully and credibly conveys the feeling of a band in a room—of this band in a room—faithfully honoring McCartney’s original concept. The only serious misstep is the title, which unintentionally sabotages the validity of the undertaking; perhaps they should have called it Just Let It Be. In any case, this is the Let It Be I’ll be listening to from now on.
| Dec 3 Wed |
TV: Jenny Lewis & Elvis Costello on David Letterman TV: Spectacle: Elvis Costello With... Series Premiere on Sundance |
|---|
Contests.
