GET BACK: Bare-bones Beatles

As Phil Spector enters a "not guilty" plea for murder, the surviving Beatles remove all signs of his presence on their album Let It Be. Coincidence? Probably. But this move should have happened years ago, anyway.

From the Plain Dealer via the Houston Chronicle:

A handful of "de-Spectorized" tunes yield particularly dramatic results, akin to seeing a painting's true colors after stripping off layers of varnish.

Devoid of Spector's 36-piece orchestra and 14-piece choir, "The Long and Winding Road" sounds like a demo, with the emphasis on McCartney's bittersweet vocal and eloquent piano.

Lennon's "Across the Universe" is a revelation, too, with tom-tom, a droning tamboura and an acoustic guitar providing the only accompaniment. George Harrison's "I Me Mine" and McCartney's title track also benefit from less-is-more upgrades.

Click here for the rest of the review.

The Beatles' original intention was to create an album called Get Back that would return them to their raw roots as a live rock and roll band. They essentially recorded the album live in the studio. That is, they tried to play as a group, without the overdubs and studio trickery that had become their trademark by 1969, the year they recorded the album. As stupid as Paul McCartney seems to come off these days, you gotta hand it to him: it was his idea, and a brilliant idea it was. I long ago realized just how great these songs in the rough were when I saw the depressing Let It Be documentary film when I was a teenager--the film is so depressing because you get to see just how much the Beatles hated each other at that point. Their infighting is what killed the project.

They shelved the tapes of the recording sessions seemingly for good. The group managed to reunite without bickering to record Abbey Road and that was it. The Beatles never recorded together again (unless you count the John Lennon demos they sweetened in the early 90's sans John). Enter legendary producer Phil Spector to take a crack at the Get Back tapes. Spector previously had turned some simple songs into well received bubblegum symphonic hits: he was responsible for the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," and the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling." By the late 60s, however, his career was floundering, and the Beatles offered a chance for him to revitalize his reputation.

What Spector came up with for the Get Back tapes wasn't really all that bad; it just wasn't what was originally envisioned. In fact, John Lennon once praised Spector's work on the album that eventually was entitled Let It Be, calling the original masters "the shittiest pile of shit," and expressing amazement that they were ultimately worth releasing. The thing is that Spector typically used numerous layers of music to augment the underlying songs that he produced. His "wall of sound" usually improved greatly the simple tunes with which he had been associated: the Beatles, however, were geniuses; their bare-bones songs were about a billion times better than anything Spector had ever worked with. Consequently, his production work on Let It Be was something akin to putting arms on the Venus de Milo. That is, the album works, but it's unsatisfying.

I'm really looking forward to hearing Let It Be ... Naked. I've always thought that a stripped down version could be great under the right circumstances with the right re-mastering. Here's hoping they did it right.

It damned well better be in my stocking come Christmas morning.

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