When they reconvened at the start of the final year of the decade in which they came of age, they decided on no studio tricks, no outside influences and no pressure. Things didn't quite work out that way. Get Back was shelved, Abbey Road was recorded and released instead and those early 1969 sessions were later remixed by Phil Spector as Let It Be, with some inside grumbling, then released in May 1970.
The excellent six-disc (five CDs, one Blu-ray) Super Deluxe Let It Be Special Edition doesn't capture the tensions that reportedly spoiled the sessions.
The excellent six-disc (five CDs, one Blu-ray) Super Deluxe Let It Be Special Edition doesn't capture the tensions that reportedly spoiled the sessions.
In addition to a newly mixed Let It Be from Giles Martin and Sam Okell, the box includes the original 1969 Get Back album assembled by engineer Glyn Johns and more than two dozen session and rehearsal leftovers. (only one track from the famous Apple rooftop performance, the "Get Back" single B-side "Don't Let Me Down," is here.) It's not the extensive dissection the Special Edition could have been – more than 150 hours of material exists – but like previous multidisc collections dedicated to Sgt. Pepper, the White Album and Abbey Road, this upgraded Let It Be uncovers some fresh perspective.
The new mix is revelatory at times, sweeping away some of Spector's mud and elevating previously buried elements: "I Me Mine" bounces now, "Let It Be" sounds even more hymnlike, the jagged edges of "I've Got a Feeling" are suitably tempered by Billy Preston's electric piano. But the real revelations can be found in the two discs of outtakes and alternate versions.
Take 10 of "Let It Be" starts with a piano-seated McCartney singing the Beatles' first U.K. Top 10 "Please Please Me." An all-too-brief cover of the Everly Brothers' "Wake Up Little Susie" that prefaces an instrumental take on "I Me Mine" shows how easy it was for the group to slip into some of its favorite songs. George Harrison demos his newly written "All Things Must Pass" for his bandmates, who join in following a solo verse and chorus. And early attempts at five Abbey Road songs (two of them, "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" and "Polythene Pam," were incorporated into Side Two's sprawling medley) reflect the anything-goes looseness of the sessions.
There's much left in the vaults.
There's much left in the vaults.
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