Let It Be

When I was in eighth grade, iTunes was all the rage, exchanging mix CDs with friends and downloading entire albums onto our third generation iPhones. One day, my mother randomly told me to download “Rubber Soul” and “The White Album”, thinking I’d like them. Of course I had always loved the Beatles since a young age, but this would be the first time I actually sat down and listened to an album in full. My mother had great taste. “Rubber Soul” became my favorite. I’d listen to ‘You Won’t See Me’ and think about the boy I had a crush on while most of my peers listened to Top 40. I was born in the wrong generation. “More songs, Mom!” She told me to listen to “Help!” giving me specific songs like ‘The Night Before’ and ‘Another Girl’. She told me her favorites from “Let It Be” were ‘Two Of Us’ and ‘Dig A Pony’. We listened together. She loved how the band talked between the songs. How raw the album was. A different side to the Beatles. We’d argue about what the hell John Lennon was saying in the ‘Two Of Us’ intro:

“Doris gets her horse”

“No, Mom, it’s oats.”

“Horse!”

“Okay, Mom.” I was right.

By the time I hit freshman year, I had “Let It Be” practically memorized, listening to it on the school bus every morning. One afternoon, I was sitting in my school’s library when a new student from my class came in. I saw that they were holding a Beatles pencil case and decided to make conversation. “Are you a fellow fan of the Beatles?” they said. I could tell I was being felt out. Was I really a true fan? “What’s your favorite album?” I said “Rubber Soul or The White Album”. They immediately perked up, and that was it. We became friends. All that year we would be discussing and analyzing songs. And it all started from something as simple as a pencil case. Music unites us. My father had a theory that Keith Richards and Mick Jagger would not have met in this generation. The story goes upon their first meeting on a train, Richards was carrying his guitar and a Chuck Berry record. Him and Jagger then bonded over their love of blues music and planned to meet up again in the future. The rest is history. My father said if Keith hadn’t been carrying that record, if he had been listening to it on a mobile device, we wouldn’t have had the Rolling Stones. Possibly. Even though I’m from Gen Z, I still had moments like Jagger and Richards and I’m grateful. I’m grateful my mother introduced me to those albums. I’m grateful my future friend popped into the library that day. But mostly I’m grateful for the music. And the pencil case.

On this day in 1969, the Beatles performed an impromptu concert from the rooftop of their Apple Corps headquarters in London. Joined by guest keyboardist Billy Preston, the band played a forty-two minute set before the Metropolitan Police arrived and ordered them to reduce the volume. It was the final public performance of their career. But to fully understand the magnitude of “Let It Be” we need to go back to the very beginning.

“The whole ‘Let It Be’ project was really to see…the Beatles working,” said Paul McCartney. “I think the original idea was Paul’s idea to rehearse some new songs and then we were going to pick a location and record the album of the songs in a concert…it was to do a live album,” said George Harrison. The album’s infamous rehearsals began at Twickenham Film Studios in January 1969 as part of a planned television documentary showing the Beatles' return to live performance, something they had been planning to do for a while. However, the filmed rehearsals were marked by ill feeling, leading to George Harrison's temporary departure from the group. Apple Corps executive Peter Brown characterized the time spent in Twickenham as a "hostile lethargy".

“It was a disaster” said Barry Miles in “The Beatles Diary”: “They were still exhausted from the marathon ‘The Beatles’ [The White Album] sessions. Paul bossed George around; George was moody and resentful. John would not even go to the bathroom without Yoko at his side ... The tension was palpable, and it was all being caught on film.” Lennon was unable to supply his share of new songs and remained distant from the other band members. Harrison on the other hand was newly inspired, yet had a lot of ideas dismissed by Lennon and McCartney. Some that would go on to be featured on his solo album “All Things Must Pass”. Can you believe that song was rejected from the group? Ringo Starr attributed Harrison's exit to McCartney "dominating" him. However, McCartney was trying to be some sort of leader amongst the chaos. Paul’s my favorite, I won’t let him get a bad edit.

But in the end, Harrison returned. During a meeting in mid January, the band agreed to his terms: abandon the plan to stage a public concert and move from the cavernous soundstage at Twickenham to their Apple Studio. There, they would be filmed recording a new album, using the material they had gathered to that point.

Some songs include tunes from their childhood. A brief extract of the traditional ‘Maggie Mae’ was performed in a joking manner during these sessions. The band would warm up in the studio by playing old rock and roll and skiffle songs that they had known and played in their teenage years. They adopt heavy scouse accents for the performance. ‘One After 909’ is another example. “‘One After 909’ was our childhood coming back to us,” said Paul “It was sort of raw energy from our youth. I think it reminded us of those teenage years and so it surfaced. As did ‘Maggie Mae’ and a few things like that during the ‘Let It Be’ sessions we were just dredging up anything.” Originally, Lennon wrote ‘One After 909’ at seventeen and in March of 1963, the Beatles recorded a version of the song in five takes during the same session that produced their third single, ‘From Me to You’, and its B-side. However, they were unhappy with the result and that version was not released, shelved for six years, until the Beatles re-recorded it and eventually saw the release in “Let It Be”. Various takes from the original session and an edit of them, can be heard in their 1995 “Anthology 1” compilation.

“We made ‘Let it Be’. We, then, mixed it once with Glyn Johns who made a very straightforward mix, very plain but I loved it,” said Paul, “Allen Klein was around by this time and said ‘I don’t think it’s good enough’. He called in Phil Spector to help reproduce it”. After the Apple sessions, audio engineer and best dresser in the “Get Back” series, you can quote me, Glyn Johns put together a rough-mix of several songs for the band to listen to. Often referred to as the "Untouched" or Elecktra mix, it includes false starts and studio banter throughout. Spector made various changes to the songs. His most dramatic embellishments included adding orchestral overdubs to ‘The Long and Winding Road’, ‘Across the Universe’ and ‘I Me Mine’ at EMI Studios. Embellishments McCartney came to resent and Glyn Johns was denied a production credit.

In 2003, McCartney pushed for the release of “Let It Be... Naked”, a more stripped down version of the album, stating his long-standing dissatisfaction with the released version of ‘The Long and Winding Road’ as the catalyst. The album included a take of the song with no strings or other added instrumentation and was closer to the Beatles' original intention.

For the recording of ‘Across the Universe’, McCartney approached fans waiting outside the studio and asked if anyone could hold a high note. Lizzie Bravo and Gayleen Pease answered yes. Shortly after, the band's road manager, Mal Evans, came out and ushered the two girls into the recording studio to record the backing vocals. Although the girls' voices are not heard on the “Let It Be” album version of ‘Across the Universe’, their background vocals are heard on the albums “No One's Gonna Change Our World, Rarities” and “Past Masters”. Can we blame Phil Spector for this too?

If you don’t know by this point that McCartney wrote the title track based on a dream he had, then you’re not a true Beatles fan. I’m kidding. The story goes that Paul had the idea for ‘Let It Be’ after he had a dream about his mother during the tense period surrounding “The White Album” sessions in 1968. Mary Patricia McCartney passed away due to cancer when Paul was fourteen. McCartney said: "It was great to visit with her again. I felt very blessed to have that dream. So that got me writing 'Let It Be'." In a later interview he said about the dream that his mother had told him, "It will be all right, just let it be." When asked if the phrase "Mother Mary" in the song referred to Mary, mother of Jesus, McCartney has typically replied that listeners can interpret the song however they like.

Upon its release in 1970, “Let It Be” topped charts in several countries, including both the UK and the US, but was a critical failure at the time of its release and it became regarded as one of the most controversial rock albums in history. General response has since become much more favorable in later years.

Although “Let It Be” is seen as the Beatles last album, it was “Abbey Road” that they recorded last, and “Let It Be” was released after. So, why the switch? After the recording sessions for “Let It Be”, McCartney suggested to music producer George Martin that the group come together and make an album "the way we used to do it", free of the conflict. Martin agreed, but on the strict condition that all the group, particularly John Lennon, allow him to produce the record in the same manner as earlier albums. When “Abbey Road” had been out for months, the band would still be editing and critiquing songs from “Let It Be” before its release in 1970. So, it technically is the last album. Whatever the case may be, the two albums were released when they were released and live on in Beatles lore as sharing the title of last album.

I know I wouldn't be the person I am today without “Let it Be” or any of the Beatles’ music. The album brought me those great moments with my mother, my high school friend and more moments with more friends in my future. And the album was there for me during those early, angsty teenage years.

…and taught me what a wet dream was.

Favorite song on the album: I’ve Got A Feeling