Tuesday, November 18, 2003

By Ed Masley, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

They called the album "Let It Be." But Paul McCartney couldn't do that.

Today, after 33 years of resenting the wall of sound Phil Spector built around "The Long and Winding Road," the former Beatle hopes to set the record straight by giving fans a chance to hear his song without what David Fricke of Rolling Stone refers to as "the Mantovani strings."

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But that's just one of several de-Spectorized new mixes of songs from the "Let It Be" sessions that turn up on "Let It Be ... Naked," the others being "Let It Be," "Across the Universe" and "I Me Mine." They've also cut the dialogue -- no more digging of pygmies or hoping they passed the audition.

And two songs -- "Maggie Mae" and "Dig It" -- have been sacrificed, presumably to make room for "Don't Let Me Down" on a CD that clocks in at 35 minutes.

Ringo Starr has said, "There's nothing wrong with Phil's stuff, but for me after all these years of listening to 'Let It Be,' this new album is the version I love." And, he adds, "The Long and Winding Road," in particular, "blew me away."

The long and winding road that led to "Naked" stretches back to 1968 and a plan to get back to performing. The Beatles hadn't faced an audience since 1966. But rather than touring, the plan was to do a concert to be televised along with footage of the band rehearsing. The project got off to a shaky start on a sound stage at Twickenham studios on Jan. 2, 1969. After nine days of jamming in front of the cameras, George Harrison, tired of being told what part to play or not to play by McCartney, walked out on the project, threatening to quit the group.

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A few days later, with Harrison back on board, the Beatles reconvened in Apple's basement studio, where the project evolved from a televised concert to a feature film about the making of a back-to-basics album free of overdubs.

Before the month was out, they'd filmed their legendary last performance on the Apple rooftop and finished the tedious process of recording live until they felt they had a perfect take. In March, they handed the tapes to engineer Glyn Johns. After rejecting his first version at the end of May, the group decided to just let it be and move on to another album, "Abbey Road." They finished "Abbey Road," in fact, and had it on the streets before inviting Johns to have another go at compiling a soundtrack.

	Record Review: Songs are still strong on Beatles rerelease

It was only after the Beatles rejected the second Johns mix that Spector's name was thrown into the ring.

As Neil Aspinall, a longtime Beatles friend and head of Apple Corp., recalls the situation:

"I'm not sure that anybody told him, 'It's got to be what a four or [with keyboard player Billy Preston rounding out the lineup] five piece band could do, Phil. No overdubbing and orchestras.' They just gave the tapes to him, and so he did what Phil Spector does and overdubbed and put orchestras on and all the rest of it. In a sense, he did a really good job. It's a great album, but it wasn't what the concept was in the first place. This new album is that."

Kind of. It isn't really naked.

Tim Riley, the author of "Tell Me Why," a book that goes through every Beatles album song by song, points out, "It's not the Beatles playing alone live with no overdubs. That take of 'Don't Let Me Down' is very famous for Lennon flubbing the lyric in the middle. In the film, he sings a gibberish lyric in the middle verse and they just edit that out. So it's not naked; it's patched up.

"The original idea was to show them in rehearsal, get them on tape and on film rehearsing songs and then do a live set of songs. It was supposed to be, 'Look, this is how we sound when we don't have any fancy studio stuff.' And now, they're putting it out and trying to say, 'Well, this is how we sound with no studio stuff.' And there's all kinds of studio stuff on it. ...

"Any Beatle fan who knows these tracks will tell you exactly what's going on. They're trying to whitewash their legacy. That's what bothers me. They have a great legacy. There's no need to whitewash it."

Many fans no doubt will be disheartened that they didn't just release the mixes Johns did, which, as Howard Kramer -- curatorial director for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland -- points out, many now consider the sessions' "definitive" document.

"Why," Kramer asks, "does it have to be remixed now by contemporary engineers as opposed to using the mixes that were done at the time?"

To make it "a modern audio experience," according to Apple press materials.

McCartney says the project sprang from conversations with director Michael Lindsay-Hogg about releasing "Let It Be," the film, on DVD. "And the more I thought about it," he says, "I realized that the music in the film is unadorned, or sort of naked as I was calling it, thinking of it without the overdubs that Phil Spector had been brought in to do. That was OK; I didn't hate it, but I didn't like it."

Some would argue that McCartney's feelings on the subject run a good deal deeper, given that he's quoted in "The Beatles Anthology" as saying, "I heard the Spector version again recently, and it sounded terrible."

As Riley sees it, "Paul McCartney's held a grudge for 30 years. ... And I just feel like, 'OK, Paul, you don't want strings and choruses. That's fine. But you had strings on your records before. It's not as though you're anti-strings or anti-schmaltz or something.' Give me a break. Paul McCartney?!"

Riley may be on to something there, but as both Fricke and Kramer see it, McCartney's entitled. After all, it is his music.

" 'Let It Be' has always been a thorn in Paul McCartney's craw," says Kramer. "And now is the opportunity for him to go back in and make it sound the way he would like to hear it. If this makes him feel better, then it's fine. He's the artist. He was one of the creative entities. He's entitled to do what he wants."

As Fricke says, "People make a bigger deal about much smaller things than that. Why shouldn't he care? That's his legacy. Those are his songs. Compared to the kind of grudges you often see in politics or business, this is nothing. These are songs that were important to him that he felt weren't treated in the way he had hoped they would be."

And what did the other Beatles think about the Spector mixes? Harrison, who worked with Spector on "All Things Must Pass," his solo masterpiece, is quoted in "Anthology" saying, "Paul ... didn't want Phil Spector involved or didn't like him overdubbing orchestras on 'The Long and Winding Road' and other tracks. But I personally thought it was a really good idea."

Starr, who likes the "Naked" mixes better now, says in "Anthology," "I like what Phil did, actually. ... There's no point bringing him in if you're not going to like the way he does it."

And John Lennon, who worked more frequently with Spector than any other Beatle?

"Anthology" includes a quote from 1970 in which he says of Spector, "He'd always wanted to work with the Beatles, and he was given the [lousiest] load of badly recorded [expletive] with a lousy feeling to it ever, and he made something out of it. He did a great job."

And for that, he's being demonized.

As Fricke says, "Spector gets a raw deal in all this. The thing is, if you ask Phil Spector to make a record, he usually makes it from the bottom up. He didn't get to do that here. He was given a box of tapes and told to make an album. So he thought, 'Well, [expletive] it then, I will.' So he did. It wasn't like they were sitting around going, 'Oh, Phil, don't do this. Don't do that. They had all [run] off by then."

As to whether "Naked" is rewriting history, that may depend on how authentic you thought the original album was.

The way Fricke sees it, "Let It Be" was "made under quite extreme and, in many ways, unpleasant circumstances. And nobody was particularly happy with the end product. It stands as an artifact of its time and actually reflects quite accurately what they went through in that last year or so together. But this is the age of the remix. People are remixing records all the time. In this case, I guess pretty much under McCartney's influence, what they've done is just de-mix it."

Still, there's something about going back in and creating an alternate version of a classic album 30-odd years later that could rub a fan of "Let It Be" the wrong way.

Even Kramer, who supports McCartney's right to revisit the album, has doubts.

"Personally, I think utilizing technology to remaster things is great. Remixing starts to really tread in murky waters. They can always go back and revisit a project and try to accent something they didn't before, but at that point I think they're disturbing the collective memory of their audience who know it a particular way.

"Look at the Super Audio remasters of the Dylan catalog. They did go back and utilize technology. But they didn't mess with the mixes. The songs are still the songs. They just sound infinitely better. And there's a big difference."

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