2.30pm
19 October 2016
I don’t like what Spector did with Across The Universe and The Long And Winding Road , but to say he ruined the album goes too far. Other than those two songs I would say he generally did a solid job selecting, editing and mixing performances. There was no shortage of sloppy, incomplete or simply lackluster performances at Twickenham and Apple. Spector did a fine job pulling those together into something listenable, even if most of it was inconsistent with the “as nature intended” manifesto that originally guided the project.
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Beatlebug2.33pm
18 April 2013
11.48pm
14 February 2016
I was listening to this half an hour ago and it is so painful to listen to. Not because the group was mentally being shook, but because it’s just bad. An awful album that should never be ranked above Please Please Me .
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9.40am
14 June 2016
@Evangeline said
I was listening to this half an hour ago and it is so painful to listen to. Not because the group was mentally being shook, but because it’s just bad. An awful album that should never be ranked above Please Please Me .
I found a Get Back ver 2 bootleg that I like a lot better than Let it Be. If I have time I also want to extract the songs from the Let it Be movie and make a LiB soundtrack, which I feel I will enjoy better than LiB
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5.01pm
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Moderators
1 May 2011
William Shears Campbell said
@Evangeline said
I was listening to this half an hour ago and it is so painful to listen to. Not because the group was mentally being shook, but because it’s just bad. An awful album that should never be ranked above Please Please Me .I found a Get Back ver 2 bootleg that I like a lot better than Let it Be. If I have time I also want to extract the songs from the Let it Be movie and make a LiB soundtrack, which I feel I will enjoy better than LiB
The early Glyn Johns compilations are well worth tracking down. His remix of ‘ATU’ for the 4th of his compilations is beautiful; quite possibly the best mix of the song out there. The problem is that they are quite raw albums, they’d be accepted nowadays but I think it would be more unlikely back in 1969/70.
"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)
5.42pm
14 June 2016
@meanmistermustard said
The early Glyn Johns compilations are well worth tracking down. His remix of ‘ATU’ for the 4th of his compilations is beautiful; quite possibly the best mix of the song out there. The problem is that they are quite raw albums, they’d be accepted nowadays but I think it would be more unlikely back in 1969/70.
Yeah, it is very raw recording, but I’m quite enjoying it. It’s a good alternative to Let It Be … Naked, which only improved half of Let It Be , the other half it made worse….Get Back with no coda or chatter, but just a simple armature poorly placed fade out.
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"Sometimes I wish I was just George Harrison" - John Lennon
7.51pm
31 July 2014
8.10pm
14 June 2016
I wish that Get Back ver 2 was released instead of Let It Be . It would have been the Let It Be – Specters’s mixing + 4 other songs(Don’t Let Me Down , Rocker, Save The Last Dance For Me, and Get Back (Reprise))
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27 November 2016
9.06am
28 March 2014
3.51pm
14 November 2017
I’m not a massive fan of this album,even though there are some very good tracks on it (LIB , One After 909 ,Get Back ,I Me Mine ). Whenever I listen to it,my mind always drifts to the film, and how they looked like they weren’t enjoying making it one little bit. George and Paul arguing, Ringo looking miserable as hell, and John by his own admission being stoned out of his mind “and I didn’t give a f**k”. Very sad. No matter how many times I listen to it, I can’t summon up much enthusiasm for it.
@Evangeline ‘s post is spot on:
Evangeline said
I was listening to this half an hour ago and it is so painful to listen to. Not because the group was mentally being shook, but because it’s just bad. An awful album that should never be ranked above Please Please Me .
Still writing the words to the sermon that no one will hear......
6.57pm
26 January 2017
I really disagree there 2 of the songs on this album , Let It Be and Across The Universe are often talked about as “the best song ever.” But its not just the timeless ballads that make this albums so great, its the mad keybord licks by Billy Preston through Get Back , the howling vocals from Paul on I’ve Got A Feeling over John’s soft verses, George’s expanded guitar playing on For You Blue and his daring rhythms on I Me Mine that really groove.
But the part I disagree with most is the album being a reminder of the dreariness that was the movie recording process. To me, what comes out in the album are John’s moments of witty banter, George’s back and forth with Ringo on Dig It , and the pure energy and fun that comes through on One After 909 and Dig it.
Although the album ultimately failed to be the “stripped down” finale they had hoped, there are plenty of moments where it does feel that way. Combined with the naturally GREAT songs they had during this period, this album is an absolute classic.
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6.17pm
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1 May 2011
Do people like the production of ‘Across The Universe ‘ or just ignore it? I find it to be horrible, not only here but on ‘Past Masters ‘. On ‘LiB’, it’s overproduced and so slow.
"I told you everything I could about me, Told you everything I could" ('Before Believing' - Emmylou Harris)
12.05am
26 January 2017
meanmistermustard said
Do people like the production of ‘Across The Universe ‘ or just ignore it? I find it to be horrible, not only here but on ‘Past Masters ‘. On ‘LiB’, it’s overproduced and so slow.
I enjoy the mix. It sound like nothing else. Ever since I first heard it I though Across The Universe sounded like it was recorded in space.
"The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handles!"
-Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues
"We could ride and surf together while our love would grow"
-Brian Wilson, Surfer Girl
2.55am
24 March 2014
I was wondering when they decided to change the name of the project from “Get Back ” to “Let it be” and why?… also… the idea of “Get back” as a project was to return to their roots in the recording process… not much overdubs, or over-editing… but was this name chosen because of that or because of the song? was the song’s titled inspired by that concept or was it just mere coincidence?
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3.53am
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1 May 2011
Beatle Source writes
Phil Spector began his work on Get Back on 23 March 1970. In Chronicles, Mark Lewisohn…. states that the Get Back title
was still planned as late as spring 1970 when Spector’s work was almost finished. At which time the title was changed to Let It Be .
I think it became Let It Be ‘ because the ‘Get Back ‘ single had been out for ages and releasing an album tied to a song issued months ago would not have been appropriate, too confusing, whereas ‘Let It Be ‘ was going to be the new single, a better way to promote the album. It may also have been Spector stamping another mark on the album since Glyn Johns had been the one working on all the ‘Get Back ‘ album variations.
‘Get Back ‘ started out as a tongue-in-cheek jam about the UK’s immigration issues (see the video below) and evolved through the January sessions into the well-forged song it is now (the more blatant racial elements dropped). The name was probably seen as a good catch-all for the project but the song was definitely one of the strongest numbers ready to go when they were looking for what to release.
Interestingly, George’s ‘Sour Milk Sea’ has the lyrics
If your life’s not right, doesn’t satisfy you
You don’t get the breaks like some of us do
Better work it out, find where you’ve gone wrong
Better do it soon as you don’t have longGet out of sour milk sea
You don’t belong there
Get back to where you should be
Find out what’s going on there
Did that have some influence on Paul’s impetus for the entire project?
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10.48am
22 December 2013
Don’t know if this was by design or not, but I’ve always seen the ‘Get Back ‘ title as an effort to “get back to where (they) once belonged” after things fell off of the rails during the ‘White Album ‘ sessions… by Spring 1970, it was pretty clear that they were never going back and everyone should just ‘Let It Be ‘…:-)
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Ahhh Girl, Beatlebug8.56pm
31 January 2018
Frankly, I don’t know where else to ask this (I have a hard time navigating the forum for some reason), but this has to do with the rooftop concert.
Is there any HD footage of the song “Dig A Pony ” out there. Hell, not even HD, but just something that has more than 4 pixels… (lol). I can’t find jack on the internet regarding any sort of decent quality footage.
Also, the one thing I want more than anything else when it comes to the future of Beatles releases is a good quality video of the entire rooftop concert from start to finish. I do know that some footage wasn’t captured during film reel switch outs, but that only comprises about 10 seconds of non existant footage. Everything else was filmed and lies in Abbey Road studios (or somewhere else) if I’m not mistaken. I have a strange obsession with this concert, and if I had a time machine going to see this concert would be the first thing I’d do.
Thanks for any help regarding Dig A Pony footage or any other higher quality footage out there. I do know of the HD Don’t Let Me Down on youtube, but I believe that’s a mix of footage from multiple takes they did of the song during the concert. You can tell when you hear a bass playing yet Paul isn’t moving his left hand….
7.18am
21 March 2018
ewe2 said
IMHO that’s an appalling Paullist trying to shoehorn a bit of glory in a reference book. And I don’t think Paul is any better than his fellows just because he wrote a few sad character lyrics; I think there’s empathy there, but I also note how unable he is to express his emotion directly even in a song. John gets too much credit sometimes for being the opposite, George gets little credit for his expressions of empathy, and everyone patronizes Ringo. Sometimes these statements says far more about the person making them as a projection of their desires on a Beatle.
And sometimes I fear that the arguments over whose version of events we should take as read have so obscured the real people in those events already that by the time that generation is finally gone, we will have a really weird idea of who they were and this album will be the greatest cipher in their legend. And the movie release will be another travesty whenever it happens.
I’ve only just come across this, despite it being a couple of years old. I’m astonished. Paul, apparently, “is unable to express his emotion directly even in a song”. Even if it is true, which it isn’t, this argument has been around since the ark. How writers wish to express their thoughts and feelings is up to them, and irrelevant whether in first person or third person, as attested by the emotional power of thousands of books and poetry published over the last four hundred years. It seems that in the field of popular music, however, emotions are too easily seen as a product to be packaged for human consumption. As I’ve intimated recently on another thread, emotional expression is not a competition.
Getting back to the recording and filming of Let it Be (sorry about both puns), I don’t feel much sympathy for any of them. Their behaviour was childish, and if Paul was that stupid and idiotic to let himself be filmed on camera (which the others were very well aware of) then he has had to deal with it, but that hardly excuses the others. Despite the whole fiasco, I still enjoy a lot of the songs from Let it Be.
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