Let It Be... Naked [Let It Be... Naked]

Artist	The Beatles
Format	CD
Genre	Rock
Label Name	Capitol
Producer	The Beatles, George Martin, Alan Rouse, Paul Hicks, Guy Massey
Release Date	2003 11 18
Song List	1: Get Back (2:34) 2: Dig a Pony (3:38) 3: For You Blue (2:27) 4: The Long and Winding Road (3:34) 5: Two of Us (3:21) 6: I've Got a Feeling (3:30) 7: One After 909 (2:44) 8: Don't Let Me Down (3:18) 9: I Me Mine (2:21) 10: Across the Universe (3:38) 11: Let It Be (3:55) 12: Fly on the Wall (21:58)
Style.Categories	Album Rock, Pop/Rock, British Invasion, Pop, Singer/Songwriter, Rock & Roll

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Of all the Beatles albums, none has garnered as much controversy and speculation as Let It Be. Released as their final album in May 1970, the record began its life as a back-to-basics affair called Get Back, which was intended to show the Beatles as a stripped-down rock & roll band after the excesses of Sgt. Pepper and The White Album. They weren't just going to record an album -- they were going to tape a documentary of the rehearsal and recording of the album, which would conclude with their first live performance since 1966. To facilitate filming, the band abandoned the home turf of Abbey Road Studios and hunkered down at Twickenham Film Studios, where Michael Lindsay-Hogg filmed endless hours of the band jamming, bickering, recording, and fighting. Throughout it all, the Beatles recorded so much material -- with much of it being no more than sloppy rehearsals and unfinished takes -- that neither the group nor its longtime producer, George Martin, had any desire to cobble together a releasable album, so the task was handed over to engineer Glyn Johns. As the group was recording Abbey Road, Johns crafted a Get Back sequence that captured the raw, unfocused nature of the sessions by splicing conversational asides between new songs, revived songs, covers, and brief, jokey tunes. This pretty much mirrored the feel of the Get Back sessions, and the record got fairly close to release -- including an airing of an acetate on a Boston radio station -- before it was scrapped at the last minute. Soon, the Get Back project mutated into Let It Be as Phil Spector, who had been working with John Lennon on solo projects, was brought in to finalize the project. By and large, he retained the original spirit behind the project, right down to the inclusion of dialogue and jokes, but he did overhaul three songs significantly, most notoriously Paul McCartney's "The Long and Winding Road," which he wrapped in syrupy strings and choirs. This is the version of Let It Be that was released as the Beatles' final album, and McCartney made his displeasure with the final product, particularly "The Long and Winding Road," known. Over the years, fans pined for an official release of Get Back while McCartney rumbled about revising Let It Be (even after a string-less "The Long and Winding Road" appeared on 1996's Anthology 3), and when the Beatles announced the release of Let It Be... Naked it seemed that the desires of both camps would finally be satiated. Unfortunately, that wasn't quite the case.
As the title should make clear, Let It Be... Naked is not Get Back. Where Get Back was designed to be deliberately loose, complete with ragged performances and spoken asides, Naked is a deliberately professional piece of work, with all of the rough edges smoothed down. Consequently, it's not so much an archival release, but more like the audio equivalent of George Lucas' Star Wars special editions, complete with controversies along the lines of Han Solo not shooting Greedo first. Let It Be is recognizable in its Naked form, but it's been cleaned up, mixed up, and altered, gaining the superb "Don't Let Me Down" at the expense of "Dig It" and "Maggie Mae," as the song sequence has been shuffled and the dialogue has been cut out completely (perhaps Paul wasn't too keen on John's mock "and now here's Hark the Herald Angels come" preceding "Let It Be"). Those are merely the obvious changes, too.