The Beatles Let It Be…Naked (Apple/Capitol)
The new set–which includes a remixed Let It Be and a bonus disc, Fly on the Wall, that strings together dialogue from the sessions–has touched off yet another wave of Beatles nostalgia, but even critics of the retooling have largely ignored the proprietary controversy in the middle of the musical one. On paper, the stripping away of Phil Spector’s 11th-hour production on the 1970 original was supposed to result in a purer, more faithful document of the Beatles’ acrimonious and ill-fated sessions for “Get Back” (the album’s working title). But this notion, reinforced by the new record’s title, is a dodge, as anyone who’s heard bootleg tapes from those sessions–or seen the movie Let It Be–will immediately recognize. What it dodges, and what’s obscured by this ballyhooed peeling back of the layers, is a sticky question whose answer has less to do with authenticity or artistic integrity than it does with the knotty business of ownership and entitlement as well as ego–one man’s in particular.
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While the official Apple line is that McCartney was hands-off in the so-called demixing of Let It Be, he’s been talking up the idea for years, and his shadow looms large over the finished product. In addition to the new mix the track list has been reordered, with McCartney cuts (“Get Back” and “Let It Be”) now opening and closing the disc. Two John Lennon songs, admittedly makeweight, have been excised altogether, along with all of his between-songs patter. And even though Lennon’s dirgey “Don’t Let Me Down” is rescued from B-side ignominy, it’s hard to imagine how the balance of the record could be tipped any further in McCartney’s favor.
Lennon’s copiously documented attitude toward the sessions careened between overstated boredom and outright loathing. He peppered the band’s run-throughs with snotty asides and silly embellishments, frequently ripping into the nasal screech he’d previously reserved for when he felt a performance was beyond salvaging. On recordings of the sessions it pops up whenever Lennon seems to feel the music getting too sincere for its own good. Even harmless old chestnuts like “Yakety Yak”–a song nobody should have cared about one way or the other, even in 1969–were treated to the old Walrus’s extemporaneous honks, yelps, wheezes, and blats.
McCartney’s always been his own worst enemy in his clumsy campaign to court public opinion. Take, for example, the flap that erupted last year with Ono over his desire to reorder the Lennon-McCartney credit on a handful of Beatles songs. Though he had a legitimate argument, and while Ono herself is guilty of the worst sort of hypocrisy in the matter (for more, see Gilbert Garcia’s “The Ballad of Paul and Yoko” at Salon.com), McCartney was perceived as the villain, trying to screw the dearly departed in the pettiest manner possible.
The saddest thing about all this is that we’ve already forgiven McCartney his trespasses, real and imagined–hell, we’ve forgiven Yoko–and he still can’t leave it alone, intent upon micro-managing old work even as his new material suffers (a phenomenon formerly known as the Townshend Effect). It seems a lifetime of glory, money, and adulation hasn’t convinced McCartney he’s passed the audition.
