The Beatles
Let It Be

THE REVIEW

1970 LET IT BE
The end of the Beatles, the end of a decade, the end of a philosophy of life... Let it be, let it go, now we must think about what to do when we grow up... We had a lot of fun, but now it's time to settle down. Now, each for themselves and the rock god for all.

When "Let it be" was released, the world's most famous band had officially ceased to exist for a month, and solo albums by Paul, Ringo, and John had already been released. The four were separated even on the cover. The entire album has something of the flavor of something that "had to be done", because it was truly impossible to drop everything without even a final chapter. Not precisely a happy ending, but at least the closing credits and the word "the end" to this great story, the Beatles owed it.
Evidently, "Abbey Road" was not considered a sufficient farewell, who knows... Probably, if the saga of the Fab Four hadn't ended, these songs (recorded prior to those of "Abbey Road" which, however, had been released first) would never have been published and certainly not in this form, but this is mere speculation. Instead, the four decided that they nevertheless had to release one "last record," so they handed a handful of second-choice songs (by their standards), recorded without any enthusiasm in a period of boredom and fights, to producer Phil Spector. Spector then, according to almost everyone and Paul in particular, managed to ruin with pompous and pretentious production even the little good that was there. At the time, he was considered the best producer in the world, but the material he had to work with was not stellar.

John said, "He was given the shittiest load of poorly recorded shit with a lousy feeling and he still got something out of it," Paul said, "His work on the entire album and especially on 'The Long and Winding Road' is terrible, and moreover represents an intolerable interference with my work."
George Martin was appalled to hear what Spector had done. The press talked about "an inflated EP" and "a cardboard tombstone"... But is "Let it be" such a horrible record? In the end, probably not. Perhaps it should be listened to with the ears of the time, coming from everything the Beatles had done before, to understand the reactions of the period, but listened to today, the album doesn't seem so terrible. It certainly contains some high-level moments (Harrison's two songs "I Me Mine" and "For You Blue," but also "The Long And Winding Road," "Two Of Us," "Get Back," and "Let It Be" itself), “Across The Universe,” composed by Lennon over a year earlier but then relegated to a charity album for the WWF, is here retrieved and enriched with several overdubs, and in its lamenting psychedelia is one of the better moments of the album. And even the non-memorable episodes ("Maggie Mae" and "One After 909," which even belonged to the Quarrymen period, the slack "Dig It") don't seem worse than some other minor Beatles stuff.

Perhaps the greatest pop group in the world deserved a better farewell, but, who knows, perhaps a great album would have made the fans' pain and regret even greater...