The Apple Studios sessions began on 21 January 1969. From the following day, until the end of the Let It Be recordings on 31 January, they were joined by keyboard player Billy Preston, who was in London performing with Ray Charles.
The Beatles knew Preston from their Hamburg days, and George Harrison invited him to participate in the sessions to help alleviate the tensions. Five of the songs on Let It Be featured Billy Preston on organ or electric piano, as did Don't Let Me Down, the b-side to the Get Back single, also recorded during the sessions.
Billy came down and I said, 'Remember Billy? Here he is – he can play the piano.' He got on the electric piano, and straight away there was 100% improvement in the vibe in the room. Having this fifth person was just enough to cut the ice that we'd created among ourselves. Billy didn't know all the politics and the games that had been going on, so in his innocence he got stuck in and gave an extra little kick to the band. Everybody was happier to have somebody else playing and it made what we were doing more enjoyable. We all played better and that was a great session. It was more or less just as it is on the record.
Anthology
As at Twickenham, The Beatles performed a large variety of songs at Apple, although the original material became more focused. The sessions culminated with the famous rooftop performance on 30 January, and with a live studio set the following day for those songs which were less well suited for an outside performance.
Three of the Let It Be songs - Dig A Pony, I've Got A Feeling and One After 909 - were taken from the 30 January 1969 rooftop performance on the top of the Apple building. Dialogue from the event was also added to the end of a studio take of Get Back, with John Lennon closing The Beatles' book with the line: "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we've passed the audition."
From the final studio session on 31 January, versions of Two Of Us and Let It Be were used on the album, and various other performances from the day were used in the film.
Glyn Johns' Get Back
Eventually, once the recording and filming was complete, The Beatles realised they had little aptitude to sift through the hours of recordings for suitable songs. That task was given to Glyn Johns, who prepared two different versions of an album, titled Get Back, both of which were rejected by The Beatles.
We let Glyn John remix it and we didn't want to know, we just left it to him and said, 'Here, do it.' It's the first time since the first album we didn't have anything to... we just said, 'Do it.' Glyn Johns did it, none of us could be bothered going in and Paul... nobody called each other about it. The tapes were left there, and we got an acetate each, and we'd call each other and say, 'Well, what do you think? Oh, let it out.' We were going to let it out with a really shitty condition, disgusted. And I wanted... I didn't care, I thought it was good to go out to show people what had happened to us. Like this is where we're at now, we couldn't get - we can't get it together and don't play together anymore. Leave us alone. Glyn Johns did a terrible job on it, 'cause he's got no idea, etc. Never mind. But he hasn't, really. And so the bootleg version is what it was like. Paul was probably thinking, 'Well, I'm not going to fucking work on it.' It was twenty-nine hours of tape, it was like a movie. I mean just so much tape. Ten, twenty takes of everything, because we're rehearsing and taking everything. Nobody could face looking at it.
Lennon Remembers, Jann S Wenner
Johns had been approached by Paul McCartney in December 1968 to work on the Get Back sessions. He was present throughout the sessions, and afterwards began the mammoth task of compiling an album from the tapes.
I originally put together an album of rehearsals, with chat and jokes and bits of general conversation in between the tracks, which was the way I wanted Let It Be to be - breakdowns, false starts. Really the idea was that at the time, they were viewed as being the be-all-and-end-all, sort of up on a pedestal, beyond touch, just Gods, completely Gods, and what I witnessed going on at these rehearsals was that, in fact, they were hysterically funny, but very ordinary people in many ways, and they were capable of playing as a band, which everybody was beginning to wonder about at that point, because they hadn't done so for some time - everything had been prepared in advance, everything had been overdubbed and everything, and they proved in that rehearsal that they could still sing and play at the same time, and they could make records without all those weird and wonderful sounds on them.That became an obsession with me, and I got the bit between my teeth about it, and one night, I mixed a bunch of stuff that they didn't even know I'd recorded half the time - I just whacked the recorder on for a lot of stuff that they did, and gave them an acetate the following morning of what I'd done, as a rough idea of what an album could be like, released as it was...
They came back and said they didn't like it, or each individual bloke came in and said he didn't like it, and that was the end of that. A period of time went by and I went to America to work with Steve Miller, and when I came back, I got a call from John and Paul asking me to meet them at EMI, which I duly did. They pointed to a big pile of tapes in the corner, and said, 'Remember that idea you had about putting together an album?' and I said, 'Yes'. They said, 'Well, there are the tapes - go and do it'. So I was absolutely petrified - you can imagine. I was actually being asked to put together a Beatle album on my own. So I did - I went off and locked myself away for a week or so and pieced an album together out of these rehearsed tapes, which they then all liked, really liked. This was some months after the thing had actually been recorded, and we'd actually started work on Abbey Road about the same time.
The Record Producers
Related articles:
- Mixing, editing: Get Back LP
- Mixing, master compilation: Let It Be, Get Back LP
- Mixing: The Long And Winding Road, Let It Be
- Mixing: Get Back, Teddy Boy, Two Of Us, Dig A Pony, I've Got A Feeling, The Long And Winding Road, Let It Be, Rocker, Save The Last Dance For Me, Don't Let Me Down, For You Blue, The Walk
- Glyn Johns compiles the second Get Back LP
Let It Be, Naked or Not has two of Paul's most long winded and nail scrapes aganst the blacboard. After seeing Anthology this past week, i forgot how he was the most annoying of the Beatles. Let It Be and Long and Winding Road could have ended a lot soone, but no, the camera's were rolling. Let It Be was a recording of the breakup of a band and these two songs were the blueprint.
If you don't like Paul McCartney then you don't like the Beatles. Let it Be and Long and Winding Road are too of Paul's masterpieces -as well as being two of the best songs on the Album. Really silly post..
Being brand spanking new to this particular Beatles site, I was just fixing a whole wear the rain gets in, when I suddenly found meself wonderin', In 2003 there was mention that the Let It Be film was about to be released. This film was last screened on British BBC2, Television in about 1982. A Saturday, If I recall... But is it any closer to being released. Any ideas???
Engineers started remastering the film a while back but decided the film was too "controversial". Paul and Ringo do not want it released either. I doubt it will be released any time soon, especially during Paul, Ringo, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison's lifetimes.
The whole album and sessions and film and all is so polemic!
Here's why LIB doesn't work for me - and this may be picky but here goes: because it is supposed to be the soundtrack to a movie and was intended to replicate the feel of live performances, the problem I have is this - listen through head phones and notice how many times John's voice is on one side and his guitar is on the other side.
This completely wrecks the feel of a live performance. At least for me.
Sorry I can't help but notice it.
Does anyone know if Paul fixed this on LIBN - I don't have that CD.
It shouldn't really make a difference. With multitrack recording, a live performance can be taped with simultaneously-played instruments routed to different tracks, which can then be mixed to different parts of the stereo spectrum. Of course, that's not to say that all of the LIB performances were live - there were a number of overdubs added once they'd thrown the 'live' concept out of the window.
"marked a move away from The Beatles' elaborate studio experimentation of 1966 and 1967, with a return to more straightforward rock and roll, and the White Album and much of the Yellow Submarine soundtrack had followed in a similar vein."
I wouldn't say much of the Yellow Submarine soundtrack was back to basics. There were 13 songs: 2 were repeats from previous albums/singles, 7 were George Martin's orchestra songs, 2 were George Harrison's songs neither of which sound back to basics, so that leaves 2 new Lennon-McCartney songs which could be called back to basics.
And certainly not all the White Albums was back to basics – Revolution 9, Wild Honey Pie.
I was referring to the 'new' songs on the YS soundtrack, though it probably needs clarifying. Certainly Hey Bulldog and All Together Now were a step away from their sound of 1967, though the George Harrison songs clearly aren't.
As for the White Album, you're right that there were some complex recordings on there, but nothing like to the same degree of Sgt Pepper or Strawberry Fields Forever. Much of it is fairly straightforward, thought with liberal doses of Beatles magic.
"And, let us not forget, even if the collection wasn't The Beatles' best, for many lesser bands these songs would have constituted a career peak."
Couldn't agree more. When fans always talk about this isn't good or whatever, what we really mean is compared to The Beatles' other stuff it isn't as good, but it is still amazing.
Sorry Joe, but it does matter whether lennon's voalcs and guitar are on the same stereo pan.
of course multitracking makes it possible to put an instrument and/or vocal anywhere in the spectrum, but that doesn't make it "work".
Even though the beatles abandoned the actual "live" recording technique, they still marketed and presented the album as a live experience - to go with the movie.
The intended feel of the record is to experience a live beatles performance (even if it wasn't). So it's an anomaly to have a musician's voice separated from his instrument.
Of course perhaps I'm just too sensitive.
With electric instruments and microphones and amplifiers, modern live music often features "a musician's voice separated from his instrument"; it is not anomalous.
Even though this LP features my least favorite Beatles song, I still enjoy the heck out of it - Spectorized or not. In fact, I wish all of the songs on it were recorded "live" on the roof top. It would have been very refreshing to hear a live Beatles recording without the screaming.
As an aside, I get a kick out of the Spector quote on page 5 of this article. I'm by no means a fan of his, but it's the first time I've seen his defense in print. It's actually pretty funny.
Yes, I love that quote. I used it on the Phil Spector profile as well.
Dear all,
We would like to inform you about the following event :
LET IT BE live / The Beatles
by Yael Naim, Mathias Malzieu, Cocoon, Loney Dear, David Donatien, Camille O’Sullivan, Sense of Sound Singers,…
Paris (France), July 4th, Salle Pleyel
For the 40th anniversary of the release of the album Let It Be, David Coulter, who has collaborated with artists like Damon Albarn, Tom Waits and Marianne Faithfull, unites a young generation of European musicians to reinterpret the Beatles' last album.
http://www.citedelamusique.fr/minisites/1007_daysoff/concert/en_let_it_be_live.aspx
I believe Paul made a mistake. He did allow female voices in their records. Yoko sang in The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill, and Yoko again along with Patti Harrison in Birthday. His wife Linda provided background vocals for Let It Be.
Yeah, and there was also the female choir in "Walrus" - and howbout those two Apple scruffs that Paul himself invited to sing on "Across The Universe"! He was either being wilfully obtuse, or exaggerating, or he had a terrible memory. (And the amount of dope he smoked would suggest the latter.)
Pretty sure Paul meant a female singing lead
and wasn't there an entire choir on Good Night?
Ooh right, good catch!
LIB is both fantastic and disappointing. Eventhough substandard by usual Beatle standards, the songs are worthy and hold up against anything other artists put out at the same time (hell, for the next 40 years for that matter!). It was a disappointment in that it actually could have been far, far better. The Beatles are openly apathetic on LIB. Also, George's growth as a songwriter could have (had he been allowed to contribute more songs)partly made-up for John's growing indifference, dwindling song contributions and a seeming drop in the quality of his contributions. All Things Must Pass absolutely deserved to have been properly recorded and included on LIB (and NOT in place of, but in addition to, For You Blue and I Me Mine). It is no wonder why George walked out during these sessions and became hesitant to work as a Beatle ever again. What a pity (which reminds us that Harrison's brilliant song Isn't It A Pity was another in a list of George composed tunes rejected for Beatle records by John, Paul and/or George Martin). Thankfully, George recorded these on his own after the group's dissoluion.
It is funny that people think of John towards end as not writing much but he was actually very creative and writing a ton. He just did not want to write for the beatles. Look at his first two solo albums Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, they are full fledged releases. Paul's first solo albums while they are charming and having their bits (and the masterpiece 'Maybe Im Amazed) are bit rough and incomplete.
This is not a Beatle album, is just a Spector work... A Spector album, soloist, taking the tapes and the band's name...
Adding orchestra to a quarter of an album, while not doing anything else of his typical way isn't bad. It's called doing what you're asked.
I think Phil Spector is treated unfairly when it comes to LIB. He had the unenviable task of wading through hours of recordings and make something of it--all with virtually no input for the band. The only sin Spector committed was not being George Martin. Martin is tasteful and understated; Spector (on all his works) is melodramatic and over-the-top. Spector simply delivered a Spector production. Lennon was reportedly happy with it. I have little patience for McCartney's complaints. A bit like crying over spilt milk.
Actually I don't think Spector did wade through that many hours of tapes. Most of the selection and filtering was done by Glyn Johns prior to Spector arriving.
When Spector began work he hit the ground running, completing his work in a matter of days (he needed just seven recording and mixing sessions in March and April 1970), with George Harrison and Allen Klein apparently present for most of the sessions. Ringo Starr even played on one.