Let it Be, already

The Beatles are the largest musical franchise ever. Fans don’t seem to care that two band members are dead or that Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono are constantly engaged in petty estate arguments or that it’s no longer the 1960s if the Fab Four keep releasing ‘new’ product, people will keep reaching for it, buying it, swallowing it whole.

Listening to the Beatles is like trying to end a long-term relationship. Too much time has passed you’re finally ready to let them go, to move on to something more say, contemporary, like Journey (baby steps). But just when you’ve taken your phone off the hook and settled on the couch with the clicker and comfort food, your ex delivers a gift. An old photo, reframed, with a new poem inscribed on the back. It’s beautiful. You sigh. You take him back. You pop in Revolver.

Such is the nature of Let it Be… Naked. Technically, there is nothing new about the album it’s rehashed, remixed and served back to the public in a shiny new package. The cover, coincidentally, is the best part: it features two strips of negatives matching the original cover photos except, on Naked, George is looking down, away from the camera, perhaps ashamed to admit the record was released for strictly commercial purposes.

That’ s not entirely fair. On the surface, releasing Let it Be… Naked seems like a necessary action. And now, in case you ever need to know for Trivial Pursuit, the two-minute backstory to a Beatles masterpiece:

It’s 1970. John, Paul, Ringo and George are unproductive, uncooperative and downright catty, pulling in different directions. But the boys miraculously agree to record a stripped-down roots rock record while getting taped for an accompanying documentary about the recording process. Something coalesces the Beatles record so much material during the sessions, it’s near impossible to sort through it all and extract a cohesive album. Instead, they hand the task off to engineer Glyn Johns, who fashions a loose set, complete with random conversation, outtakes and jams Get Back, as it was tentatively titled.

But at the last minute, the album is scrapped and John Lennon (of course) calls in Phil Spector and his infamous ‘wall of sound.’ Though Spector keeps the idle chatter and outtakes, he adds strings and instrumentation to many of the raw tracks, most notably to McCartney’s yearning baby, ‘The Long and Winding Road.’

Fans have long accused Spector of ‘ruining’ the Beatles’ Let it Be. (Phil, see what happens to meddling producers who add too many cheesy strings to Sir Paul’s creations? They go crazy and knife B-actresses. You should have known better.)

I’ve never bought wholeheartedly into that camp. Although I can’t listen to the Spector-ized ‘Long and Winding Road’ without questioning my very coolness the strings scream ‘adult contemporary’ the record, in its entirety, sparkles with personality and pure talent. ‘Dig a Pony’ and ‘I Me Mine’ are two of my favorite Beatles songs they walk the edge of hard rock, their barely intelligible lyrics flippantly jabbing society. Paul’s funky, impromptu vocal intonations turn ‘Get Back’ into a tongue-and-cheek ditty about cross-dressing quelle chic! And the title track, how it sends shivers up my spine.

But it goes deeper. The Beatles have always had this monolithic, idyllic stature. They were brilliant yet brutally inaccessible on the grandiose, excessive Sgt. Pepper (think ‘Day in the Life’); and equally brilliant yet too smart, too psychedelic and maybe too quirky on the White Album. Let it Be, with its scattered background chatter and choppy feel (‘Maggie Mae’ ends just as it gets good) reminds us the band is only human. John’s stream-of-conscience rant, ‘Dig It,’ forever validates my own randomness and when the witty one comments ‘I hope we passed the audition!’ after ‘Get Back,’ we all want to reassure him: of course you did!

Let it Be… Naked may strip away all unnecessary instrumentation, but it also strips away the human patina. Gone is the chatter. Gone are ‘Maggie Mae’ and ‘Dig It.’ Gone is the coda from ‘Get Back.’ And what was the point of rearranging all the tracks? No point. No direction. Just an inexplicable impulse to make Let it Be… Naked as bland, generic and consciously produced as possible.

That said, ‘The Long and Winding Road’ on Naked does sound better. Without the strings and overdubbed theatrics, it’s an entirely different beast perhaps closer to how McCartney envisioned it. It’s haunting, lonely and regretful. Paul is turning away from his three best friends and isn’t too proud to cry.

Naked also presents ‘Across the Universe’ (Lennon’s lulling, exquisite mantra) string-free, and the result is personal and revealing. Finally, ‘Don’t Let Me Down,’ originally the B-side to ‘Get Back,’ is a worthy addition another of my Beatles faves, it sexily begs over heavy bass. However, it should have remained an addition, not a substitute for the absent tracks.

Apparently Paul and Ringo applaud the effort but they don’t really have a choice. It is their music, devoid of Dr. Spector. But Naked can’t possibly be as the nostalgic ads would lead you to believe Let it Be ‘as the Beatles intended it,’ unless they wanted to see their work spliced, reordered and rendered inanimate.

The Beatles can’t be improved: just let it be.