NEW BEATLES ALBUM

Well, sort of. AJC/AP reports,

A new version of The Beatles’ album “Let It Be” will be released in November, the group’s company Apple Corps announced Thursday.

“Let It Be…Naked” strips the 1969 album of Phil Spector’s lavish production effects, returning to Sir Paul McCartney’s original idea for the recording.

“This is the noise we made in the studio,” McCartney said of the new version. “It’s exactly as it was in the room. You’re right there now.”

“Let It Be … Naked” mostly keeps the same track listing as the original album, which featured songs Let It Be, The Long and Winding Road, Get Back and Across the Universe.

Background dialogue, Dig It and Maggie Mae have been taken off the album, and Don’t Let Me Down has been added, Apple Corps said.

Most of “Let It Be” was recorded in 1969 for an album which was to have been called “Get Back,” showing The Beatles returning to their roots as a four-piece rock-and-roll band. But the group was splitting up and the album was abandoned.

Spector was later brought in to convert hundreds of hours of tape into an album, renamed “Let It Be.”

Ringo Starr told Rolling Stone magazine earlier this year: “Paul was always totally opposed to Phil. I told him on the phone (recently), ‘You’re bloody right again. It sounds great without Phil.’ Which it does.”

Interesting.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. BigFire says:

    Not that the Beattles weren’t going to break up. But the Phil Spector’s version of the albium is simply the final nail in the coffin. The original concept of the albium is to make a ‘get back to the basic’ music, the kind that can be play just as well in studio as on stage.

  2. Bryan says:

    At least they won’t have Yoko Ono Naked! on this project.