An Anniversary Beatles Fans Don't Celebrate: 55 Years Ago This Month, the Fab Four's Last .....
About 16 months after the process of recording it began, Let It Be trickled into record stores. It arrived in May 1970, 55 years ago this month. By that time, Beatles fans had started to mourn the fact that the four men’s professional relationship had ruptured.
Anniversaries of the release dates of other Fab Four albums are generally a cause for celebration and reflection. With Let It Be, maybe it’s only the reflection part, as we all try to get a handle on this legacy of this star-crossed project.
As had been the case with several Beatles’ projects in the second half of their recording career, Let It Be, or Get Back, as it was also known for a while, belonged to Paul McCartney. The Beatles would create a new album from scratch, film a documentary about that process, and then close the whole thing out with a live performance of the fresh songs.
McCartney saw it as a way of pulling the band back together after The White Album had progressed at times like it was four separate solo albums. He misjudged the growing disenchantment of John Lennon and George Harrison. The dour environment, with blinding lights pouring down on the band in the cold studio, didn’t help tempers much.
Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary, released four years ago, somewhat rebutted the notion that the process was a joyless slog. But that doesn’t change the fact that George Harrison briefly quit the band after a studio dustup with McCartney. Or that Lennon dressed down McCartney for his overbearing behavior when the cameras weren’t looking.
Perhaps the Let It Be album could have come out stronger had The Beatles shown interest in completing it. But they were so happy to be done with it after the rooftop concert that they quickly moved on to the Abbey Road album.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Jim Beviglia
