Paul – lead and
backing vocals, piano, bass, maracas
John – backing vocals
George – backing vocals, lead guitar
Ringo – drums
Billy Preston – organ, possibly electric piano
Linda McCartney – possibly backing vocals
Session musicians – two trumpets, one or two trombones, tenor and
possibly baritone saxophones, cellos
“This was a very difficult period. John was with Yoko full time and our relationship was beginning to crumble … One night during this tense time I had a dream and saw my mum, who’d been dead ten years or so. And it was so great to see her because that’s a wonderful thing about dreams: you are actually reunited with that person for a second … In the dream she said, ‘It’ll be alright.’ I’m not sure if she used the words ‘Let it be’ but that was the gist of her advice, it was ‘Don’t worry too much, it will turn out okay.’ … I felt very blessed to have that dream.”
Paul must have felt that he was carrying the world upon his shoulders in 1968. He felt responsible for keeping the Beatles working, and so responsible for the friction, hurt and hostility that it generated. Apple’s financial problems were also a worry, as the company was responsible for livelihood of so many. For the first time he could not share his feelings with John, and so the happy, confident, thumbs-up public Paul lived alongside the despondent, anxious, sleepless private Paul. Although Paul has intimated that his “dream” was a euphemism for something a little more psychedelic – it’s clear that the pressures must have permeated his waking and sleeping hours.
As is so often is the case, Paul’s knack for concise lyricism leaves us with delicious scope for interpretation – here even in the title. Within its semi-religious setting, “let it be” could be a request – a prayer – for a light to shine, for the parted to be reunited, for a trouble to be resolved. Equally it could be existential counsel to accept the inevitable, to hope for the best and to accept what fate has in store. Either way, the message is strangely comforting, with the sum of the message being possibly greater than the content of the lyric. And of course, it stands as a valediction in being the group’s final single release, sending the four on their separate ways into an uncertain future, from its recording during a troubled time in the unfamiliar environment of a documentary film set.
The time spent at Twickenham was taken up with rehearsals and run-throughs, interspersed with endless jamming and spurious recordings of old rock ’n’ roll numbers, half-remembered Lennon-McCartney snippets and early appearances of songs that would become solo releases. All audio from these Twickenham sessions is from the mono film tape and no songs were recorded that were intended to be released. Any subsequent bootleg recordings from this period are taken from the film soundtrack. (The one snippet from the two-week Twickenham experience that did find its way onto Let It Be was John’s “Queen says no to pot-smoking FBI members” comment before ‘For You Blue’.) Musical offerings from these two weeks included everything from ‘It’s Only Make Believe’, ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’ and ‘What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For’ to ‘Give Me Some Truth’, ‘All Things Must Pass’ and ‘Another Day’.
The first recording of ‘Let It Be’ at Savile Row, captured on Anthology 3, took place on 25 January. A telling exchange between John and Paul can be heard prior to the take – John provocatively asks “Are we supposed to giggle in the solo?”, to which Paul replies “Yeah.” At this stage Paul had seemingly not come up with a final verse, as the first verse is repeated after the guitar solo. All other released versions of the song are based on a take recorded on 31 January. This was the last day of the Get Back sessions, a day known as the “Apple Studio Performance”, which followed the “Apple Rooftop Performance”. ‘Two Of Us’ and ‘The Long And Winding Road’ were recorded on this day, and then, finally, ‘Let It Be’. All three songs feature in the Let It Be film, but appear just before the “climatic” rooftop performance. The Beatles (with John on six-string bass) were again joined by Billy Preston on organ, and recorded nine takes of ‘Let It Be’. The final two takes, which were the last two recordings of the entire month-long project, were used for release on record and film respectively. The lyrics seem to have been finalised at this eleventh hour because even for the very last take, Paul is seen on film reading from a lyric sheet. For this final take, he sings “there will be no sorrow” instead of “speaking words of wisdom” in the final verse, which he then repeats for the final chorus. There is also a short edit in the film from an earlier take, which extends the second chorus from two to three couplets.
With recordings at Apple at an end, the group eventually moved on to record tracks that would appear on Abbey Road. Meanwhile, ‘Let It Be’ lay dormant until 30 April, when George taped a new lead guitar solo, treated with a Leslie speaker. On 28 May the track was the last song to be mixed as the Get Back album was finally made ready for release.
Except, of course, nothing happened … until 4 January 1970, and a flurry of activity. The tape was dusted down and loaded into the Abbey Road recording console once again, and a brass section was overdubbed, using a score by George Martin. (There is a contradiction in the records regarding the brass players – EMI documentation lists two trumpets, two trombones and one tenor sax, whereas George Martin’s notes, reproduced in his 2003 Playback memoir, suggest two tenor saxes, one baritone sax, two trumpets and one trombone.) John’s rather sloppy bass part was also wiped, replaced by a new bass line played by Paul. Further overdubs followed – another (un-Leslied) lead guitar solo from George, additional drums from Ringo, percussion from Paul and the brass contribution was beefed up by mixing a second overdub with the first. George Martin’s notes also reveal that the backing harmony vocals from George, Paul and possibly Linda were triple-tracked, being bounced from tape track 7 to track 4 and back to 7. Finally a snatch of George Martin-scored cellos was added to the end chorus.
So much for warts-and-all.
Two mixes were made of the track – one with (mostly) the April guitar solo, which was released as a single on 6 March 1970, and one without, intended for the revised Get Back album.
And that session, ending at four o’clock on the morning of Monday 5 January, was the last time that the Beatles as a band – albeit without John – were together in a studio. It was also the last time George Martin worked on any new Beatles recordings.
But not so Phil Spector, who put his inimitable stamp on the track on 26 March. His remix of ‘Let It Be’ paved the way for his work on ‘The Long And Winding Road’ by treating the existing overdubs on ‘Let It Be’ in the same way as his own orchestral recordings for ‘The Long And Winding Road’. The first change we hear is the echo laid onto Ringo’s hi-hat – what was a subtle touch in the single becomes inappropriate and out of proportion as the off-beat tap ripples into the distance. The hi-hat remains the centre of attention when the full drum kit makes its entrance, a move that prepares us for the prominent level of the brass, which first appears in the repeat of the refrain. Whereas George Martin used something like this level of mix at the climax of the song, here it leaves us with nowhere to go and progression becomes repetition. Spector plumps for the guitar solo recorded on 4 January, and also pumps up the volume for later touches such as the guitar lick before “I wake up to the sound of music”, and those during the final refrain. His final contribution is to give us three refrains instead of two at the end of the song – this tactic, the salvation of ‘I Me Mine’, is an unnecessary touch here.
Another version of the song appeared in 2003 on the Let It Be… Naked album. In the spirit of the project, this is stripped down, and is not only pre-Spector, but pre-Martin in its shunning of both guitar solo overdubs. The version oddly features a series of slight, imperceptible edits, which would seem to go yet further against the spirit of capturing an unembellished performance. The edits, including the entire guitar solo, come from the subsequent take, which is referred to as take 27b, and was the last recording made on the last day of filming. This is the take that was used in the movie, with laughter from George – apparently responding to Paul repeating a joke about syncing a second clap – edited out of the introduction.
The song is melodically and harmonically without frills – the melody is entirely pentatonic, and the harmony based heavily on I–V–vi–IV (C–G–Am–F), or C major and A aeolian with, as Wilfrid Mellers puts it, “pentatonic roulades”. Put another way, these are Hoagy Carmichael’s old ‘Heart And Soul’ chords (the ones Ringo used for ‘Octopus’s Garden’), but in a different order. The only brief flirtation with anything outside this formal structure is the flattened seventh Bb we skip past in the coda.
Before the Beatles had the chance to release their single version of ‘Let It Be’, it had been covered by Aretha Franklin, on her 1970 LP This Girl’s In Love With You, which also featured ‘Eleanor Rigby’. There had originally been plans to release her version of the song in the UK simultaneously with the Beatles’ release, as a follow-up to ‘Eleanor Rigby’. Wiser heads eventually prevailed, and ‘Call Me’, a former Billboard R&B number one, was released instead.
The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ single hit number one on the Billboard chart, and in most countries around the world, but only reached number two in the UK, being held off the top by Lee Marvin’s ‘Wand’rin’ Star’. A parallel with the experience of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’/‘Penny Lane’ is all the more convincing given that these were the only two Beatles singles issued in the UK with special picture sleeves.
However, ‘Let It Be’ finally made it to the top in 1987 when released as a charity single by the Ferry Aid ensemble (which included a contribution by Paul McCartney) in aid of the Zeebrugge disaster.