Post by TotalInformation on Nov 18, 2003 21:43:53 GMT
The Mirror
November 15, 2003, Saturday
WHY I STILL CAN'T LET IT BE;
billy MCCARTNEY ON THE ALBUM GIVING THE BEATLES A NEW LEASE
IT was created in chaos during the death-throes of the most famous band in the world - and the Beatles' Let It Be album has remained a bone of contention ever since.
Until next week, when a new version, Let It Be Naked, goes on sale.
It takes the album back to basics, stripping away producer Phil Spector's notorious "Wall of Sound" choirs and violins.
It's a sweet moment for Paul McCartney, who loathed Spector's arrangement... and fell out with John, George and Ringo who approved it.
Here, McCartney reveals to PAUL DU NOYER the full extent of the spiral of arguments and legal wrangling which broke up the band.
And how, 33 years later, he's finally happy with the album that chronicles the end of the Beatles.
BEATLES records are the Elgin Marbles of Rock, the Dead Sea Scrolls of Pop. You just don't mess with them.
Unless, of course, you're Paul McCartney. He's been messing with their records a lot lately.
This looks like his most audacious project yet - a root-and-branch remix of their final LP, which will now be renamed Let It Be Naked.
There will, in due course, be a super-improved DVD version of the movie that was made of its birth too. A very, very difficult birth that the Beatles would not survive.
"When Let It Be came about the Beatles were feeling the strain for various reasons," says billy McCartney now.
"We all agreed in the end that we'd come full circle. That felt pretty spooky. It was, 'Ooh, this is a bit final.This is full circle'. And there were the arguments, the business differences and all that.
"We made Let It Be but, because of all the fraught personal relationships, the final straw was Allen Klein (the Beatles' business manager) coming in.
"It was his decision that Let It Be wasn't good enough and that it needed strings, needed tarting up. So he brought in Phil Spector. Poor old Phil, it's not really his fault. He had to tart it up - literally, put tarts singing on it.
"And a few strings. So when the album came out, I liked it, but I'd had an early copy of the number before all that Spector stuff, an acetate. And I was listening to this acetate one night and thinking, 'Jeez this is brave'.
"It was the Beatles stripped back, nothing but four guys in a room with (keyboards player) Billy Preston. It was almost scary, 'cos we'd always double-tracked, harmonised and so on. I remember being in this empty white room and getting a thrill. It was very minimalist and I was impressed."
But he adds: "Then it got re-organised, re-produced for disc." To make sure it sold.
A FEW years ago, Paul bumped into Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the director of the Let It Be film on a flight to the US.
They agreed that a DVD release of the Let It Be movie was overdue -properly restored, perhaps with added material - and Paul promised to take the matter up with the band's record company Apple.
There would, of course, be a soundtrack album to go with it, which revived Paul's dream of releasing those un-Spectorised sessions.
What had bothered Paul the most for these past 33 years? Was it the "tarted up" production or that he felt excluded from the original process? "It was the two," he says. The nature of the Beatles' management deal with Allen Klein remains a source of annoyance to McCartney.
"I kept saying, 'Don't give Klein 20 per cent, give him 15. We're a big act!' And everyone's going, 'No, no, he wants 20 per cent'. But it was impossible in the end.
"It was really difficult. So the only thing I could do was to boycott Apple. I was going in every day saying, 'Look, I think we ought to do this. y'know'."
The others told Paul to f*** off, so he boycotted Apple.
"I just didn't go in. And that was very fraught. So when Klein brought Phil Spector in, I said 'I don't think we should do this, I vote against it and they said 'Well, we vote for it'. So I wasn't involved because of my boycott and I wasn't consulted.
"At least in the past if you were going to put strings on it, someone would run the arrangement past me. And I'd say 'Great!' or 'Not great' or 'Fix it'. So it was both. It was not being consulted, then putting what I thought was crap on it.
"It was the worst time of my life, really, and the worst time of all our lives. I was just trying to save our fortune for us."
The Beatles spent the early weeks of January 1969 at Twickenham film studios. But the atmosphere was wretched. Matters improved when the group left Twickenham for the cosiness of their own, newly-built studio in the basement of Apple's HQ in Savile Row.
The projected climax, a live public performance of the new songs, fell from favour. Early ideas for the venue had ranged from a Roman amphitheatre to Liverpool Cathedral, from the House of Commons to an ocean liner. By the end of January, with disenchantment growing daily, the Beatles opted for the simplest course of all. They simply went upstairs to the roof above Savile Row and plugged in their amps.
The rooftop show of January 30, 1969, was a classic. Lindsay-Hogg's cameras caught the band in storming form, performing for 40 minutes in the frosty London air as office workers milled about the streets below and marvelled at the sounds.
But the Beatles would never play in public again.
The next day saw them downstairs once more and marked the last day of the sessions. The film crew, too, retired to study their canisters. Disillusioned by the entire affair, they went back to EMI's studios with George Martin to make a 'proper' Beatles album, duly named after the studios' Abbey Road location.
By early 1970, with Abbey Road released and Lindsay-Hogg's film nearing release date, thoughts turned to a soundtrack album.
There was no possibility now of the squabbling Beatles making a new album, so the Let It Be tapes were dusted off and handed to Phil Spector.
Three of The Beatles were in favour. Paul McCartney was not.
Nevertheless, Spector took the tapes to Abbey Road and there he fashioned a finished LP. Notoriously, he sought to embellish the bare-bones style of the sessions by overdubbing strings and choirs at certain points.
By the time it was released, on May 8, 1970, the Beatles no longer existed. And this ill-starred album was one of the reasons why.
I'VE always wondered whether part of Paul's dislike of Let It Be might lie in its running order.
It always seemed tactless the way his title track was treated. Here was a hymn to his dead mother, suddenly sandwiched in between Dig It (which ends in John's satirical squeak 'And now we'd like to do Hark The Angels Come') and the vulgar ditty of a Liverpool prostitute, Maggie Mae.
Not so, Paul protests. The track list never fazed him.
"That was just the occupational hazard of being in the Beatles," he shrugs. "We could all take the p*** out of each other. Keeping each other's feet on the ground. So that didn't bother me."
The last two years have even seen dance re-mixes of Elvis Presley. I suppose if you can alter the Beatles and the King you can do it to anyone. 'Do you think that's what the future holds?' I ask him. An infinity of re-mixing?
"I start off by digging my heels in and saying 'Oh, you should never do that with Elvis or the Beatles or the Stones. They're pure and should remain like that'," he says.
"But there is an argument about the kids. They hear it at a club and go 'Who's that? Elvis? Who's he?' It seems incredible but there are young people who don't know who Elvis is and the Beatles.
"They also don't know who JFK is - they think it's a chicken restaurant. The point being, you could argue it's a good thing just to get people introduced."
All right, but how would you feel when you're not around any more and somebody said 'Let's go back and ...
He flashes me a look of mock alarm: "You mean Yoko?"
No, I mean anyone at Apple. Who ever's in charge in 50 years time.
"Well you know, I've become much less strict about that stuff," he says. "I certainly wouldn't mind after I'm dead, 'cos I won't be thinking about things like that."
You won't be turning in your grave going "Leave Yesterday alone?" "I really don't think I would be that fussed."
-The full version of this article appears in the new edition of WORD magazine, out now. (www.wordmagazine.co.uk)
-Let It Be Naked is out on Monday.
mirrorfeatures@mgn.co.uk
-- 30 --
(Posted for fair use purposes of education and discussion.)
November 15, 2003, Saturday
WHY I STILL CAN'T LET IT BE;
billy MCCARTNEY ON THE ALBUM GIVING THE BEATLES A NEW LEASE
IT was created in chaos during the death-throes of the most famous band in the world - and the Beatles' Let It Be album has remained a bone of contention ever since.
Until next week, when a new version, Let It Be Naked, goes on sale.
It takes the album back to basics, stripping away producer Phil Spector's notorious "Wall of Sound" choirs and violins.
It's a sweet moment for Paul McCartney, who loathed Spector's arrangement... and fell out with John, George and Ringo who approved it.
Here, McCartney reveals to PAUL DU NOYER the full extent of the spiral of arguments and legal wrangling which broke up the band.
And how, 33 years later, he's finally happy with the album that chronicles the end of the Beatles.
BEATLES records are the Elgin Marbles of Rock, the Dead Sea Scrolls of Pop. You just don't mess with them.
Unless, of course, you're Paul McCartney. He's been messing with their records a lot lately.
This looks like his most audacious project yet - a root-and-branch remix of their final LP, which will now be renamed Let It Be Naked.
There will, in due course, be a super-improved DVD version of the movie that was made of its birth too. A very, very difficult birth that the Beatles would not survive.
"When Let It Be came about the Beatles were feeling the strain for various reasons," says billy McCartney now.
"We all agreed in the end that we'd come full circle. That felt pretty spooky. It was, 'Ooh, this is a bit final.This is full circle'. And there were the arguments, the business differences and all that.
"We made Let It Be but, because of all the fraught personal relationships, the final straw was Allen Klein (the Beatles' business manager) coming in.
"It was his decision that Let It Be wasn't good enough and that it needed strings, needed tarting up. So he brought in Phil Spector. Poor old Phil, it's not really his fault. He had to tart it up - literally, put tarts singing on it.
"And a few strings. So when the album came out, I liked it, but I'd had an early copy of the number before all that Spector stuff, an acetate. And I was listening to this acetate one night and thinking, 'Jeez this is brave'.
"It was the Beatles stripped back, nothing but four guys in a room with (keyboards player) Billy Preston. It was almost scary, 'cos we'd always double-tracked, harmonised and so on. I remember being in this empty white room and getting a thrill. It was very minimalist and I was impressed."
But he adds: "Then it got re-organised, re-produced for disc." To make sure it sold.
A FEW years ago, Paul bumped into Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the director of the Let It Be film on a flight to the US.
They agreed that a DVD release of the Let It Be movie was overdue -properly restored, perhaps with added material - and Paul promised to take the matter up with the band's record company Apple.
There would, of course, be a soundtrack album to go with it, which revived Paul's dream of releasing those un-Spectorised sessions.
What had bothered Paul the most for these past 33 years? Was it the "tarted up" production or that he felt excluded from the original process? "It was the two," he says. The nature of the Beatles' management deal with Allen Klein remains a source of annoyance to McCartney.
"I kept saying, 'Don't give Klein 20 per cent, give him 15. We're a big act!' And everyone's going, 'No, no, he wants 20 per cent'. But it was impossible in the end.
"It was really difficult. So the only thing I could do was to boycott Apple. I was going in every day saying, 'Look, I think we ought to do this. y'know'."
The others told Paul to f*** off, so he boycotted Apple.
"I just didn't go in. And that was very fraught. So when Klein brought Phil Spector in, I said 'I don't think we should do this, I vote against it and they said 'Well, we vote for it'. So I wasn't involved because of my boycott and I wasn't consulted.
"At least in the past if you were going to put strings on it, someone would run the arrangement past me. And I'd say 'Great!' or 'Not great' or 'Fix it'. So it was both. It was not being consulted, then putting what I thought was crap on it.
"It was the worst time of my life, really, and the worst time of all our lives. I was just trying to save our fortune for us."
The Beatles spent the early weeks of January 1969 at Twickenham film studios. But the atmosphere was wretched. Matters improved when the group left Twickenham for the cosiness of their own, newly-built studio in the basement of Apple's HQ in Savile Row.
The projected climax, a live public performance of the new songs, fell from favour. Early ideas for the venue had ranged from a Roman amphitheatre to Liverpool Cathedral, from the House of Commons to an ocean liner. By the end of January, with disenchantment growing daily, the Beatles opted for the simplest course of all. They simply went upstairs to the roof above Savile Row and plugged in their amps.
The rooftop show of January 30, 1969, was a classic. Lindsay-Hogg's cameras caught the band in storming form, performing for 40 minutes in the frosty London air as office workers milled about the streets below and marvelled at the sounds.
But the Beatles would never play in public again.
The next day saw them downstairs once more and marked the last day of the sessions. The film crew, too, retired to study their canisters. Disillusioned by the entire affair, they went back to EMI's studios with George Martin to make a 'proper' Beatles album, duly named after the studios' Abbey Road location.
By early 1970, with Abbey Road released and Lindsay-Hogg's film nearing release date, thoughts turned to a soundtrack album.
There was no possibility now of the squabbling Beatles making a new album, so the Let It Be tapes were dusted off and handed to Phil Spector.
Three of The Beatles were in favour. Paul McCartney was not.
Nevertheless, Spector took the tapes to Abbey Road and there he fashioned a finished LP. Notoriously, he sought to embellish the bare-bones style of the sessions by overdubbing strings and choirs at certain points.
By the time it was released, on May 8, 1970, the Beatles no longer existed. And this ill-starred album was one of the reasons why.
I'VE always wondered whether part of Paul's dislike of Let It Be might lie in its running order.
It always seemed tactless the way his title track was treated. Here was a hymn to his dead mother, suddenly sandwiched in between Dig It (which ends in John's satirical squeak 'And now we'd like to do Hark The Angels Come') and the vulgar ditty of a Liverpool prostitute, Maggie Mae.
Not so, Paul protests. The track list never fazed him.
"That was just the occupational hazard of being in the Beatles," he shrugs. "We could all take the p*** out of each other. Keeping each other's feet on the ground. So that didn't bother me."
The last two years have even seen dance re-mixes of Elvis Presley. I suppose if you can alter the Beatles and the King you can do it to anyone. 'Do you think that's what the future holds?' I ask him. An infinity of re-mixing?
"I start off by digging my heels in and saying 'Oh, you should never do that with Elvis or the Beatles or the Stones. They're pure and should remain like that'," he says.
"But there is an argument about the kids. They hear it at a club and go 'Who's that? Elvis? Who's he?' It seems incredible but there are young people who don't know who Elvis is and the Beatles.
"They also don't know who JFK is - they think it's a chicken restaurant. The point being, you could argue it's a good thing just to get people introduced."
All right, but how would you feel when you're not around any more and somebody said 'Let's go back and ...
He flashes me a look of mock alarm: "You mean Yoko?"
No, I mean anyone at Apple. Who ever's in charge in 50 years time.
"Well you know, I've become much less strict about that stuff," he says. "I certainly wouldn't mind after I'm dead, 'cos I won't be thinking about things like that."
You won't be turning in your grave going "Leave Yesterday alone?" "I really don't think I would be that fussed."
-The full version of this article appears in the new edition of WORD magazine, out now. (www.wordmagazine.co.uk)
-Let It Be Naked is out on Monday.
mirrorfeatures@mgn.co.uk
-- 30 --
(Posted for fair use purposes of education and discussion.)
