Stripped-down version of The Beatles' 'Let It Be' due in November
A new version of The Beatles ' "Let It Be" album--said by the band's company, Apple Corps, to be "the no frills, back-to-basics album that The Beatles first set out to make back in 1969," will be reissued under the title "Let It Be ... Naked" in November.
"If we'd have had today's technology back then, it would sound like this because this is the noise we made in the studio," Paul McCartney said in a statement. "It's all exactly as it was in the room. You're right there now".
Over the years, band members have expressed displeasure with the original release, which producer Phil Spector--adding heavily orchestrated overdubs--pieced together from abandoned recording sessions.
The Beatles were imploding due to internal strife--documented in the film version of "Let It Be"--when they decided to record an album that focused on the four members playing live, getting away from the studio tricks they'd favored on the preceding albums.
"Let It Be" was eventually shelved, and The Beatles had completed and released "Abbey Road"--the final album the group recorded together--by September of 1969. Though it was recorded before "Abbey Road," "Let It Be" was originally released in May of 1970 to accompany the film.
According to Apple Corps, "Let It Be ... Naked" is a digitally "de-mixed and re-mixed, un-dubbed of orchestration, choirs and effects and stripped-back to the raw" version of the original album.
"When I first heard it, it was really uplifting," Ringo Starr said in a statement. "It took you back again to the times when we were this band, the Beatle band."
The track listing on "Let It Be ... Naked" differs greatly from the original. The tracks "Dig It" and "Maggie Mae" have been removed from the album, and "Don't Let Me Down has been added. The background dialogue that appears on the original release has been removed on the new version.
A 20-minute bonus disc providing "a unique insight into The Beatles at work in rehearsal and in the studios in January 1969" will be included with the new version of the album, according to a press release.
"Let It Be ... Naked" will also be packaged with a booklet featuring photographs of the recording sessions and "extracts of band dialogue from the original booklet that first accompanied early copies of the 1970 album."
The running order for "Let It Be ... Naked," set for release worldwide on Nov. 17, is:
"Get Back"
"Dig a Pony"
"For You Blue"
"The Long and Winding Road"
"Two of Us"
"I've Got a Feeling"
"One After 909"
"Don't Let Me Down"
"I Me Mine"
"Across the Universe"
"Let It Be"
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