LET IT BE

Let It Be had a legendarily difficult birth. The recording sessions more or less broke the band, and left everyone concerned so miserable that they were prompted to regroup and focus their efforts one last time to make Abbey Road - because they were damned if this was going to be how the band was remembered!

The version of the album we generally know (and which I'm reviewing here) was the result of the tapes eventually making their way into the hands of Phil Spector, who was tasked with working on them and salvaging *something* from them. The result is an album which never reaches the lows occasionally attained on the White Album but with correspondingly rarer highs. A couple of undeniable classics in the form of Let It Be and Get Back, a couple of songs which are acquired tastes but which I'm kind of a sucker for - Across the Universe and The Long and Winding Road - and then a fair amount of somewhat undistinguished filler. Not that the filler is poor - hell, Harrison's I Me Mine is pretty good - but still not quite up to the standards of the album's major classics. And, of course, that wall of sound treatment has been dividing listeners for over four decades and will probably continue to do so for years to come. Three stars; by no means a humiliating end, but I'm glad they stuck together to do Abbey Road and finish their career on a proper high.