The Beatles - The Final Days

The last time all four Beatles were together at EMI Studios at Abbey Road was on August 20, 1969 to finish the Abbey Road album.  But, as we have already seen, there were in 1970 four more Beatles recording sessions with least one or three Beatles in attendance to tie up the loose ends of Let It Be.

On April 1, 1970, Phil Spector oversaw in Abbey Road's cavernous Studio One the very last recording session for a Beatles record before the breakup was made official, which involved overdubbing an orchestra on three of the Let It Be album's songs, all but one of them having actually not been recorded during the January 1969 sessions from which the album was conceived.  This fourth Beatles recording session of 1970 featured one Beatle - Ringo (below, in 1970), who played drums on all three songs along with the orchestra.

Again, the three songs in question were John Lennon's song "Across the Universe," George Harrison's "I Me Mine," and, the only song from the January 1969 tapes involved here,  Paul McCartney's "The Long and Winding Road."  The results were quite telling; the former two songs benefited from Spector's orchestral overdubs, while "The Long and Winding Road" suffered tragically.  The difference was likely due to the fact that the former two songs had been professionally recorded from the start, while "The Long and Winding Road" was recorded live in a makeshift studio and had deliberately been stripped down.  The take of "The Long and Winding Road" that was used, from January 26, 1969, wasn't the best take the Beatles had recorded - the definitive version was probably the one recorded five days after as seen in the Let It Be movie - but it was by no means in need of lavish overdubbing.  Listening to Spector's version of the earlier take and then listening the overdub-free version of that same take, issued in 1996 on Anthology 3, is like looking at a picture of a beautiful woman wearing elaborate makeup and then seeing a picture of the same woman with her plain face; you're more drawn to the natural beauty of the plain version.

Be that as it may, Spector certainly put his stamp on the three songs he overdubbed.  "Across the Universe" was the most successful example; he took the recording used for the remix that had appeared on the World Wildlife Fund charity album and slowed it down to make John's voice sound more natural, omitting the wildlife sound effects from the earlier remix and adding the orchestra and a choir of fourteen vocalists with great subtlety.  His work on "I Me Mine" was also impressive, extending the song's length by 51 seconds and giving the song a greater sense of urgency and drama with the orchestra and choir.  His overdub on "The Long and Winding Road," though, was pure Mantovani, the sort of "beautiful music" associated with doctors' offices and dinner with your grandparents.  Spector didn't arrange these songs himself - he gave that honor to Richard Hewson, who, ironically, arranged the McCartney-produced Mary Hopkin single "Those Were the Days" - but the sonic quality more than lived up to Phil's "wall of sound" technique.

This session presented numerous problems, most of which were Spector's doing.  While most producers map out the way a record will sound only when the basic tracks are recorded, Spector wanted to hear the final product as it was being recorded, which led to him making numerous demands; he failed to grasp that Abbey Road was not equipped for his unorthodox method.  Ringo, using his status as a Beatle, took him aside and calmed him down.  Spector's biggest mistake, however, was to try to pull a fast one by giving the musicians three musical parts when they were only booked for and paid for two.  The con job failed, and the musicians walked out.  Engineer Peter Bown went home, and Spector conceded.  The musicians got their extra payment, and Bown was called back to help finish the session.  Noting that the session happened to be on April Fool's Day, Bown would later say that Spector's deception was "one April Fool's joke which did not come off."

In all, Spector's overdub session cost £1,126 and 5/ - more than twice the cost of recording Please Please Me, the album Let It Be was intended to emulate.  In 2020 American money, that price for the overdubs comes to $21,638.86.

The next day, Spector and Bown remixed the newly overdubbed songs - the seventh and final session for assembling Let It Be - and Spector quickly informed the Beatles that the record was done and awaiting their approval.  John, George, and Ringo approved it.  Though Paul McCartney also approved the album in order to facilitate its scheduled May release, he was disgusted with Spector's work on one song in particular - no prizes for guessing which one - and by now he had had enough.

On April 9, 1970, after having spent the past seven months trying to keep the group together, Paul sent out a press release announcing his departure from the Beatles.

To be continued . . .

The Spector of the Beatles

"I've been Phil Spectored, resurrected." - Paul Simon

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And so, on March 23, 1970 - coincidentally, at the start of Holy Week - Phil Spector began the thankless job of trying to make a Let It Be album for the Beatles out of the January 1969 Apple Studios tapes.  He worked in Room 4 at EMI Studios at Abbey Road, concentrating on remixing and editing the songs in an effort to make them sound as alive and as fresh as possible and make the record sound whole. 

He seemed to be the appropriate choice for the job. Spector was as much as an artist as the performers he produced records for, and maybe even more so.  He had pioneered the "wall of sound" technique - numerous overdubs of one instrument, tape echo, and heavy reverberation - and his approach to recording led John Lennon and George Harrison to call him a genius.  And this was from two musicians who had worked with a genius - George Martin.  But Spector was also known for his liberal use of orchestration - he envisioned his records as "little symphonies for the kids" - and those who bought records from his clients the Ronettes and the Righteous Brothers would certainly agree.  Let It Be, however, was not meant to be anything of the sort - it was meant to be, as Greil Marcus put it, an album meant to "recapture [a] fading sense of combined self," an album that got back to the essence of rock and roll.  Certainly Spector could make a record like that, as he'd already proved he could do so with "Instant Karma!".  Which approach would Spector take here - basic rock and roll or a grand production?  The answer would be both. 

With George Harrison present for most of the sessions, Spector worked with engineer Peter Bown, using an eight-track tape with seven tracks of music and an eighth track that was a "sync pulse" track for the cameras used to make the Let It Be documentary movie.  They spent the first day of work on mixing and editing, mixing two takes of "I've Got a Feeling," one from the studio and another from the Apple rooftop performance (the latter making it onto the Let It Be album), and editing out backing vocals from the rooftop performance of "Dig a Pony" while leaving the false start in.  It should have been apparent from the editing on the latter song that, while the Let It Be album would be sonically better than either of the two Get Back albums compiled by Glyn Johns, it wouldn't be consistent.  Live mistakes and studio banter would be juxtaposed by edits destroying the "live" concept.  But even bigger alterations were planned; on March 23, Spector also reworked "Across the Universe" and "I Me Mine" for overdubs, and it seemed that he had already decided on an orchestra for the two songs.

It's worth noting again that while "Across the Universe" and "I Me Mine" were not recorded during the January 1969 sessions, they were included on the Let It Be album only because the Beatles were shown rehearsing them in the Let It Be movie.   If these songs were rehearsed but not properly recorded when the movie was made, perhaps it would have made more sense to release these songs as a separate single accompanying the LP and film.  Spector, of course, would have even grander designs for an overdub of another song that was recorded during the January 1969 sessions.

The rest of the week was devoted to mixing the other songs intended for the record.  March 25 saw a remix of "For You Blue," as well as a remix of "Two Of Us" that brought a crisper sound to the song and is regarded by Beatles author Mark Lewisohn as Spector's best production effort on the Let It Be LP.   The following day, March 26, Spector worked to create entirely new remixes of "Let It Be" itself and "Get Back" that differed noticeably from the single release mixes, the former being extended by eleven seconds and getting a heavier George Harrison guitar solo, highly mixed brass and cellos that, ironically, had been scored by George Martin, and an emphasis on Ringo Starr's hi-hat.  (The former two elements were both overdubs recorded in the Beatles' January 4, 1970 session.)  It was also on this day that Spector began a remix of the third song slated for lavish overdubbing, "The Long and Winding Road" . . .

March 27 was devoted to editing the improvised "Dig It" down to an inexplicable length of fifty seconds.  An improvisation recorded earlier in the January 1969 sessions, known as "Can You Dig It?", had ended with John saying in a falsetto voice, "That was 'Can You Dig It?' by Georgie Wood, and now we'd like to do 'Hark, the Angels Come'."  Spector took this Goon Show-style banter and tacked it onto the end of his edit of "Dig It" to, somewhat cleverly, introduce "Let It Be," which Paul McCartney had conceived as a hymn.  (For the record, Georgie Wood was an old-time music-hall comedian in England.  As for "Hark, the Angels Come," that's the old-style title of the Christmas carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," which the Beatles in fact never recorded.)

Finally, after the Easter holiday break, Spector returned to Abbey Road on Easter Monday, March 30 with two recording engineers (Peter Bown not being one of them) and a tape operator to work on the two George Harrison songs, producing a remix of "For You Blue" and concocting an ultimately unreleased sixteen-second loop of the instrumental break in I Me Mine" with sound from the movie overlaid onto it.

Throughout this entire time, Spector displayed the temperament of an artist, exhibiting all sorts of odd behavior.  Bown later remembered him taking a pill every half hour.  Also noteworthy was that Spector had his bodyguard with him, which Bown attributed to the danger of working in American recording studios (I touched on this on this blog back in 2002, when rap turntable operator Jason Mizell of Run-DMC was shot to death in a recording studio); the bodyguard was dismissed before the Let It Be remix sessions ended.  (The fact that Spector shot a woman to death in his own mansion in February 2003 and is now doing time in prison for it suggests that the bodyguard may have been there to protect others from Spector, or at least protect Spector from himself.)

Spector's work on the Let It Be album in the early spring of 1970 was not the only Beatles-related activity going on then at Abbey Road.  Paul McCartney was at the studio complex finishing up his debut solo album, unaware of Spector's presence.  In fact, by all accounts, he was unaware of Spector's project; John, George and Ringo had allowed Phil to go ahead on putting the Let It Be album together without Paul's knowledge, believing that the then-esteemed producer was the best person to make the best of what they felt was a bad situation.  And Paul would be anything but pleased when he heard the final master. Indeed, as March 1970 went out like a lamb, Spector's grandest production job on Let It Be was yet to come.

To be continued . . .