Any true Beatles fan can’t listen to them any more. Much like 60s’ Dylan, there is no more to be learnt in the byways of their material and even the three anthology’s did little to shed new light. For one thing, they had been available for decades on boots and for another thing, they were such a produced album band that with the possible exception of “Let It Be” the out takes are musically first take irrelevancies.
“Let It Be” was the exception. Produced, many, including McCartney, claim overproduced, by Phil Spector, it was the Beatles album failing to live up to its potential. And my least favorite beatles album and that is mostly Mccartney’s fault. When he was co-writing with Lennon on “Two Of Us,” “One After 909,” “I’ve Got A Feeling” he was fine and the perennial Beatle rocker “Get Back” needs no apologies from any one but “Let It Be”? “Long and Winding Road”? This is as close to bathetic pathos as the Beatles ever got. In McCartney’s 2003 re-thinking ” Let It Be… Naked” you can bet he took out Lennons sarcastic “…and now we’re gonna do ‘hark the angels come'”.
Lennon, on the other hand, was in fine fettle: “Dig A Pony,” “Across the Universe,” and the co-writing chores -superb, awesome, prime Lennon and prime beatles.
So,how bad can the worst beatles album be?
“Let It Be… Naked” is a little besides the point. Nothing can save the McCartney songs and the only song really improved, “Across The Universe,” has been available for decades on “Past Masters Vol II.”
The moral of this story is: Spector was a better producer than McCartney.
By the way, while Spector may well have waved his gun at five women, he also waved his gun at Lennon during the recording of Lennon’s “Rock And Roll” so…
Let’s be honest about Spector. He shot and killed Lana Clarkson BY ACCIDENT. He is insane and he should be put in an asylum if and until he can be brought back to his senses.
Spector is also a genius well past his prime.
I am going to see “Hair” tonight. I saw it as part of the “Encore” series a coupla years ago and thought it sagged like hell in the middle. But it reminds me how disliked the score was by the cognoscenti at the time who considered it a watered down sell out of the hippie ideology for the same old yankee dollars.
Of course, Lou Reed would blow a hole right through the entire ideology with a curt “the kids are being hyped”.
Finally, I was going along with Steve Diamond’s “It’s Blitz” as album of the year but Karen O was such an arch drag on SNL (singing her single of the year “Zero”) she’s got me wondering if it might be indie sensation, passionate and highly melodic “The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart”.
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