let it be...naked?

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Next up: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band... Naked

Laura S., Saturday, 20 December 2003 17:33 (twenty years ago) link

havent heard it yet. i am turned off by the idea of it a bit though. i always liked the strings on "long and winding road". this seems like the culmination of the whole pop-->rock cannonization process in that some of the rhetoric around this album seems to center on finally rescuing the music from its more "pedestrian" aspects so that it can be reclaimed as an important piece of "rock literature" or whatever.

personality/character-wise, i dont know if i ever liked any of the beatles, but lennon is my least favorite songwriter in the group. i will try and hear it regardless. nb my favorite beatles/beatles related album is macca's "give my regards to broad street".

Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Saturday, 20 December 2003 19:30 (twenty years ago) link

four years pass...

crappy title. this would have been a better cover:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Let_It_Be_Negative.jpg

veryloggedout, Friday, 28 December 2007 12:28 (sixteen years ago) link

Or this:

http://www.beatlesource.com/bs/scans/acetates/apple/gb-lib1i.jpg

PappaWheelie V, Friday, 28 December 2007 18:43 (sixteen years ago) link

Or something a bit similar to this:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1198/590050688_454a6dcf11_o.jpg

Geir Hongro, Friday, 28 December 2007 22:50 (sixteen years ago) link

i recommend the 'get back' album that you can get on certain p2p networks and bootlegs. its apparently the version the engineer glyn johns made before the album turned into let it be. whether its cobbled together from all the various let it be sessions or the actual version johns made up (ie the takes he selected that would have made up the get back album had it come out), i dont know, but its good. some of the takes i wish didnt have certain bits of banter at the start or end, but it makes it seem nice and informal. which is probably the better option as the original material was pretty ragged to begin with. ill hear the naked version one day.

mr x, Saturday, 29 December 2007 17:01 (sixteen years ago) link

There are two separate Glyn Johns mixes of it.

PappaWheelie V, Saturday, 29 December 2007 17:20 (sixteen years ago) link

hmm. and theyre both legit?

mr x, Saturday, 29 December 2007 17:21 (sixteen years ago) link

eight months pass...

Beatles MANIA up in this bitch.

Bimble Is Still More Goth Than You, Saturday, 13 September 2008 11:23 (fifteen years ago) link

this release was such a disaster

akm, Saturday, 13 September 2008 13:54 (fifteen years ago) link

twelve years pass...

Did we have a thread for the upcoming Peter Jackson Beatles reswizzle?

Anyway here's the book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM__OJUFzIQ

piscesx, Wednesday, 16 September 2020 15:42 (three years ago) link

What about that stereo Pepper's done by George Martin's son? Heard about half of it, thought most of that was good ("Mr Kite" very show offy, but it's a song for an imaginary show, after all, sort of UK Ray Bradbury)

dow, Wednesday, 16 September 2020 16:50 (three years ago) link

this has to be the least-loved and most-forgotten 21st-century Beatles release, right? even the thought of listening to this roundtable is more appealing:

On 13 November 2003, the completed Let It Be... Naked album had its world premiere with a two-hour radio special from Infinity Broadcasting. The special featured (...) a 20-minute roundtable discussion hosted by Pat O'Brien. The roundtable discussion featured analysis from musicians Sheryl Crow, J.C. Chasez, Billy Joel and Fred Durst, Breakfast with the Beatles host Chris Carter, record producers Alan Parsons and Jimmy Iovine, music critic David Fricke and journalist Geraldo Rivera.

Doctor Casino, Wednesday, 16 September 2020 17:20 (three years ago) link

xp Some of those remixes are decent yeah, his great thing is making the vocals sit where they 'should' be in the middle, but sometimes the whole 'everything but the kitchen sink' approach is a bit much.

Yeah '...naked' isn't even in the big box sets so.. it's like they are going to pretend it never happened.

piscesx, Wednesday, 16 September 2020 19:01 (three years ago) link

xpost For a second I thought that was something upcoming this November and was going "Why in the name of god is that allowed to exist."

Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 16 September 2020 19:02 (three years ago) link

there's nothing that can really redeem these bros bringing their worst material to a room where they just stare at each other filled with malice/barely concealed racism for days on end while they pray for their lawyers to finish the busy work of letting them start solo careers

Hmmmmm (jamiesummerz), Wednesday, 16 September 2020 19:03 (three years ago) link

even as a 7 year old first looking through and listening to my parents vinyl collection i could tell this was shitty. i'll rep for I Me Mine and Long & Winding Road but thats about it.

Hmmmmm (jamiesummerz), Wednesday, 16 September 2020 19:05 (three years ago) link

buncha glynn johns mixes here:

https://www.beatlesource.com/bs/mains/audio/GetBack/gb2intro.html

brimstead, Wednesday, 16 September 2020 19:17 (three years ago) link

Well it's their legacy now so they can arse around with it as much as they like IMO. If it's decent, i think i'll enjoy a good film maker's remixing of the
cleaned up footage. It'd be worth it for me, just to clap eyes on that performance of Two Of Us again. Hell even the recent remastered rooftop footage (on the 1+ Blu-Ray) looked amazing.

I mean i'm as cynical as the next fella but even i'd draw the line at all that 'malice and lawyers' talk.

piscesx, Wednesday, 16 September 2020 19:18 (three years ago) link

would like an all things must pass naked, hate the Phil Spector production on there

rascal clobber (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 16 September 2020 19:21 (three years ago) link

eh, its a long time since i've watched it to be fair, but i just remember the original LIB film taking away from a lot of what i liked about them "as a band" - ie my idea of The Batles... which sure is probably half mythologising anyway. there's just so little joy in the whole project. i don't know how anybody who's seen that film could think "Damn i need to see more of this!" .... its not as if they had a stock of magically joyful better performances hidden away that weren't used at the time?

Hmmmmm (jamiesummerz), Wednesday, 16 September 2020 19:23 (three years ago) link

yes i said The Batles.

Hmmmmm (jamiesummerz), Wednesday, 16 September 2020 19:24 (three years ago) link

my understanding is that Jackson's intent with this footage is to dispel that impression made by the oroginal film—that the sessions were so miserable and depressing. The unseen footage from what I've read reveals that contrary to the conventional narrative the band still dug eachother and enjoyed playing together.

error prone wolf syndicate (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, 16 September 2020 19:41 (three years ago) link

On 13 November 2003, the completed Let It Be... Naked album had its world premiere with a two-hour radio special from Infinity Broadcasting. The special featured (...) a 20-minute roundtable discussion hosted by Pat O'Brien. The roundtable discussion featured analysis from musicians Sheryl Crow, J.C. Chasez, Billy Joel and Fred Durst, Breakfast with the Beatles host Chris Carter, record producers Alan Parsons and Jimmy Iovine, music critic David Fricke and journalist Geraldo Rivera.
LOL, I actually listened to this special! Sheryl Crow (who went on about how she loved the bass sound and wanted to steal it) and David Fricke were definitely participants, and possible Parsons, but Billy Joel, Durst and Geraldo certainly were NOT, some wag threw those names in.

birdistheword, Wednesday, 16 September 2020 22:50 (three years ago) link

But yeah the 2003 remix was virtually unnecessary. By 2003, the best, definitive versions of every track that SHOULD have been on that album were either on "Let It Be," "Past Masters Vol. 2" or the "Anthology" CD's, or at least used in the film itself (which to be fair, was never issued on DVD). It would've been nice to have them all in one place on an official CD, but they decided to mess around with it, hence the inferior new mixes.

birdistheword, Wednesday, 16 September 2020 22:54 (three years ago) link

i finally got around to listening to this years after it came out and thought it was...fine, really. it's always been my least favorite beatles album but i found myself appreciating the songs more in this context -- just a straightforward album, no spector crap, none of the annoying chatter between songs, and they replaced the two throwaways with "don't let me down" which always belonged on this album anyway. i'd probably rather listen to it than the original album. that said i always kinda wished they had just released an album of the rooftop concert and left it at that.

(The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, 16 September 2020 23:40 (three years ago) link

The track sequence on Let It Be...Naked is actually rock solid - it flows much better than Phil Spector's Let It Be and all three of Glyn Johns's rejected Get Back sequences. I agree that replacing complete throwaways like "Dig It" and "Maggie Mae" with "Don't Let Me Down" helps immensely, and I also agree with ditching Spector's orchestral and choral overdubs, I never bought the counter-argument that "The Long and Winding Road" needed those strings - that's like saying Mountain Dew needs more sugar.

What I don't like are the new edits and mixes because for the most part, those were already done right back in 1969 or 1970, and except for stripping Spector's orchestral and choral overdubs, all the noticeable changes made on Let It Be...Naked didn't improve any of the songs - quite the opposite. Losing the coda on "Get Back," picking an inferior take of "Don't Let Me Down," using the guitar solo on "Let It Be" that Harrison himself rejected (and twice re-recorded, with the best one picked for the single and the other Spector used for the album), etc.

I actually like the quiet and brief spoken word bits on Let It Be, the stuff that didn't get their own tracks and opened or followed most of the songs, because in total they did bring a welcome loose and casual atmosphere to the album rather than crossing the line into sloppiness.

birdistheword, Thursday, 17 September 2020 05:35 (three years ago) link


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