"Get Back To Where You Once Belonged..."

Yay! Looks like that little band called The Beatles is releasing another album! Let It Be is being re-released, stripped of all the sugary orchestration and choirs that Phil Spectorócalled in by John Lennon over Paul McCartney's protestationsóhad added in post-production after the fabs had canned the album in 1969.

Most Beatle-philes seem to side with McCartney on this one, decrying Spector's lavish embellishments on songs like "The Long And Winding Road" and "Let It Be". Macca's original idea for the album, and for his songs in particular, was to take a "back to basics" approach, using simple, stark arrangements. Spector's meddling with the tracks infuriated him. I suspect that may have been precisely the effect Lennon was after.

Bootleg copies of the album in its "intended" form, the somewhat mythologized version mixed by the session engineer Glyn Johns, have been around for years, so this release will be a wish come true for Beatle-philes. And for those of us who have never heard that version, it should be a real ear-opener.

So it looks like Phil Spector won't get away with his mangling of Let It Be. But the question remains: Is he getting away with murder?