I still have my Let It Be bootleg called “Get Back To Toronto” (from IPF Records in “High Quality Stereo”). You can’t imagine how excited I was when I saw it at Underground Records that day. It’s been awhile since I’ve listened to it. Apparently it’s a copy of an acetate that John brought to Canada in 1969.
Side 1:
Peace Message-Get Back
Teddy Boy
On Our Way Back Home
All I Want Is You
Side 2:
I Got A Feeling
Let It Be
Don’t Let Me Down
Sweet And Lovely Girl
Get Back
When You Walk/Christmas Message
“I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and myself, and I hope we passed the audition…”
Went with Get Back, as well.
Have good words also for Two of Us and I Got a Feeling (always good to see the two of them teaming up), One After 909 (old school!) and Across the Universe.
Part of the dislike for the finished album may have to do with the reported mess that was getting it assembled: there were several versions until this one was hammered together so as to be able to release it along with the film. By then both film and album had been so long in post-prod that a whole another (more polished) album had been released in the meantime. Like **Voyager **mentioned, some tracks that ended up in the album version were not the best takes. Heck, even in the *documentary * there are some more interesting-sounding takes (IMO: Let It Be itself with the “there will be no sorrow” alternate last-verse lyric).
The project started off with a notion of a “rockumentary” of the making-of an album (or series of singles) that would see them “Get Back” from White Album-era explorations to being an actual rock band, with the big payoff a comeback live-concert performance. But it staggered through the middle of some badly dysfunctional times personally, artistically and financially, both among the four and at Apple, and a lot of the goals were abandoned or only met in the loosest or most ironic sense (e.g. the “rooftop concert”); the end-result footage and recordings wound up being harder than expected to turn into acceptable finished product.
Yet once that was done with and they no longer had to work in front of a film crew all day, they were able to get together with their usual studio team and actually make that post-White back-to-“real band” album, the later-recorded Abbey Road (including some tracks we hear during the film) which they released promptly, causing a further delay of the pending project. By the time that Let It Be as we know it got around to being finished, everyone involved had effectively gone their different ways except for corporate identity, and Phil Spector was brought in to put it out of its misery.
You’re right on all counts (though technically, I didn’t make a similar caveat for “Love Me Do” in the very first poll, so if you’re hoping to vote for it on Past Masters 1, you’re out of luck ;))
If this was the poll for the vastly superior “Let It Be… Naked,” the title track would easily win it for me. The take of “Let It Be” Paul chose for “Naked” features my favorite George Harrison solo of all time, and overall that take is just a thousand times better than the original album track. Whoever allowed Phil Spector in that studio (John, I think?) made probably the biggest mistake of the Beatles’ career.
That being said, for this poll, I voted for “Get Back.” 'Cuz it’s still great, and Spector didn’t shit all over it.
I was tempted to overlook “Across the universe” in favor of “Let it be” simply because various covers of Across have oversaturated my playlist such that I want to skip ahead whenever I hear it, but really, Across is still classic and more playable, or else I wouldn’t have overplayed it in the first place.
