Spector of the Beatles

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary come to me, Speaking words of wisdom, let it be . . . And when the brokenhearted people, Living in the world of grief. There will be an answer, let it be.

So begins the recent Beatles' song Let It Be. For two months, as a single, it has floated high on the Top 40 charts, even though its message is mystic and ambiguous. "Let it be," for example, can be taken as an invocation to God to "let there be" an answer. Or simply as the answer itself: "Stay cool." No matter. As sturdy, unadorned and honest as a country church, Let It Be is one of the most moving pop songs of this or any other year.

Last week Let It Be came out again on an Apple LP, along with eleven other Beatles renditions. Where did those brass choirs come from? And those secular maracas? They came courtesy of Phil Spector, yesteryear's teen tycoon of rock, whose paeans to post-pubescent passion (Be My Baby, You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin') earned him an estimated $5,000,000 before he retired in 1966 at age 25. Last February Spector was brought in by Beatles Manager Allen Klein to give the album a little commercial passion. And did he ever.

No Plot. Ostensibly the last of the 19 LPs turned out by the Beatles in the extraordinary six years of their fame, Let It Be is also one of their worst. The Long Winding Road, for example, with Spector's broad-brushed addition of strings, harp and choir, is outright embarrassing. Most of the takes were recorded in early 1969 during the shooting of a Beatles film happening, also called Let It Be. While the film (to be released this week in the U.S.) has no plot, its basic theme appears to be "a day in the recording life" of the Beatles. The LP was planned as a "soundtrack album" complete with false starts and in-between chatter.

No Beatles' LP could be all dull, however. Get Back is topnotch. For You Blue is a small gem featuring a moonlit slide guitar that twangs all the way from Nashville to Waikiki. Underlying the basically nostalgic thrust of the album is an authentic piece of oldtime rock 'n' roll, One After 909, which Lennon and McCartney wrote together back in the mid-'50s.

The odds are good that Let It Be will be roundly panned. The odds are equally good that the album will sell in round millions. After all, since the recent Paul McCartney outbreak (TIME, April 20), no one can be really sure that Let It Be is not the group's last trip to the platter.

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