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NPR Music

Let It Be? No, Let's Remix The Beatles

NPR Music

NPR

Music

4.33.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 October 2021

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Producer Giles Martin talks about a new 5-disc deluxe version of Let It Be, one of The Beatles' most complicated albums. Hear his remixed version of the album plus never-before-heard banter and outtakes.

Transcript

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0:00.0

For MPR Music, you're connected to all songs considered on Bob Boylin.

0:03.3

Today, a conversation with Giles Martin about the Beatles' last release studio album,

0:09.6

Let It Be, and his work on the just released Super Deluxe Edition. Let It Be is a complicated album,

0:16.8

originally intended as a simple way for the band to get back to its more rock-and-roll roots.

0:22.4

Let It Be was engineered by Glenn Johns, culminating in a rooftop concert,

0:27.5

but the album was shelved. This five-disc set produced by Giles Martin, Giles' son of producer George

0:34.9

Martin, though his dad didn't have a large role in this project. Giles and I have had the pleasure

0:40.4

to talk about his recent remixing of the Beatles album, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts,

0:44.6

called Band, The White Album, and Abbey Road. Giles was in his home outside London,

0:50.0

as in my apartment outside Washington, D.C. One of the impressions I've had about the Beatles'

0:55.7

Let It Be sessions is that they were contentious. In fact, the film that came out in 1970

1:00.9

showed some pretty dark moments, but that isn't the impression that he had after going through nearly

1:06.7

four weeks of recordings. I want to set the scene. It's the top of January 1969.

1:11.7

Beatles' double album was just finished and released just a few months before 30 songs.

1:16.6

They're going to write and record new songs for a TV documentary of sorts,

1:20.8

ending in a live performance. They had a tight deadline, a bit more than a month to do it,

1:25.6

but that seems absolutely insane. I think here, if there was an issue with what was the

1:32.4

Get Back project, it wasn't called Let It Be Then, was the sheer ambition behind it,

1:37.8

was the fact that they planned on doing a live album of tracks they were going to perform

1:44.7

with no idea where they were going to perform it, and also having no tracks written.

1:49.9

And not only that, but they were going to write them in front of a film crew.

1:53.8

I just like, you're going to measure a band now, any band, think of the band that were like that,

...

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