Let It Be (US version)

BEATLES’ ALBUM HITS RECORD SALES PEAK IN UNITED STATES

The Beatles’ “Let It Be” album chalked up the largest initial sale in the history of America’s recording industry. Advance orders for the LP, which has just been issued in the States, totalled 3,700,000 albums — representing a gross retail price of 25,900,000 dollars! The controversial “Long And Winding Road” track from the album has been released in America as a single, and immediately earned the group another Gold Disc selling 1,200,000 copies within two days of issue.

Over one million copies of the “McCartney” album have now been sold in America during the four weeks it has been on sale there. And Ringo Starr’s “Sentimental Journey” LP has chalked up half-a-million sales in two weeks. A Ringo promotional film clip on the album was screened in U.S. TV’s top-rated “Ed Sullivan Show” last Sunday.

From New Musical Express – May 23, 1970

Beatles album hits American jackpot

BEATLES have hit the jackpot yet again! In America the “Let It Be” album looks like becoming the biggest seller of all time. And “The Long And Winding Road,” the track released as a single there, has already outsold “Yesterday.”

Figures released by Beatles boss Allen Klein this week show that despite recent publicity about personal and professional rifts, John, Paul, George and Ringo are still the darlings of America.

Said Apple’s Mavis Smith: “It’s quite incredible. They’re certainly selling more records now than they’ve ever done. Even at the height of the ‘scream’ era!”

“Let It Be” — which enters the UK album chart at no. 3 this week — has already sold 3,700,000… the equivalent of nearly 26 million dollars! And on this evidence, claims Klein, the LP should scoop the largest gross sale of any record in the American record business. He confidently expects it to top the eight million mark.

“The Long And Winding Road,” the Paul McCartney track which was changed against the Beatles’ wishes (Allen Klein allowed Phil Spector to add orchestra and choir), earned the group an immediate Gold Disc. It sold 1,200,000 within two days of release! And it has topped total US figures for “Yesterday,” also out there as a single.

Paul’s solo album “McCartney” is also selling extremely strongly. It passed the million mark after a month. And Ringo’s “Sentimental Journey” sold 500,000 in two weeks.

Beatles’ previous best-selling American albums were “Abbey Road” (3,718,000) and “Hey Jude” (2,730,000).

ON RADIO 1 this Saturday (5 p.m.) “Scene And Heard” compere Johnny Moran introduces “Let It Be,” a 45-minute show of Beatles interviews, plus tracks from the LP.

From Disc And Music Echo – May 23, 1970

Beatles Gold And Sold

HOLLYWOOD — To no one’s surprise, the Beatles’ “Let It Be” album has earned immediate certification from the RIAA for sales well over the $1 million mark. Shipping the albums, however, was not as easy as selling them, according to Liberty/UA Distributing president Mike Elliot.

Citing trucking strikes and other obstacles, Elliot called the feat of physically moving 1,600,000 pieces of the Apple album within 48 hours “the greatest triumph of logistics in the industry’s history,” and congratulated all Lib/UA branch personnel for their efforts.

From Cashbox Magazine, May 30, 1970

LET IT BE, The Beatles (Apple AR 3400)

To those who found their work since the White Album as emotionally vapid as it was technically breathtaking, the news that the Beatles were about to bestow on us an album full of gems they’d never gotten around to polishing beyond recognition was most encouraging. Who among us, after all, wouldn’t have preferred a good old slipshod “Save The Last Dance For Me” to the self-conscious and lifeless “Oh! Darlin’” they’d been dealing in?

Well, it was too good to be true — somebody apparently just couldn’t Let It Be, with the result that they put the load on their new friend P. Spector, who in turn whipped out his orchestra and choir and proceeded to turn several of the rough gems on the best Beatle album in ages into costume jewelry.

Granted that he would have preferred to have been in on the project from its inception rather than having it all handed to him eight months after its announced release date (in which case we would never have been led to expect spontaneity and his reputation would still be intact), one can’t help but wonder why he involved himself at all, and wonder also, how he came to the conclusion that lavish decoration of several of the tracks would enhance the straightforwardness of the album.

To Phil Spector, stinging slaps on both wrists.

He’s rendered “The Long and Winding Road,” for instance, virtually unlistenable with hideously cloying strings and a ridiculous choir that serve only to accentuate the listlessness of Paul’s vocal and the song’s potential for further mutilation at the hands of the countless schlock-mongers who will undoubtedly trip all over one another in their haste to cover it. A slightly lesser chapter in the ongoing story of McCartney as facile romanticist, it might have eventually begun to grow on one as unassumingly charming, had not Spector felt compelled to transform an apparently early take into an extravaganza of oppressive mush. Sure, he was just trying to help it along, but Spectorized it evokes nothing so much as dewey-eyed little Mark Lester warbling his waif’s heart out amidst the assembled Oliver orchestra and choir.

“I Me Mine,” the waltz sections of which reminds one very definitely of something from one of The Al Jolson Story’s more maudlin moments, almost benefits from such treatment—it would have been fully as hilarious as “Good Night,” after all, had Spector obscured its raunchy guitar with the gooey strings he’s so generously lavished on the rest of it. As he’s left it, though, it, like “Winding Road,” is funny enough to find cloying but not funny enough to enjoy laughing at.

Elsewhere, Spector compounds his mush fixation with an inability to choose the right take (it is said that nothing on the “official album” comes from the actual film sessions, mind you). Inexplicably dissatisfied with the single version of “Let It Be,” for instance, he hunted up a take in which some jagged guitar and absurdly inappropriate percussion almost capsize the whole affair, decided that it might be real Class to orchestrally embellish the vocal, and thus dubbed in — yes! — brass. Here the effect isn’t even humorous — Spector was apparently too intent on remembering how the horns went on “Hey Jude” to listen closely enough to this one to realize that they’re about as appropriate here as piccolos would have been on “Helter Skelter.”

Happily though, he didn’t impose himself too offensively on anything else, and much of what remains is splendid indeed. Like John’s “All Across The Universe,” which, like “Julia,” is dreamy, childlike, and dramatic all at once and contains both an unusually inventive melody and tender devotional vocal.

Like the two rough-honed rockers, the crudely revival-ish “I’ve Got A Feeling” and “One After 909,” both of which are as much fun to listen to as they apparently were to make. “C’mon, baby, don’t be cold as ice” may be at once the most ridiculous and magnificent line Lennon–McCartney ever wrote.

Like John’s crossword-puzzlish “Dig a Pony,” which features an urgent old rocker’s vocal and, being very much in the same vein as such earlier Lennonisms as “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” nearly makes up for the absence of “Don’t Let Me Down” and “The Last Dance.”

And especially like everyone’s two favorites, “Two of Us,” which is at once infectiously rhythmic and irresistibly lilting in the grand tradition of “I’ll Follow the Sun,” and the magnificent chunky, thumping, and subtly skiffly “Get Back,” which here lacks an ending but still contains delightful comping by John and Billy Preston.

All of these are, of course, available on the bootleg versions of the album, a further advantage of which is their pure unSpectoredness and the presence of various goodies that didn’t quite make it to the official release.

Musically, boys, you passed the audition. In terms of having the judgment to avoid either over-producing yourselves or casting the fate of your get-back statement to the most notorious of all over-producers, you didn’t. Which somehow doesn’t seem to matter much any more anyway. — JOHN MENDELSOHN

Well, by now you’ve probably heard the official album, admired the production, and scowled at its lack of balls. The bootlegs are of varying quality, have different takes, and cost about the same. The one here is the best we’ve heard, as well as one of the most complete, and it’ll do until George Martin gets around to putting out a bootleg of what it should have sounded like. — ED WARD

From Rolling Stone – June 11, 1970