Mixing the "Get Back" album (3rd compilation)

On this day, Glyn Johns created a new stereo mix for “Let It Be” and completed his third version of the “Get Back” LP.

[To George Martin’s ears, the mix was] warts and all, with the mistakes and count-ins and breakdowns and so on. That was the album. I thought it was a write-off. I didn’t hear any more, and I thought that was the end of our days. I thought, ‘Well, that’s the finish of the Beatles. What a shame.’

George Harrison – From “Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles” by Kenneth Womack, 2019

We all had an acetate. Listening to it one night in June, I thought, Jeez, this is brave, but it’s a great album. It really is just The Beatles stripped back, nothing but four guys in a room. Or five with Billy Preston. It’s almost scary, cos we’d always double-tracked, harmonised and so on, but this was a live album kind of thing.

I remember getting a thrill cos I was in this empty, very white room listening to this album – very minimalist – and thinking, great, very impressed. This is gonna be a great album. And then it was reorganised, re-produced for disc, reorganised for the shops, kind of thing.

Paul McCartney – From “Conversations with McCartney” by Paul du Noyer, 2016

Session activities

1. Let It Be

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Mixing • Stereo mixing of take 27

2. Master tape banding and compilation for GetBack LP

   Editing

Staff

Production staff

Going further

The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions • Mark Lewisohn

The definitive guide for every Beatles recording sessions from 1962 to 1970.

We owe a lot to Mark Lewisohn for the creation of those session pages, but you really have to buy this book to get all the details - the number of takes for each song, who contributed what, a description of the context and how each session went, various photographies... And an introductory interview with Paul McCartney!

Buy on Amazon

The Beatles Recording Reference Manual: Volume 5: Let It Be through Abbey Road (1969 - 1970)

The fifth and final book of this critically acclaimed series, "The Beatles Recording Reference Manual: Volume 5: Let It Be through Abbey Road (1969 - 1970)" follows The Beatles as they "get back to where they once belonged...". Not once, but twice. With "Let It Be", they attempted to recapture the spontaneity of their early years and recordings, while "Abbey Road" was a different kind of return - to the complexity, finish and polish that they had applied to their work beginning with "Revolver" and through to "The Beatles".

Buy on Amazon