The album had previously been abandoned and Paul wasn’t happy with its sound
The Beatles perform on the rooftop of the Apple offices at Savile Row, London in 1969(Image: Handout)
The Beatles’ split in 1970 shocked the world. After dominating popular music throughout the 1960s, the band went their separate ways, with artistic differences and John Lennon’s relationship with Yoko Ono (and her presence in the recording studio) cited as the primary reasons for the break-up.
According to most, John began the process of the split in September 1969, when he told Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison that he wanted a “divorce” from the band. This led Paul to retreat to his home and write his first solo album ‘McCartney’ – the release of which in April 1970 was accompanied by a press release that announced his departure from The Beatles.
However, the cracks emerged a couple of years before. The sessions for 1968 album ‘The Beatles’ – known as ‘The White Album’ – were notoriously tempestuous as each band member wanted to express themselves more and put their own stamp on the record.
About that period of recording, Paul said: “There was a lot of friction during that album. We were just about to break up, and that was tense in itself” and John later added: “The break-up of The Beatles can be heard on that album.”
Despite the troubles, The Beatles returned to the studio in January 1969 for their next project. Paul wanted the band to return to performing live – having retired from touring in 1966 – and they convened at Twickenham Film Studios in London, where they would prepare and record a new album.
The idea was that their rehearsals would be filmed for a TV special to accompany their return to playing live. However, it did not go to plan.
In ‘The Beatles Diary’, Barry Miles wrote: “It was a disaster. They were still exhausted from the marathon The Beatles sessions. Paul bossed George around; George was moody and resentful. John would not even go to the bathroom without Yoko at his side…The tension was palpable, and it was all being caught on film.”
George Harrison left the group for a period during those sessions, returning to Liverpool fed up. The plans for live performance were quickly ripped up and they went back to the familiar surroundings of their Apple Studios to continue working on the new album.
The mood improved after a while and they recorded what would become ‘Let it Be’ – their final album, which was released in May 1970. However, the initial plan was to release an album called ‘Get Back’ in September 1969.
As they worked on the album, the band agreed to one final live performance – their iconic rooftop concert on January 30, 1969. The four Beatles and keyboardist Billy Preston – who was working on ‘Get Back’ played a 42-minute set on the roof of their Apple Corps headquarters on Saville Row in central London before the police arrived and asked them to turn the volume down.
Two months later, with the ‘Get Back’ recordings in the bag, John and Paul asked audio engineer Glyn Johns to put an album together based on them. A cover was taken for the album in May at record label EMI’s offices in Manchester Square. It was designed to mirror the cover of their first album ‘Please Please Me’, showing the older Beatles looking down from the stairwell.
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However The Beatles rejected the album, not happy with how it sounded. The tracks ‘Get Back’ and ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ were released as a single in April 1969 but the album’s release was pushed back as the band had spent the spring and summer recording ‘Abbey Road’ and wanted to release that next.
‘Get Back’ was moved to a December release. However, it was shelved when a bombshell arrived on September 20 – John told his fellow bandmates that he wanted a “divorce” from The Beatles.
As mentioned earlier, Paul went away to work on his solo album, believing it was over for The Beatles. But John was approached again by the band, asked to put an album together to mirror the tracks from the planned ‘Get Back’ film.
New mixes were also offered by the band and Paul returned to record ‘I Me Mine’ with Ringo and George (as John had left) but they again rejected Johns’ proposed album. Looking to salvage ‘Get Back’, producer Phil Spector (later convicted for murder) was appointed to turn the recordings into a full working album.
It was at this point that Paul was looking to release ‘McCartney’. Paul has said he told his bandmates in advance that he would release ‘McCartney’ alongside a press release announcing his departure from The Beatles in April 1970. The Beatles released ‘Let it Be’ as a single in March 1970 so the new album was renamed after it and they set a May 1970 release date – following the film’s premiere.
But with record label Apple wanting to avoid a clash and Paul not wanting to speak to Apple due to his disapproval of manager Allan Klein, Ringo went to his home with a letter from himself, John and George asking him to move his release date. Paul and Ringo had a huge row and he threw the drummer out of his house.
About that row, Chris Ingham wrote in ‘The Rough Guide to The Beatles’: “McCartney managed to retrieve his original release date but, when he heard what Spector had done to The Beatles’ music, he hit the roof”.
None of the band attended the film’s premieres and the album’s release brought the band to an end. John had left the year before and Paul’s release of his first solo album in April showed that he also had moved on.
‘Let it Be’ topped the charts in the UK and the USA but it wasn’t only Paul who was unhappy with the album’s finished product. The Beatles’ long-time producer George Martin was not credited for his work on it, with Spector named instead.
About that, George said: “I produced the original, and what you should do is have a credit saying ‘Produced by George Martin, over-produced by Phil Spector’.” Contemporary reviews were not that kind either.
NME critic Alan Smith said: “If the new Beatles’ soundtrack is to be their last then it will stand as a cheapskate epitaph, a cardboard tombstone, a sad and tatty end to a musical fusion which wiped clean and drew again the face of pop.”
Opinion has shifted in the years since, with critics praising a number of the songs – particularly the titular single. ‘Let It Be’ was ranked at 86 in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003.
In his review of the song ‘Let it Be’, NME’s Derek Johnson said: “As ever with The Beatles, this is a record to stop you dead in your tracks and compel you to listen attentively.” Meanwhile, it was described as the “best thing musically that McCartney has done” by High Fidelity magazine’s John Gabree.
The recording of ‘Let it Be’ was the subject of Peter Jackson’s 2021 Disney+ documentary ‘The Beatles: Get Back’, which was put together with unused footage from the original film. In 2003, still unhappy with Spector’s work, Paul released ‘Let it Be… Naked’, which was a stripped back version, intended to capture the original feeling of the recording.