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More than fifty years after Let It Be, the twelfth and final studio album released by The Beatles, the project is getting a remix from producer Giles Martin. For those who may not know, Giles is the son of longtime Beatles collaborator George Martin. Giles has now remixed four albums by The Beatles over his career, telling NME he's "been working on Beatles projects for longer than my Dad produced them, which is kind of embarrassing.”
For many fans of The Beatles, Let It Be is not only notable for being the band's last release, but for being the group's most divisive album. Released a month after the group split, Let It Be was produced by Phil Spector rather than George Martin. Paul McCartney has famously described the album as being "overproduced" and even released a stripped-back version of the project in 2003.
“I have the legacy of my Dad talking about what an unpleasant experience Let It Be was, and how upset he was. It hurt him," Giles told NME of his Dad's ousting on that final album. "The Beatles said they wanted a live album and didn’t need him to produce it, and then Spector did everything they said they wouldn’t do. That hurt him, and I think it hurt Paul too.”
“Phil Spector was very different to my Dad – he was an artist-producer, so he wanted everything to sound like Phil Spector had done it," Giles continued. "My Dad was more of a sensitive, blueprint producer. He would take the ideas and interpret them, like a satellite dish that could beam them onto a vinyl record. Spector would force his character on it, but you can’t really take away from the iconic sound that he gives."
Giles describes Let It Be as "an album that’s kind of fragmented in its creation," which is something he aimed to fix in his version. "How can we make it more unified in its sound? So I suppose my approach was to make it sound more like an album," he told the outlet.
Despite being considered a controversial outing for The Beatles, Giles has a hard time considering Let It Be a "forgotten" album. “I find it quite amusing that this is considered a ‘forgotten’ Beatles album, or whatever, and yet it has one of the most successful Beatles songs of all time on it," he said. "And that’s the Beatles! And then you look at ‘Let It Be’ and you realize it has all these songs on it that are pretty bloody amazing. You think, ‘Jesus, they were kinda good, weren’t they?’”
The Let It Be remix boxset drops on Friday (October 15). In addition to Giles remix, fans of The Beatles can also look forward to The Beatles: Get Back, a new book about the band, coming out on the very same day. Peter Jackson’s highly anticipated three-part TV documentary Get Back is also set to premiere on Disney+ in November.