ALBUMS THAT GOT SCREWED: They Found Themselves in Times of Trouble

To close out Albums That Got Screwed Week, I've chosen a record that has never been released. We're all familiar with the Beatles' Let it Be. Many of us are even familiar with the album's troubled history. In brief: the Beatles were falling apart, and decided to record an album live in the studio in the hopes of rekindling the excitement of their early days. It didn't work, and Phil Spector was brought in by John and George to overdub the hell out of the results. McCartney threw a fit, critics hated it, and the group broke up before it could even hit the shelves.

(Personally, I don't find Spector's contributions to be as horrifying as some. His graceful work on "I Me Mine" and "Across the Universe" sound just fine. He did go too far with the strings and choir he piled onto "The Long and Winding Road," but when you listen to the original track, it does sound awfully flat.)

What a lot of people don't know is that engineer Glyn Johns, later a superstar producer, attempted to shape the basic tracks into an album before Spector was brought in. The album Johns wanted to compile was the anti-Sgt. Pepper's; it was raw and a little sloppy, much like some of the songs it contained, namely "Don't Let Me Down." It was a simple, unpretentious rock and roll album. Twice Johns presented the group with a potential track listing, painstakingly culled from hundreds of hours of tape. Both times they rejected his proposal.

So the Glyn Johns version of Let it Be will never be heard. Some of the unadorned original recordings popped up on the Anthology, others on Let it Be... Naked, which was closer to Johns' vision but with a very different track listing. Johns later became famous for his work with Led Zeppelin and the Eagles, and was even mentioned briefly in the film Almost Famous. But I'll bet it still burns him up that his version of Let it Be never saw the light of day. And the title probably doesn't bring him any comfort.

TODAY'S RECOMMENDATION: "Don't Let Me Down" by the Beatles
AVAILABLE ON: Past Masters Vol. 2