Paul McCartney should have just let it be

The debate won't end with the new "Let It Be . . . Naked," which comes out Tuesday and strips away Spector's production entirely. The problem is, it also strips away much of the record's vital juices, leaving a sonic shell that is supposed to sound the way the band first intended it to (or so we're told in waves of press hype). The new CD ends up sounding like someone tampering with a classic.

Sure, the music sounds clearer and more punched-up because of modern technology. But here are the negatives: The song order is drastically changed; two songs are dropped (replaced by "Don't Let Me Down," originally the B-side to the "Get Back" single); and the intervening studio chatter, which added so much personality to the original record, has been thrown out. The new album is naked, all right, but naked is not always better.

Paul McCartney, the instigator of this project, has continually said that the Beatles wanted to make a live-sounding record with "Let It Be" and that he did not approve of Spector completing it. The Beatles were breaking up at the time, in 1969, and after rejecting a couple of versions of the album produced by Glyn Johns, band members started to go their separate ways. At that point, John Lennon gave the tapes to Spector.

All these years later, as the "Let It Be" film (a documentary of the making of the album) was being readied for DVD release, McCartney asked Abbey Road engineers to remix the CD. They were reportedly given free rein and, unfortunately, they took too much advantage of it. (McCartney says he loves the result, and Ringo Starr has said the same; one wonders what Lennon and George Harrison would have thought were they still alive.)

"Let It Be" will hardly go down in history as the Beatles' best album, but individual songs such as "Across the Universe," "The Long and Winding Road," "Get Back," and, of course, "Let It Be," are clear standouts. But without the strings, "Across the Universe" loses its epic grandeur. And with the orchestral flourishes missing from the spiritual "The Long and Winding Road," it now sounds more like "The Short, Straight Road." Frankly, it resembles a hollow demo.

The two songs that have been dropped, "Dig It" and the traditional "Maggie Mae," were recently called "throwaways" by Abbey Road engineer Allen Rouse. Admittedly, they are only 49 seconds and 38 seconds each, but they're not throwaways. "Dig It" has some of Lennon's coolest stream-of-consciousness lyrics: "like a rolling stone, like the FBI and the CIA and the BBC, B.B. King, and Doris Day . . . dig it, dig it." Hey, who knows what he was talking about -- but that was part of the spacey, psychedelic charm of the album. Also gone is John's "Doris gets her oats" rap that opened the record, along with his quip at the end that "I hope we passed the audition." These elements added important texture and resonance, as well as a flow.

At least there's some solace in knowing that the new remix won't replace the old version, which will remain in print.