The Beatles Add ‘Let It Be . . . Naked’ to iTunes
More than two years after the Beatles made most of their albums available on iTunes, they’ve added a missing piece: Let It Be . . . Naked. The re-imagined version of the band’s final release is now for sale for the first time through Apple’s digital music store, a decade after it was originally released on CD. The Beatles added much of their catalog to iTunes in November 2010.
Phil Spector produced the original version of group’s 1970 album, which turned out to be the Beatles’ last studio release, though the band recorded Let It Be before making 1969’s Abbey Road. The Naked version that first came out in 2003 was strikingly different from the original, stripping away the orchestral overdubs Spector had added after John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr had thought the songs were finished.
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McCartney said at the time Let It Be . . . Naked was released that the revised version was a more accurate reflection of what the band had intended, though Anthony DeCurtis wrote in Rolling Stone that “Naked exists essentially as an excuse for Paul McCartney, after decades of complaining, to finally remove Phil Spector’s production effects from ‘The Long and Winding Road.'”
The iTunes LP version of Let It Be . . . Naked includes the original booklet and liner notes, along with 20 minutes of studio chatter recorded during sessions for the album. Apple is also offering videos for the Naked versions of “Get Back” and “Don’t Let Me Down.”