Beatles To Unveil Unheard Treasure Trove, 50 Years After ‘Let It Be’

The Beatles are poised to release a treasure trove of unheard recordings. The vintage money-making machine of the most successful band in history continues to rake in millions, even 50 years after Paul McCartney left for a solo career in April 1970. The British foursome, which has now sold 250 million records, said “Let It Be” on a single in March 1970 — and it now is pressing ahead with material based on the parent album that first came in May of that year.

The last three years have been lucrative for the group, with the 50^th-year reissues of its most popular LPs, all coming near the exact anniversary of the originals. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band came in May 2017; The Beatles (best known as The White Album) in November 2018; and Abbey Road in September 2019. All were remastered by Giles Martin, son of the original producer George Martin, with many unreleased tracks. Fans have long expected that the revised Let It Be would be due around May, 2020 — along with a generous helping of extras. There were 55 hours of original footage shot for the movie of the same name and 140 hours of audio recordings.

Most Fab Four aficionados will know that the project was originally entitled Get Back. It stalled amid in-fighting and the tapes were given to the producer Phil Spector who smothered some songs with strings. John Lennon made various attempts to resurrect the planned album – he was fond of the cover photo, later used for the compilation 1967-1970 – while McCartney had a stab at salvaging the original with Let It Be…. Naked in 2003.

In January this year, expectation grew on the half-century anniversary of the Beatles’ final public performance. On that day, The Lord Of The Rings film director Peter Jackson said that he was working on a documentary about the album. We now know the film is titled The Beatles: Get Back and is coming from Disney in September. With coronavirus, a release date earlier may not make commercial sense and it would follow the pattern seen in September 2016 with Live at the Hollywood Bowl, the album timed to coincide with the Ron Howard documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week. A fully restored cut of the original Let It Be movie directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg is also due “at a later date.” While there is no official comment, it would be unlikely that the releases would not come with a bumper box set, quite possibly in time for the holiday-season sales. As for timing, Callaway Arts & Entertainment has a book being published called The Beatles: Get Back which is scheduled for October 6.

The lucrative nature of the CD releases is all too clear because of their prices, from about $25 up to $145. The albums peaked at No. 1 in many charts, suggesting platinum figures of 500,000 or more. At a normal royalty rate for this figure, the return could well come to about $8 million.

A dozen tracks from the Savile Row sessions for Get Back were released on Anthology Three in 1996, though much has been left on the shelf, variously bootlegged but never formally released. We do know that the movie will include the entire 42-minute surprise gig recorded on the roof of the band’s office in Savile Row, London, on January 30, 1970.

Fans may hope for more hearings of the full rock and roll medley such as “Shake Rattle And Roll” and dozens of originals recorded at the time. Lennon worked on “Black Dog Blues,” while his “Give Me Some Truth (Gimme Some Truth)” and “Oh My Love” were later released more polished forms on Imagine in 1971.

McCartney home-demoed “Goodbye,” written for Welsh pop singer Mary Hopkin; “Teddy Boy,” which nearly made the final album and was put in a different form on Anthology 3 and McCartney in April 1970. He also masterminded a long instrumental called “The Palace Of The King Of The Birds.” George Harrison’s contributions, apart from the already-released “All Things Must Pass,” included “Isn’t It A Pity” and “Hear Me Lord,” which also later made it on his 1970 solo album. The bootlegs show that some of the sessions were very raw and unrehearsed, some just informal jam sessions, and so it is likely not all will be deemed worthy of release in audio form. Even so, there is a treasure trove of material on offer and, like the previous reissues, is likely to result in a rewriting of Beatles history, which has it that the band dissolved amid nothing but rancor.

McCartney, who once referred to the time as “the most miserable sessions on earth,” now says that the new documentary will show “friendship and love.” The drummer Ringo Starr says the new version will show the foursome laughing with joy. This is a stark contrast to the original 80-minute movie, where a resigned Harrison sarcastically tells McCartney: “I’ll play, you know, whatever you want me to play, or I won’t play at all if you don’t want to me to play. Whatever it is that will please you.”