Having completed ‘I Me Mine’ the previous day, The Beatles turned their attentions to Paul McCartney’s song ‘Let It Be’. (Beatlesbible.com)
They taped a series of overdubs onto take 27, the basic track which had been laid down on 31 January 1969. First to be recorded on this day was a bass guitar part, with McCartney replacing Lennon’s original effort on track four.
Two trumpets, two trombones and a tenor saxophone were recorded onto track five by session musicians, as was McCartney’s descending piano motifs in between chorus and verses.
Three reduction mixes were then made to free up space on the multitrack tape. These mixes were labelled takes 28-30; as they were being made, a simultaneous overdub on track five of brass and woodwind double-tracked the previous recording. Cellos, again played by session musicians, were also added during the reduction mixes to track two.
McCartney, his wife Linda and George Harrison triple-tracked some high harmony vocals. These were initially recorded onto track seven; an unnumbered mix bounced this onto track four, and while it was made they recorded the second set of harmonies. A final mix saw the third lot of vocals added once again to track seven, along with the previous sets. This track also contained the guitar solo recorded on 30 April 1969, which was used on the Let It Be single.
The final recording saw Harrison add lead guitar, including a new solo, onto track four, along with maracas by McCartney and extra drums by Starr. This solo can be heard on the Let It Be album.
Two stereo mixes of the song were then made. Glyn Johns, who produced many of the Let It Be recordings, was present at the session. To compile his latest version of the Get Back album, he took away the new Let It Be mixes, along with the multitrack tape of I Me Mine from the previous day.
In a new interview with BBC 6 Music, Starr has now also confirmed this was the case and that the band wanted to go on recording into the 1970’s.
Starr said: “We did do Abbey Road and we was like, ‘Okay that’s pretty good…but none of us said, ‘OK, that’s the last time we’ll ever play together’. Nobody said that. I never felt that.
“We’d made this record, and then we would go off and do whatever we wanted to do. And then Paul would call us and say, ‘Hey, you want to go in the studio lads?’ and we’d do another one.
“So it was not the end – because in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make. So I never felt it was in stone.”
