By Larry Nager
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The Beatles

The latest Elvis ad campaign claims he did it all first - private jets, fancy cribs and so forth. Not true. Elvis did it first for solo rock stars, but for rock bands, it's the Beatles.

Here they are in Let It Be... Naked (Capitol; $18.98) the first Behind the Music, rock 'n' roll's reality TV prototype.

The idea was to create a new album while cameras documented everything. But it was a depressing project when it arrived as a film and record in 1970. The Fab Four was on the verge of a breakup, sniping at one another like the last dregs of a long, angry marriage.

With hippie idealism dissolving in a sea of hard drugs and bad commercialism, and the Vietnam war dragging on, Let It Be fit the times, a very sad end for the rock band.

A third of a century later, sadness has mellowed to nostalgia, while the music's melodies sound fresher than ever.

Cleansed of the overblown post-production artifice ladled on by overrated producer Phil Spector, Let It Be shines as the most human, the most real, of all Beatle albums.

This reissue, in stores this week, combines the original album with a second CD of studio snippets and chatter.

What first hits you is the clarity of the music, the presence of the voices and instruments in the album's remastered "naked" form. The choogling rock of "Get Back," the country blues of "For You Blue"; the folksy shuffle of "Two of Us"; John Lennon's mystical "Across the Universe" all sound far better than the Spector versions.

The standout is Paul McCartney's "The Long and Winding Road." The sappiness Spector's orchestration added is gone and McCartney's voice and piano are again the heart of the piece.

McCartney dominates Let It Be, owning the ballads as he usually did. But though Lennon was known as the rocker in the Beatles, it's McCartney who's responsible for the best rock here as well.

For proof, go to Track 7, "One After 909." In its day it seemed like filler, the Beatles taking up space with some rockabilly. Today, it comes off as a country-rock gem, and the Beatles, too often seen as distant icons, come into focus as the great rock 'n' roll band they were.

That's the best thing about Let It Be, the record. The bickering that filled the movie is gone. But the humanness, the look at the men behind the Beatles curtain, remains. Let It Be is four very talented people making great music at the end of their time together. The new version brings that music back to life, more fun, more moving, more immediate than ever before.