The Beatles: Let It Be (Apple Special Edition)
Verdict: Long and Winding... but frequently fab
Rating: 
Coldplay: Music of the Spheres (Parlophone)
Verdict: Stellar but nebulous
Rating: 
When the Beatles released Get Back in April 1969, the chart-topping single was billed as the Fab Four ‘as nature intended... as live as can be in this electronic age’.
The song had been part of a bid to return to their rock ’n’ roll roots after the experimentation of Sgt. Pepper and the sprawling extravagance of the White Album.
But the album they were working on alongside Get Back was proving troublesome — and the tapes for Let It Be were put aside as the band switched attention to the more polished Abbey Road. By the time Let It Be emerged in May 1970, the quartet were no more, with Paul McCartney having announced a split a month earlier.
Now the relatively unloved Let It Be is getting the bumper reissue treatment, with a new mix by Giles Martin, son of original Beatles producer George, plus the customary out-takes and studio jams.
The Beatles: Let It Be (Apple Special Edition) is Long and Winding... but frequently fab
With a new book, and Oscar-winning Lord Of The Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary set to air on Disney+ next month, an autumn of renewed Beatlemania looms.
Folklore has it that Let It Be was the band’s wild and windy night, its creation dogged by unending rows. The reality, on the evidence of the spontaneity and good-natured studio chat here, wasn’t quite like that.
The sounds of laughter that John Lennon sings of on Across The Universe were in short supply — but the band’s love of creating songs together clearly remained.
As with previous revamps, Let It Be arrives in a range of formats, from a single CD (£8.50) to 57-track ‘super deluxe’ boxes on CD (£110) and vinyl (£130). For the merely curious, the whole shebang can also be streamed.
Highlights of the original LP included two of McCartney’s greatest ballads in the title track and The Long And Winding Road, the latter featuring Hammond organ by ‘Fifth Beatle’ Billy Preston and overbearing strings by the subsequently disgraced producer Phil Spector.
One After 909, a 1950s-style skiffle tune, recaptured the spirit of the quartet’s formative years in Liverpool’s Cavern Club and Hamburg’s Kaiserkeller.
But, given that it was recorded in two locations (Twickenham and Mayfair) with three producers (George Martin, Spector
