Let It Be

Were you at the Orillia Beatles Celebration on the weekend?

Each year the City of Orillia brings in Beatles tribute bands to perform at venues all over town. If you like the Revolver era, there’s a band named Revolver. If you like McCartney, there was The McCartney Years Band at the Opera House.

Last year a cover band played the “Let It Be” album, on the roof of a local business. About 1,000 fans watched from the street, imagining it was 1968 at this was the Abbey Road studio. I was there in Orillia. The band was amazing!*! I felt like I had been time-machined back to that very moment.

Ok, back to this past weekend.

Saturday night the original “Let It Be” movie was shown at Orillia Christian Church. (OCC bought the downtown theatres.)

The theatrical release was May 1970 which was the first time I saw it.

After all these years, maybe I don't remember it well after all. The scenes of Yoko getting in the way, and John and Paul fighting, and George quitting – those scenes weren’t in the movie. I guess I read so much about the Let It Be sessions that I told myself they were in the movie, which they were not.

The best part is the classic live performance on the rooftop of Apple and that’s how the movie closed. If I was reviewing the movie, I'd say the Beatles looked pretty happy together. (Ofcourse the arguing, break-up scenes were edited out.)

Now let's talk quality. It was filmed in 16mm and upgraded to 35mm for the theatre which compromised the imaging. The film I saw in Orillia was pretty poor quality. Very, very grainy and absolutely rotten sound (no bass). My gues is it was copied and copied and copied again. I have home videos that are better quality.

Anyway, since I could not rent a VHS store version, I waited 40 years to see the movie again. Glad I didn’t miss it.