The original “Let It Be” concept was McCartney’s. The idea was to get the Beatles back to the band they were in the beginning, a foursome bashing out songs together, instead the latter-day practice of each member recording their own tracks and including guest musicians and maybe the other Beatles. McCartney originally called the project “Get Back”, as in the band getting back to their roots. 

The big concept was to have the band filmed rehearsing and working on the songs and then for them to return to the concert stage to perform the new songs. The live performance was to become the new album and the film footage would make up a feature film.  

The tensions quickly mounted in the studio and the camera basically caught a band breaking up, not a band creating musical magic together. The band tired of the idea and opted for a quick out. Instead of the big concert that McCartney envisioned for the end of the film, the band took to the roof of Apple to performed the new material. The crowds surrounding the London building grew and police pulled the plug on the rooftop show. The songs were shelved and the band decided to go the traditional route and returned to a recording studio and produced their swansong “Abbey Road”.  

“Let It Be” was resurrected when John Lennon gave master recording tapes from the “Let It Be” sessions to Phil Spector to see if he could make an album out of the hundreds of hours of tapes. The result was the original “Let It Be” album, which McCartney never seemed to embrace because Spector tweaked the songs to incorporate his patented “Wall of Sound”.  

Now fans will be able to hear the songs in the way that McCartney envisioned. They used different takes of the songs that we all know and love, ditched the spoken word segments on the album and most importantly produced the album without all the Spector “baggage” added.  A couple of the tracks that appeared on the original album are also missing; the traditional “Maggie Mae” and the clownish “Dig It”. 

Capital records is banking on the album being a blockbuster, as such they have pressed over 5 million copies of the disc in anticipation of the big demand. The first pressing of the CD is said to include a bonus disc, dubbed "fly on the wall" that features Beatle rehearsals and snatches of conversation. 

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