(In the 1970s, fans argued over whether Hey Jude and Hollywood Bowl were official Beatles albums.
It’s a gray area what counts as a Beatles album and what’s merely a Beatles project. The studio banter on Let It Be is even more peripheral than “Pepperland Laid Waste.” “Two of Us” is as great as “It’s All Too Much,” “Dig A Pony” rates with “Hey Bulldog,” and so on. Both have a few genuine Beatles songs, plus a load of lesser epiphenomena that belongs in a movie. If they’d released Let It Be on schedule, before Abbey Road, it would be precisely as famous as the Yellow Submarine soundtrack. It only became an official Beatles studio album because it happened to come out when they broke up. But on some level, Let It Be isn’t so much an album as a movie soundtrack project. Ringo was still recording drum tracks as late as April 1970. As RS contributing editor David Browne notes in his excellent book Fire and Rain, Paul, George and Ringo went into the studio on Januto cut “I Me Mine” – at that point, Abbey Road had been out for months. But all four Beatles kept working on Let It Be after Abbey Road came out. Sure, they recorded most of Let It Be in January 1969.
Sentimentally, Abbey Road has the edge, but in cold chronological terms it’s debatable.
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