"Let It Down" is a song by English musician George Harrison, released on his 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass. The recording was co-produced by Phil Spector and employs the latter's Wall of Sound production technique to lavish effect. Its brash opening and choruses contrast with the ethereal quality of the verses – a loud/soft approach that has been credited with influencing indie bands during the 1980s and 1990s.
Harrison wrote the song in 1968 and offered it to the Beatles in January 1969 for inclusion on what became their Let It Be album (1970), also produced by Spector. It is one of several Harrison compositions that were turned down by the band and subsequently found acclaim on his first solo release following their break-up. Harrison biographers recognise "Let It Down" as an erotic love song, perhaps written to a woman other than Pattie Boyd, his wife at the time. Separated by 18 months, the song's conception and recording marked two periods of romantic intrigue involving Harrison, Boyd and their friend Eric Clapton. Author Ian Inglis describes "Let It Down" as "a dynamic and passionate depiction of lust and desire".
Harrison recorded the song in London, backed by a large cast of musicians, including the whole of Clapton's newly formed band Derek and the Dominos, Gary Brooker, Gary Wright, Bobby Keys and the group Badfinger. With its dense mix of horns, orchestral strings and heavy rock instrumentation, commentators identify "Let It Down" as an extreme example of Spector's influence on All Things Must Pass, an influence that also provided a disruptive element during the album's creation. An acoustic version of "Let It Down", also taped in 1970 but with overdubs recorded in 2000, appeared as a bonus track on the 30th anniversary edition of All Things Must Pass.
Background and composition
Harrison and Pattie Boyd were married in January 1966, having met two years before on the set of the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night,Clayson, pp. 167, 189. but by 1968, his dedication to meditation and Eastern mysticism had begun to divide the couple.Tillery, p. 67.Boyd, pp. 119–20.
Harrison wrote "Let It Down" in late 1968.Sulpy & Schweighardt, p. 8. The song features the same major-seventh chord voicings that intrigued Bob Dylan during that year's Thanksgiving holidays, when the two musicians collaborated on "I'd Have You Anytime" in upstate New York.Leng, pp. 82, 90.George Harrison, p. 164. In the absence of any discussion of the track by Harrison in his 1980 autobiography,"List of Songs", in George Harrison, pp. 383–86. commentators have identified "Let It Down" as a sensual love song.Inglis, p. 27.Leng, p. 90.Spizer, p. 223.
Harrison's musical biographer, Simon Leng, describes the lyrics as being among its composer's "most tactile", full of "sexual passion" and "images of sight and touch". The verses, he suggests, "[revel] in the kind of sensory luxury any Krishna devotee is required to reject". Leng also notes the "clear climactic overtones" evident in the choruses, where Harrison urges his lover to "Let your hair hang all around me ... / Let your love flow and astound me." Musically, the composition features contrasting moods between the ethereal, ballad-like verses and the more strident choruses.Huntley, p. 57.
Author Ian Inglis terms "Let It Down" an "unashamedly erotic" song that most likely describes "an act, or acts, of infidelity". "Two lovers hide behind a veil of nonchalance, but both are equally aware of the other's intentions," Inglis suggests, with specific reference to the third verse:
The message behind the verses' recurring lines "I do, I do" and "Should someone be looking at me" has invited conflicting interpretations. Leng suggests that in the first of these lines, Harrison might be restating his marriage vow, and that the second line is an early example of the singer viewing his life "as a battle with an unseen enemy waiting to pounce". To Inglis, the characters in "Let It Down" are engaged in an adulterous affair, with the "constant threat" of being discovered – hence the conclusion to verse one: "Hiding it all behind anything I see / Should someone be looking at me."
Harrison biographer Gary Tillery observes of this period when the song was written: "Despite his spiritual hunger, [for Harrison] the temptations of a rock star were still too much to resist. He had affairs with other women, and he became less guarded about them with Pattie."Tillery, p. 68. One such affair took place shortly after the couple's return from New York, in December 1968, and involved Charlotte Martin, a French model who had just ended a relationship with Harrison's friend and occasional collaborator Eric Clapton.Tillery, pp. 68, 92.Boyd, p. 120. Harrison invited Martin to stay at Kinfauns, the home he shared with Boyd in Esher, south of London, whereupon, according to Boyd: "She didn't seem remotely upset about Eric ..."
The Beatles' Get Back sessions Harrison and Boyd returned to England just before Christmas 1968,Huntley, p. 18. ready for the start of the Beatles' ill-fated Get Back film project, released as Let It Be in May 1970, a month after their break-up.Badman, pp. 4, 8. On 1 January 1969, author Peter Doggett writes, Harrison arrived at Apple's central London headquarters in an "exuberant" mood, inspired by his recent music-making with Dylan and fellow Woodstock residents the Band, and "enjoying the frisson of sharing his home with two beautiful women".Doggett, p. 58.
Harrison put forward "Let It Down", along with as many as nine other compositions, during the Get Back sessions.Leng, p. 39. On 2 January, before the arrival of bandmates Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr for the first day of filming,Sulpy & Schweighardt, p. 5. he debuted the song to John Lennon at Twickenham Film Studios, in south-west London.Miles, p. 327. Tapes from this session reveal Lennon struggling with the song's chord changes, during a run-through that authors Doug Sulpy and Ray Schweighardt describe as an "excellent performance by George ... seriously marred by John's distracting accompaniment on guitar".Sulpy & Schweighardt, p. 7. Once the film project was under way, a combination of Lennon's barbed criticism of Harrison's songwritingHarris, p. 68.Huntley, pp. 23, 25. and McCartney's attempts to "dominate" him musically, as Starr later put it,Miles, p. 328. resulted in Harrison walking out on 10 January, apparently having quit the band for good.Rodriguez, pp. 379, 381.Tillery, pp. 86, 161. Doggett observes that, for Harrison, there had been "no relief from the tension" that week, since an upset Boyd had recently left Kinfauns to stay with friends in London.
Following Harrison's return to the Beatles, and the film project's relocation to their familiar Apple Studio,Martin O'Gorman, "Film on Four", Mojo: The Beatles' Final Years Special Edition, Emap (London, 2003), p. 73. the band rehearsed "Let It Down" briefly on 25 and 29 January.Sulpy & Schweighardt, pp. 270, 296. Author Bruce Spizer writes of the song being embellished with "gospel-style organ runs", played by future Apple Records artist Billy Preston, during these late January sessions.Spizer, pp. 223, 340. Although the Beatles dedicated more time to it than to Harrison songs such as "Isn't It a Pity" and "Hear Me Lord", the track was dropped without being recorded,Sulpy & Schweighardt, pp. 7–8. due to a lack of interest from Lennon and McCartney.The Editors of Rolling Stone, p. 187.
Phil Spector's involvement After engineer Glyn Johns had failed to compile a satisfactory album from the Get Back tapes throughout 1969, the project passed to American producer Phil Spector,MacDonald, p. 322.Sulpy & Schweighardt, pp. 313–15. via the latter's connection with Beatles manager Allen Klein.Doggett, pp. 64, 109. Like Lennon, Harrison welcomed Spector's involvement, and he offered a glowing endorsement of the producer's talents on the sleeve of Ike & Tina Turner's album River Deep – Mountain High.Williams, pp. 137–38, 153.Ribowsky, p. 250. In January 1970, Spector was in London discussing the possibility of producing a solo album by HarrisonDoggett, p. 115. when the latter invited him to a recording session for Lennon's Plastic Ono Band single "Instant Karma!"Rodriguez, p. 21. After this session, Spector urged Harrison to record his album,Phil Spector interview, in George Harrison: Living in the Material World DVD (Village Roadshow, 2011; directed by Martin Scorsese; produced by Olivia Harrison, Nigel Sinclair & Martin Scorsese). which would become the triple set All Things Must Pass.Huntley, p. 52. In 2011, Spector recalled of the material that Harrison had amassed, such as "Let It Down": "He had literally hundreds of songs, and each one was better than the rest. He had all this emotion built up ... I don't think he had played them to anybody, maybe Pattie."Olivia Harrison, p. 282.
Production
Initial recording
With Spector as his co-producer, Harrison taped the basic track for "Let It Down" in London early in the summer of 1970.Madinger & Easter, p. 427. Similar to the "libidinous detour" provided by "I Dig Love", Leng views the inclusion of "Let It Down" on All Things Must Pass as "a brief sensory interlude" from the predominant spiritual concerns found on the album.Leng, pp. 90, 97. In his discussion of the song, Inglis notes that this period coincided with heightened suspicion on Boyd's part regarding her husband's womanising,Inglis, pp. 27, 162. while music journalist John Harris has written of there being an element of intrigue during the All Things Must Pass sessions, through Clapton's growing infatuation with Boyd.Harris, p. 72. This development was an open secret to the musicians with whom Clapton formed Derek and the Dominos at this timeO'Dell, pp. 167, 172. – his fellow Delaney & Bonnie bandmates Bobby Whitlock, Jim Gordon and Carl RadleReid, pp. xii–xiii. – and to an apparently indifferent Harrison.Clayson, p. 297. Clapton sought refuge in heroin from his "torment", Harris writes,Harris, pp. 69, 72. while pouring his feelings for Boyd into the songs that Derek and the Dominos would soon record for their album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970).Reid, pp. xv–xvi.Phil Sutcliffe, "Derek and the Dominos: The Story of Layla", Mojo, May 2011; available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required; retrieved 27 September 2013).
Having also toured with Delaney & Bonnie in December 1969,Harris, pp. 69–70. Harrison used Gordon (on drums), Radle (bass) and the band's horn section, Bobby Keys and Jim Price, on the session for "Let It Down".Leng, pp. 63, 90. While Leng and Spizer both credit the Hammond organ and piano parts to Gary Wright and Gary Brooker, respectively, and list Whitlock as a backing vocalist only,Leng, pp. 90, 91. Whitlock maintains that he played the organ on the recording, "with the Leslie cranked [up]", and that Billy Preston was the pianist.Whitlock, p. 80. In addition to Harrison and Clapton on electric guitars, Leng and Spizer list Pete Ham, Tom Evans and Joey Molland of Apple band Badfinger as acoustic rhythm guitarists on the track.