MM: What did you have to do with the recording of "Let It Be?"

MARTIN: Yes, I produced the whole album originally, and got a great shock when I found it "re-produced" ... or over-produced, as I put it.

MM: What's your opinion of what Spector did to it?

MARTIN: It was an unhappy album from the beginning, because this really was the time of dissent. It was before "Abbey Road," and I really thought that "Let It Be" was going to be that last album any of us did. They were all fighting like mad. John insisted that it was going to be a natural album, and he didn't want any faking, any of the "Pepper" stuff, any production. He said to me "Your job is to make sure that we get a good sound. I don't want editing or overdubs of voices or instruments. It's got to be like it is." So we made it like that, and it was very tedious because they kept repeating the same things over and over again, and it's very difficult when you get to the 27th take to work out whether number 13 was better than number 19. None of it was ever very good, none of it was perfect - it would have been if you could have edited things together. It had this rawness, and I could quite see the advantage of it, so we made up this album which was an honest album, and that was it. It was left lying, and we recorded "Abbey Road," which was back to square one because we were able to produce it. I was much happier then, and after that.

MM: Did you think when you were making "Abbey Road" that it was going to be the last album?

MARTIN: No, I really didn't. They'd got back, they were much happier with themselves. It was very much more of a produced album ... we used a Moog for the first time, on George's "Here Comes The Sun." Everybody seemed to be working hard, and we'd got things nicely organised. It wasn't until after that that things started happening badly. I knew that John was going in the studios, doing some work on "Let It Be," but I understood that as they were making a film of it, they were doing some film tracks. When the record finally came out, I got a hell of a shock.

MM: You didn't know anything about it?

MARTIN: Nothing. Neither did Paul, and Paul wrote to me to say that he was pretty appalled, if you'll forgive the pun. All the lush un-Beatle-like orchestrations with harps and choirs in the background. And it was so contrary to what John asked for in the first place.