The Beatles’ iconic rooftop gig in 1970 ‘Let It Be’ documentary “almost didn’t happen”
The Beatles‘ classic 1970 documentary film Let It Be was premiered in London earlier this week (May 7), before arriving on Disney+. Speaking at the press launch, creators explained how one of the most vital scenes – and significant moments in music history – never happened.The film was screened in front of an audience at the Curzon Mayfair which included original recording engineer Glyn Johns and Giles Martin (son of legendary Beatles producer George Martin, who remixed the music in Let It Be), Louis Theroux, James Bay, The Lightning Seeds frontman Ian Broudie and Captain America and Indiana Jones actor Toby Jones.The documentary, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, was first released in cinemas 54 years ago and has been difficult to obtain since primarily because the original master tapes were stolen from Apple Corps shortly after the film was made.Speaking in a Q&A hosted by former Radio 1 DJ Edith Bowman, Jonathan Clyde producer of the film and director of production at Apple Corps, said: “When we first started talking about [restoring] it with [head of Apple Corps] Neil Aspinall in 2000, he said rather unenthusiastically, ‘I suppose we’d better do something about Let It Be’.“But the problem was that the master sound, that’s 450 to 500, 15 minute reels of master sound from the 20-odd days of shooting, had been stolen from Apple [Corps] in the early ’70s.”He continued: “So in truth, there was not a lot we could do except whoever it was who pilched them was licensing them to bootleggers who were then bootlegging vinyl and CD box sets.