Let It Be at The Royal Court, Liverpool. October 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Liverpool’s rich, almost exuberant, heritage for popular music has a long and proud history but it one that is missing a vital component to the story, one that history, fate and circumstance has seen fit to take away from the city that arguably gave popular culture to the U.K. after the Post-War austerity. The Beatles, the foursome who kick started a revolution, never returned to the city in their absolute pomp and ceremony in which to give the fans who propelled them to the top of the charts a sense of completion, of revelling in the majesty that the progressive nature of the band would have gone down a storm in at any of the venues in the city at the time.

The concert that Liverpool was given, the gig that Liverpool deserved, the music event that can now never happen, has at least found a way to be played and let the songs of a band that has seeped through generation after generation, music that will never allow itself to die and in Let It Be, the celebration of The Beatles just gives that extra something back to the city, that special something that was thought never possible.

To capture the music of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and John Lennon is one thing, many a tribute act has played a plethora of distinct tunes down Mathew Street, Liverpool and the world has never ceased in the amount of performers wading through songs such as Eleanor Rigby, Hey Jude, When I’m 64 or In My Life; what has never been achieved with true sincerity, with the feeling of absolute, is an evening of the music of the four men from Liverpool played out in a gala setting, the true voices of Liverpool in the city that still to this day revels in its part of making the songs come to life.

It may have been a long time coming and the detractors will ultimately point to the very real fact that the music at the end of the day is being performed by four men who have no affinity to the city, even if the music is spot on and the show bursting at the seams with more classics, more songs to make you stand and dance like the time between 1966 and 2015 was but a blink of the eye.

This is no illusion though, this is no smoke screen or thinly veiled gauze dropped over the eyes of the audience, this is a spectacular in all but name, the music is outstanding, not so much a stage show but a full blown out gig in which Time parties, in which each member of the sold out crowd is re-introduced to the live magic of the band in their early Cavern days infancy and beyond where the music became greater than any sum of the parts that were ever imagined. Let It Be is a stunning celebration brought to life and one which with songs such as All My Loving, Back In The U.S.S.R., Come Together, Here Comes The Sun, I Wanna Be Your Man, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and While My Guitar Gently Weeps all play their part.

The gig that Liverpool never had is now the gig that Liverpool cannot do without.

Ian D. Hall