By Steve Marinucci
Published 3/4/2012
Roberta Flack's new album, "Let It Be Roberta" on 429 Records, her first in eight years, transforms the Beatles music. She takes the songs, all Beatles tunes except for one solo tune by George Harrison, and adds her very distinctive style. It's the same type of feeling she gave to "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" when she had a hit with it in 1972.
In a phone interview, Flack said she decided to do the Beatles album after
getting involved in another project.
"I had an interesting project that I started to work on before this
one, a recording project called "The Real Artist Symposium,"
symposium being a group of badass musicians, writers and instrumentalists. We
decided to do an album and I started the album. Completed a great deal of it.
It's an album where I'm featured, but the other artists who are members of the
symposium are also on the project, so you'll hear them as well.
"I'm really excited about it. The only reason that's not out was
because we started working on the Beatles project."
Flack says the Beatles album was a mutual effort between her and Sherrod
Barnes, who arranged and produced it.
"Sherrod Barnes, who is given credit as arranger and producer, had a
lot to do with it. But I had a lot to do with it, too. A lot of what you hear
on the songs in terms the way the songs are arranged and certainly performed
from the vocal standpoint I had something to do with," she said. "I'm
especially glad it worked out so well."
The opening track on the album, "In My Life," actually was
inspired by Flack's performance at a John Lennon tribute, which she had done at
the request of Yoko Ono. She sang the song as a tribute to both Lennon and
Nelson Mandela, who'd recently been released from prison. "She asked me to
sing one of the songs and I picked that song. I never thought of doing as a
ballad ever. And most of the times I've heard it, it has been as a ballad." But she did the
song using both Arabian and African influences.
"It's such a national anthem-type thing. It's a very personal
song."
She said the song is representative of the Beatles' music. "I started
thinking I should do a universal kind of 'In My Life' thing. My whole attitude
about a lot of the Beatles' music is that it's universal and there's a lot of
subtextural suggestion that they're not talking about man and woman, or woman
and woman and man and man and making love, but more like universal love,"
she said.
Flack says she tried to turn "Oh! Darling" into a blues song.
"I tried to channel B.B. (King). I almost asked B.B. to do that guitar
solo, but I have so many good musicians in my life. Dean Brown, he lives in
California, he's played with so many jazz musicians and he's been playing with
me off and on for the last few years. I said to him, 'I want to channel B.B.
King.' He said, 'Well, I can do that for you, Ro!'
She then recited some of the lyrics, but with a blues spin. "Please
believe me. I'll never do you no harm.' And at the end, I say, 'Trust me.'
Because I thought it was such a blues tune and that it had never been done like
a real honest-to-goodness blues tune."
The fanciful guitar work on the single, "We Can Work It Out," was
done by Sherrod Barnes, whom she described as a "genius guitarist, writer,
songwriter. He's a bad mamajama."
Barnes also did the solo on "Let It Be," which displays shades of
another famous guitarist. "I wanted him to channel Jimi Hendrix," she
said. She had thought of asking Prince to play on the song after seeing his
performance at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame playing for George Harrison's
induction.
"I wanted Prince to do the solo," she said, "and Sherrod
agreed with that. Then he (Sherrod) put something down so we could have it in
our heads. And I said, 'No, no, I want that'."
"That's another thing I like about Sherrod's guitar playing. The
Beatles are all about melodies, words and guitars as far as I'm concerned,"
Flack says. "To have a lot of guitars featured in our recording is just
wonderful."
The only solo Beatles song included on the album is George Harrison's
"Isn't It a Pity." "Before I had to finish the Beatles project,
someone approached me who knew I was doing it and asked me to come to a private
school library, the Ethical Culture School in Manhattan, and to do a tribute to
George Harrison. And I did six songs of his and that was one of them," she
said. "Everybody liked it so much and we said OK" and it was decided
to add it to the album.
Asked to pick a favorite, she said, "I think that I like them not all
the same, but for different reasons. I like 'Hey Jude' because it's free of
anything. It's just very acoustic. And because I followed my first thought was
leave the la-la-la-la-la-la-la (chorus) out. When I perform that on stage, my
intention is to say, 'Your turn,' and let the audience kick it."
Besides the 12 songs on the regular CD, there are two additional songs,
"I'm Looking Through You" and "Yesterday," on theAmazon.com version. In addition, Flack's version of "Here Comes the Sun," is available on
the Japanese CD version and also through iTunes in the U.S.
Flack, who lived in the Dakota for many years and knew John Lennon and Yoko
Ono firsthand, said the couple were not secretive. "They lived right
across the street from Central Park and you could see them walking in Central
Park a lot without a bunch of bodyguards trailing behind them," she said.
"They were very very very sweet people."
She says there's a portion of the documentary "The U.S. Vs. John
Lennon" that touches her. "It's the part where they're in bed. It
seems like they were almost desperate to convince people, not to make people
believe, but just convince them that what they were seeing is real. And, at one
point, they said, 'No, we're not trying to do anything. We're just in bed. We
love each other."
Flack says she's doing "Isn't It a Pity," "Here Comes the
Sun" and "The Long and Winding Road" in her live shows. She's
also planning on doing a sequel. "Probably within the next two
years," she says.
She called Lennon "a beautiful man who had an incredible soul and the
ability to express it by way of
'Imagine.'"
"How can you be a bad guy and write 'Imagine'?," she exclaims.
-----------------------
REVIEW: Roberta Flack makes a comeback with a tribute to the Beatles
By Steve Marinucci
Published 2/6/2012
It's not all that often when a Beatles tribute comes along that's unique. Roberta Flack's new "Let It Be Roberta: Roberta Flack Sings the Beatles," which hits the streets Tuesday, is very much that.
Flack could have released an album with straightforward covers of the 12
songs and done what many others have done -- sung Beatles songs with nothing to
show for them. But Flack bravely took up the challenge. The album is full of
surprises.
"In My Life," which kicks off the album, is not the ballad you'd
expect it to be. It's a beautifully
upbeat rhythmic interpretation with Flack's voice winding through. Her version of the Beatles' "Hey
Jude" is tender and sweet.
Her version of "We Can Work It Out" turns the song inside out
with her soulful vocal and the percussion-laden backing. Her endearing vocal on
"Oh Darling" takes the song to its soulful limits.
The album features 11 Beatles group songs and one solo song, "Isn't It
a Pity," itself a warm tribute to
George Harrison.
And that's the way this album goes. "Let It Be Roberta," Flack's
first new album in eight years and her first for 429 Records, brings her back
with a look at Beatles songs that serve as a reminder that their songs can
still be done in some very new and still interesting ways.
And you know that can't be bad.
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NEWS: Roberta Flack's Beatles song single makes early mark on radio airplay
By Steve Marinucci
Published 1/13/2012
The single from Roberta Flack's forthcoming "Let It Be Roberta:
Roberta Flack Sings the Beatles" album has debuted on two radio charts in
the past week, according to her record company.
"We Can Work It Out" was
the #1 Most Added at the Mainstream AC Chart and the #2 Most Added at Urban
AC. The single also moved into the Top
20 at Smooth AC radio.
The album, on 429 Records, is Flack's first in eight years and will be out
on Feb. 7. It was produced by Sherrod
Barnes, whose past work includes Beyonce' and Angie Stone.
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