THIS has not been a good year for maverick record producer Phil Spector.

He already faces one charge of murder, and now he is up on a second count, accused of murdering The Beatles' Let It Be. A "crime" committed more than 30 years ago but only now is the perpetrator being brought to justice.

Administered by judge Paul McCartney, justice takes the form of extracting all traces of Spector from The Beatles' botch-job valedictory album, released in May 1970, by which time the Fab Four had imploded.

Against McCartney's wishes, John Lennon had given Spector the Let It Be tapes to overdub, and history records that the American poured dollops of treacle across the likes of The Long And Winding Road.

Yet is Spector guilty as charged or did he give it his best shot in building his wall of sound with orchestration, choirs and effects?

Contrary to the new wave of puritanical revisionism, McCartney's epic The Long And Winding Road suits those Mantovani-soaked strings.

Just as the director's cut of a movie is not always the best, so a long-held McCartney grudge has clouded his judgement.

That said, Let It Be, The Beatles Cut, is still a revelation, and overall a better album in naked form than the original ragbag of late-Beatle recordings, not least because of an improved selection policy and track order.

Out go the inconsequential Maggie Mae and Dig It; in come Get Back's superior B-side Don't Let Me Down plus a 20-minute disc of rehearsal and studio snippets that recall a band riven by internal politics but still musically bonded.

"Nothing's gonna change my world," sang Lennon on Across The Universe. Well, it just has changed, thanks to the ghost-busting of Spector.

However, Let It Be both ways.

Updated: 09:07 Thursday, November 27, 2003