1976 – The Beatles re-release 22 singles in the UK. One of the singles, “Yesterday,” had never been released in the UK. Yesterday is the most recorded song of all time by other artists, which was released in the US in 1965.
1970 – 50 musicians recorded the orchestral scores for The Beatles tracks ‘The Long And Winding Road’ and ‘Across The Universe’ for the Phil Spector produced sessions. The bill for the 50 musicians was £1,126 and 5 shillings, ($1.914).
Lyrics:
The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear
Ive seen that road before
It always leads me her
Lead me to you door
The wild and windy night
That the rain washed away
Has left a pool of tears
Crying for the day
Why leave me standing here
Let me know the way
Many times Ive been alone
And many times Ive cried
Any way youll never know
The many ways Ive tried
But still they lead me back
To the long winding road
You left me standing here
A long long time ago
Dont leave me waiting here
Lead me to your door
But still they lead me back
To the long winding road
You left me standing here
A long long time ago
Dont leave me waiting here
Lead me to your door
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Released 11 May 1970 (USA)
Format vinyl record (7″)
Recorded 26 January 1969
Genre Rock
Length 3:37 (original album)
3:34 (Naked version)
Label Apple Records
Writer(s) Lennon/McCartney
Producer George Martin
Reproduced for disc by Phil Spector
“The Long and Winding Road” is a ballad written by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon/McCartney) that originally appeared on The Beatles’ album Let It Be. It became The Beatles’ last #1 song in the United States on 23 May 1970, and was the last single released by the quartet. “The Long and Winding Road” was listed with “For You Blue” as a double-sided hit when the single hit number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in 1970.
While the released version of the song was very successful, the post-production modifications to the song by producer Phil Spector angered McCartney to the point that when he made his case in court for breaking up The Beatles as a legal entity, McCartney cited the treatment of “The Long and Winding Road” as one of six reasons for doing so.
Inspiration
McCartney originally wrote the song at his farm in Scotland, and was inspired by the growing tension among The Beatles. McCartney said later:
“ I just sat down at my piano in Scotland, started playing and came up with that song, imagining it was going to be done by someone like Ray Charles. I have always found inspiration in the calm beauty of Scotland and again it proved the place where I found inspiration. ”
McCartney recorded a quick demo version of the song, with Beatles’ engineer Alan Brown assisting, in September 1968, during the recording sessions for The White Album.
The song takes the form of a piano-based ballad, with conventional chord changes. The song’s home key is in E-flat major but also uses relative minor; the key of C minor. Lyrically, it is a sad and melancholic song, with an evocation of an as-yet unrequited, though apparently inevitable, love.
The “long and winding road” of the song was claimed to have been inspired by the B842, a thirty-one mile (50 km) winding road in Scotland, running along the east coast of Kintyre into Campbeltown, and part of the eighty-two mile (133 km) drive from Lochgilphead. In an interview in 1994, McCartney described the lyric more obliquely:
“ It’s rather a sad song. I like writing sad songs, it’s a good bag to get into because you can actually acknowledge some deeper feelings of your own and put them in it. It’s a good vehicle, it saves having to go to a psychiatrist ”
The opening theme is repeated throughout, the song lacks a traditional chorus, and the melody and lyrics are ambiguous about the opening stanza’s position in the song; it is unclear whether the song has just begun, is in the verse, or is in the bridge.
Recording session
The Beatles recorded “The Long and Winding Road” on 26 and 31 January 1969, the day after the group’s legendary final performance on the roof of their Apple headquarters, with McCartney on piano, Lennon on bass guitar, George Harrison on guitar, Ringo Starr on drums, and Billy Preston on Hammond organ. This was during a series of sessions for an album project then known as Get Back. Lennon, who played bass only occasionally, made several mistakes on the recording. Some writers, such as Ian MacDonald, have postulated that the disenchanted Lennon’s ragged bass playing was purposeful.
In May 1969, Glyn Johns, who had been asked to mix the Get Back album by The Beatles, selected the 26 January recording as the best version of the song.
Spector made various changes to the songs, but his most dramatic embellishments would occur on 1 April 1970, when he turned his attention to “The Long and Winding Road”. At Abbey Road Studios, he recorded the orchestral and choir accompaniment for the song. The only member of The Beatles present was Ringo Starr.
Finally, Spector succeeded in remixing “The Long and Winding Road”, using 18 violins, four violas, four cellos, three trumpets, three trombones, two guitars, and a choir of 14 women.
Role in The Beatles’ breakup
When McCartney first heard the Spector version of the song, he was outraged. Nine days after Spector overdubbed “The Long and Winding Road”, McCartney announced that The Beatles were breaking up. On 14 April, he sent a sharply worded letter to Apple Records business manager Allen Klein, demanding that the added instrumentation be reduced, the harp part eliminated, and “Don’t ever do it again.” These requests went unheeded, and the Spector version was included on the album.
In an interview published by the Evening Standard in two parts on 22 April and 23 April 1970, McCartney said: “The album was finished a year ago, but a few months ago American record producer Phil Spector was called in by John Lennon to tidy up some of the tracks.
Spector claimed that he was forced into remixing “The Long and Winding Road”, because of the poor quality of Lennon’s bass playing. While the poor quality of the bass playing has been noted by other sources (Ian MacDonald described it as “atrocious” in his Revolution in the Head, which contains editorial reviews of several Beatles songs), its basis as the full-scale re-working of the track by Spector has been questioned. McCartney has argued that Spector could have merely edited out the relevant mistakes and rerecorded them, a technique Spector used elsewhere on the album. Specifically, it would have been a simple matter of having McCartney overdub a more appropriate bass part to replace the Lennon bass line that was judged to be inadequate.
The controversy surrounding the song did not prevent a chart-topping single from being released in the United States on 11 May 1970, joined by “For You Blue” on the B-Side. 1.2 million copies were sold in the first two days, and the song began its ten-week long chart run on 23 May. On 13 June, it became The Beatles’ twentieth and final number one single in America, according to Billboard magazine. “The Long and Winding Road” brought the curtain down on The Beatles’ six years of domination in America, beginning with “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in 1964.
Beatles recording, redux
Anthology 3
The original Glyn Johns remix of the 26 January take without the orchestration and Spector overdubs was included on Anthology 3 released in 1996. This version included a bridge section spoken, rather than sung, by McCartney.
Let It Be… Naked
Main article: Let It Be… Naked
In 2003, the remaining Beatles and Yoko Ono released Let It Be… Naked, touted as the band’s version of Let It Be remixed by independent producers. McCartney claimed that his long-standing dissatisfaction with the released version of “The Long and Winding Road” (and the entire Let It Be album) was in part the impetus for the new version. The album included a different take, Take 19, of “The Long and Winding Road” recorded on 31 January. Although a different take, this version is nonetheless closer to McCartney’s original intention than the original Let it Be version, with no strings or other added instrumentation beyond that which was played in the studio at the time. This take is the one seen in the film Let It Be.
Ringo Starr was impressed with the Naked version of the song: “There’s nothing wrong with Phil’s strings, this is just a different attitude to listening. But it’s been 30-odd years since I’ve heard it without all that and it just blew me away.”
Preceded by
“Everything is Beautiful” by Ray Stevens Billboard Hot 100 number one single (Beatles version)
13 June 1970 – 26 June 1970 (two weeks) Succeeded by
“The Love You Save” by The Jackson 5
McCartney live performances
After its original release, “The Long and Winding Road” became a staple of Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles concert repertoire. On the 1976 Wings Over the World Tour, where it was one of the few Beatles songs played, it was performed on piano in a sparse and effective arrangement using a horn section.
On McCartney’s 1989 solo tour and since, it has generally been performed on piano with an arrangement using a synthesiser mimicking strings, but this string sound has been much more restrained than on the Spector recorded version. McCartney also played the song to close the Live 8 concert in London
1969 – The Beatles, with Billy Preston on organ, perform four songs on a London on Saville Road rooftop for the film “Let It Be.”
Billy wrote and performed the Rhodes solo on “Get Back”. The set is halted after 42 minutes because an accountant at the nearby Royal Bank of Scotland complains about the noise.
1967 – The Beatles finish recording the album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The album tops Chart Toppers’s pop album chart for 15 weeks, longer than any Beatles album.
1965 – On this week’s Cash Box chart, the Beatles hold down the top four positions, with “Eight Days a Week” at No. 1. Meet the Beatles has become the all-time best-selling album in the U.S., having sold 3.5 million copies already.
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