The Long and Winding Road

"The Long and Winding Road"
US picture sleeve
Single by the Beatles
from the album Let It Be
B-side	"For You Blue"
Released	11 May 1970
Recorded	26 January 1969; 1 April 1970
Studio	Apple and EMI, London

"The Long and Winding Road" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1970 album Let It Be. A piano ballad, it was composed by Paul McCartney in 1968 as the Beatles were growing increasingly bitter towards each other. When writing it, he "imagined it was going to be done by someone like Ray Charles". Principal recording took place in January 1969 during the Get Back album project (later renamed Let It Be) and featured a sparse arrangement of piano, bass, guitar, and percussion. However, the Get Back project soon stagnated and no album resulted, and so John Lennon and George Harrison lent the band's January recordings, including that of "The Long and Winding Road", to producer Phil Spector so that he would try assembling an album out of them. He added lavish orchestral and choral overdubs to the song.

McCartney, along with the rest of the band, sent Spector a telegram sanctioning his arrangements. However, by late April, he had grown to dislike them. The Beatles' producer George Martin and their engineer during the Get Back sessions, Glyn Johns, also disapproved of them. McCartney firmly asked the band's manager Allen Klein to curtail Spector's production, which he did not. When McCartney made his case in the English High Court for the dissolution of the Beatles' legal partnership, he cited the treatment of "The Long and Winding Road" as one of six reasons justifying the split. In his defence, Spector argued that the bass playing on the song, done by Lennon, was poor and had to be covered, and that McCartney had been consulted before its release.

"The Long and Winding Road" was released as part of Let It Be in May 1970, a month after McCartney announced the band's breakup. Critics reacted unfavourably to Let It Be and condemned Spector's overdubs on the song, which reviewer John Mendelsohn called "oppressive mush". Nonetheless, the listening public elevated it to number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in June 1970, the band's second number one of the year and their overall twentieth and final number one hit on that chart. Retrospective reviews have taken more kindly to the song; Ian MacDonald, for instance, thought it was "one of the most beautiful things McCartney ever wrote". Brian Wilson considered it his favourite Beatles song. The original non-overdubbed recording of "The Long and Winding Road" was later released on Anthology 3, and another January 1969 take features on Let It Be... Naked (2003), an album partly born of McCartney's distaste for the song's final version. "The Long and Winding Road" has been covered by Cilla Black, Aretha Franklin, and Ray Charles, among many others.

Inspiration

Paul McCartney said he came up with the title The Long and Winding Road during an early visit to his property High Park Farm, near Campbeltown, Scotland, which he bought in 1966. The phrase was inspired by the sight of a road "stretching up into the hills" in the remote Highlands surroundings of lochs and distant mountains. Two years later, he recalls in his Lyrics, this image incarnated as a song. It was inspired by the growing tension among the Beatles. Based on other comments McCartney has made, author Howard Sounes writes, the lyrics can be seen as McCartney expressing his anguish at the direction of his personal life, as well as a nostalgic look back at the Beatles' history.

McCartney recalled: "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." John Lennon said in 1980: "Paul had a little spurt just before we split. I think the shock of Yoko Ono and what was happening gave him a creative spurt including 'Let It Be' and 'The Long and Winding Road,' 'cause that was the last gasp from him." While McCartney penned the song, it is credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership.

Composition

The secrets of [McCartney's] success are to be found in the manner in which novel approaches to form and harmonic structure underscore the emotional core of the song, and belie whatever curbside surface clichés it has which may initially turn you off.

— Alan W. Pollack

The composition takes the form of a piano-based ballad, with conventional chord changes. McCartney described the chords as "slightly jazzy" and in keeping with Charles's style. The song's home key is E-flat major, but it also uses the relative C minor. 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 piece. In this way, according to musicologist Alan W. Pollack, it is unclear whether the song has just begun, is in the verse, or is in the bridge. As for the genre, "The Long and Winding Road" has variably been described as a pop, rock, and orchestral soul song.

McCartney told his biographer Barry Miles in the 1990s: "The Long and Winding Road" is "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." He also commented that the song was "all about the unattainable; the door you never quite reach ... the road that you never get to the end of."

Recording

Demo

Once back in London, in 1968, McCartney recorded a demo of "The Long and Winding Road" during one of the recording sessions for the White Album. Later, he offered the song to Tom Jones on the condition that the singer release it as his very next single. In Jones's recollection, his record company made the offer impossible since it was about to issue "Without Love" as a single.

January 1969

McCartney premiered "The Long and Winding Road" on 7 January 1969 during the Beatles' filmed rehearsals at Twickenham Film Studios. At the time, the band was working on the album Get Back, an attempted return to the group's roots after experimenting with opulent, intricate music. Their greatest influences as young musicians in the 1950s were skiffle, a largely guitar-based genre blending American folk and blues, and, more so, rock and roll such as in the style of Eddie Cochran. McCartney planned, in Beatles historian Chris Ingham's telling, "to learn some songs, record them without frills, play them at a concert and film the whole thing." While the live album and documentary eventually fell out of favour, the idea of a roots album stayed. The Get Back sessions struggled under the air of conflict and weariness within the band, such that after some time, "the only member with any real enthusiasm for the project was Paul". George Martin, their producer, detached himself more and more from the group's affairs, leaving sound engineer Glyn Johns to do his work.

The band recorded several takes of "The Long and Winding Road" at their Apple Studio in central London on 26 January and again on 31 January. The line-up was McCartney on lead vocals and piano, Lennon on six-string bass guitar, George Harrison on electric guitar played with a Leslie speaker effect, Ringo Starr on drums, and guest keyboardist Billy Preston on electric piano. As Lennon only occasionally played bass, he made several mistakes on the recording, Beatles scholar Ian MacDonald finds.

As seen in Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back, following the 26 January recording session, the band discussed the possibility of adding an orchestral accompaniment to the song. "The only way I've ever heard it in my head," McCartney said, "is like Ray Charles's band... We were planning to do it anyway for a couple of numbers, just to have a bit of brass and a bit of strings." Harrison supported the idea of a brass accompaniment: "It would be nice with some brass just doing the sustaining chord thing, moving and just holding notes."

In May 1969, Glyn Johns, who had been asked by the Beatles to compile and mix an album from the sessions, selected the 26 January recording. The 31 January take, which had slightly different lyrics and was recorded with Johns in an unofficial producer's role, was used in the film, subsequently titled Let It Be. But the tapes handed to Johns were of poor quality—in Lennon's words, "the shittiest load of badly recorded shit"—and the band refused Johns's two takes at a Get Back album.

April 1970

In January 1970, Lennon and Harrison turned over the January 1969 recordings to American producer Phil Spector, in the hope of salvaging an album fit for release. Spector had already produced the Plastic Ono Band single "Instant Karma!" to Lennon's liking. At this point, the Get Back project as originally imagined had been abandoned; it would be renamed to Let It Be. McCartney had become estranged from his bandmates due to his opposition to Klein's appointment as manager. Several weeks were lost before McCartney replied to messages requesting his approval for Spector to begin working on the recordings. Spector chose to return to the same 26 January recording of "The Long and Winding Road".

Spector made various changes to the songs. His most dramatic embellishments occurred on 1 April 1970, the last ever Beatles recording session, when he added orchestral overdubs to "The Long and Winding Road", "Across the Universe", and "I Me Mine" at EMI Studios. The only member of the Beatles present was Starr, who played drums with the session musicians to create Spector's characteristic Wall of Sound. Already known for his eccentric behaviour in the studio, Spector was in a peculiar mood that day, according to balance engineer Peter Bown: "He wanted tape echo on everything, he had to take a different pill every half-hour and had his bodyguard with him constantly. He was on the point of throwing a wobbly, saying 'I want to hear this, I want to hear that. I must have this, I must have that.'" The orchestra became so annoyed by Spector's behaviour that the musicians refused to play any further; at one point, Bown left for home, forcing Spector to telephone him and persuade him to return after Starr had told Spector to calm down.

Spector nonetheless succeeded in overdubbing "The Long and Winding Road", using eighteen violins, four violas, four cellos, three trumpets, three trombones, two guitars, and a choir of fourteen women. The orchestra was scored and conducted by Richard Hewson, a young London arranger who had worked with Apple Corps artists Mary Hopkin and James Taylor. According to technical engineer Brian Gibson, Spector removed one of McCartney's vocal tracks on the original recording to accommodate his arrangements. Additionally, writers Jean-Michel Guesdon and Philippe Margotin comment that Harrison's guitar and Preston's piano parts "disappeared" as Spector produced the final mix. This lush orchestral treatment directly contradicted the Beatles' stated intentions for a "real" recording when they began work on Get Back. However, Apple executive Neil Aspinall would later recall: "I'm not sure that anyone said, 'It's got to be what a four or five piece band could do, Phil; no overdubbing and orchestras ... They just gave the tapes to him and he did what Phil Spector does."

On 2 April, Spector sent each of the Beatles an acetate of the completed album with a note saying: "If there is anything you'd like done to the album, let me know and I'll be glad to help ... If you wish, please call me about anything regarding the album tonight", along with a lengthy letter justifying his changes. All four Beatles, including McCartney, sent Spector a telegram giving their approval.