The Long & Winding Road
The Beatles break-up song?
I was a bit flipped out and tripped out at that time. It’s a sad song because it’s all about the unattainable; the door you never quite reach. This is the road that you never get to the end of. Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
“With its heartbreaking suspension and yearning backward glances from the sad wisdom of the major key to the lost loves and illusions of the minor, ‘The Long and Winding Road’ is one of the most beautiful things McCartney ever wrote. Ian MacDonald
There was a real long and winding road — the B842 — and it did lead close to the door of McCartney’s remote farmhouse in the Scottish highlands. This was where in the summer of 1968, he wrote his melancholic ballad.
One of the ‘backward glances’ may have been the ending of his long relationship with Jane Asher. It had been Jane who encouraged Paul to buy High Park Farm in 1966 and they had announced their engagement at the end of the following year. Six months later it was curtains:
I haven’t broken it off, but it is broken off, finished. I know it sounds corny, but we still see each other and love each other, but it hasn’t worked out. Jane Asher, interview June 1968
It wasn’t working out too well at Camp Beatle, either, where the inexorable slide toward break-up was accelerating. In August 1968, McCartney retreated to Scotland to escape the internecine warfare.
A new standard?
Perhaps sub-consciously anticipating a post-Beatles future, McCartney began working on a new ballad. The vague plan was to create a standard, suitable for a mainstream crooner.
“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.
Interestingly Charles would later perform a version that seems to encapsulate this intention. In the first instance, however, he turned to British balladeers. He sent a demo to Tom Jones, who loved the song but could not record it for contractual reasons. Ditto Cilla Black, who would later record McCartney’s favourite version in 1973.
At this point, McCartney tentatively decided that it might work as a Beatles song after all.
The recording
On the 27th of January 1969, a run-through of ‘The Long and Winding Road” was recorded. It had Paul on piano and George, guitar, leaving a a clearly struggling John Lennon on bass. Macdonald’s brutal judgement that Lennon ‘inadvertently sabotaged’ the track with his ‘atrocious’ may seem harsh but there clearly was a problem.
The obvious solution was for McCartney to re-record the bass part. By this stage, however, rationality had left town. In an interview given immediately after the January sessions John Lennon suggested that personal animosity had corrupted a ‘strange album’.
“There’s just tension. It’s tense every time the red light goes on.
He also hinted that drastic surgery would be needed.
“We never really finished it. We didn’t really want to do it. Paul was hustling for us to do it. It’s The Beatles with their suits off.”
Abbey Road
Embarrassment at what they had recorded concentrated Beatle minds. Rather than trying to unravel the Let it Be mess, they opted to start a new album — with George Martin back on the bridge. Personal differences were temporarily put aside and the quest for ‘authenticity’ abandoned. The result was a worthy swansong: Abbey Road.
Nobody could face sorting out the gigantic mountain of audio tape produced by the Get Back/Let it Be sessions. Instead they returned to their day job — squabbling over the terms of the impending divorce. This all-consuming business had numerous complicating factors.
One was John Lennon’s heroin addiction, which had peaked during the Get Back sessions but was still raging throughout 1969. This he later blamed on the alleged cold-shoulder offered to Yoko by ‘Beatle people’. Though Paul had never been openly hostile — as George Harrison had been on occasion — McCartney was the focus of his resentment and increasing paranoia.
A particularly sore-point was the choice of a manager to replace Brian Epstein. Paul wanted to his employ his father-in-law, the entertainment lawyer, Lee Eastman. John counter-proposed Alan Klein, the former manager of The Rolling Stones. Klein also had the votes of George and Ringo but band decisions had to be unanimous.
Paul dug his heels in, citing Klein’s reputation and the advice of Mick Jagger. Everyone trooped off to court and stopped talking to each other.
Enter Phil Spector
Klein’s mission was to make money for his clients — so he pressed for a swift resolution that would allow Let it Be to be available in record shops. Lennon had a solution, a friend who could help out ‘Why don’t we get Phil to listen the Let It Be tapes?” (Doggett, p.104).
The Phil concerned was the legendary ‘pop-opera’’ producer, Mr P. Spector. His intervention would need McCartney’s approval. This came belatedly and reluctantly via his lawyer.
With the May release date fast approaching, Spector was unleashed on Let it Be. Most of the early changes he made were defensible, given the poor quality of the original recordings. What would prove extremely contentious, however, was the remix of The Long and Winding Road. For this Spector called in the full orchestral artillery. The merits of this interpretation would be contested all the way to the High Court.
The Final Session
Only one Beatle (Ringo) played on the final Beatles recording session, in April 1970. The lone drummer was supplemented with a 24-piece orchestra and a 14 strong (female) choir. Leading proceedings was the volatile Spector, who according to engineer Peter Brown, was in an erratic mood:
“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 constantly on the point of throwing a wobbly, saying ‘I want to hear this. I must have that.”
It all became too much for Brown, who left the studio. At this point the mild mannered Ringo intervened to calm Spector. Peter Brown was then persuaded to return to the mixing desk. The final session was completed.
A few days later an acetate of the new mix of the album was sent to all the Beatles. Initially they appeared to approve it. Then Paul listened again — and again. His furious response came in letter via m’learned friends, in which he vows that in future, ‘no one will be allowed to add to or subtract from a recording of one of my songs without my permission.’ He goes on to list his specific objections to Spector’s changes.
I had considered orchestrating The Long And Winding Road but I had decided against it. I therefore want it altered to these specifications:-
1. Strings, horns, voices and all added noises to be reduced in volume.
2. Vocal and Beatle instrumentation to be brought up in volume.
3. Harp to be removed completely at the end of the song and original piano notes to be substituted.
4. Don’t ever do it again.Paul McCartney c.c. Phil Spector John Eastman
An equally unimpressed George Martin later suggested that the credit should read: “Produced by George Martin, over-produced by Phil Spector”.’ They didn’t think that was a good idea.”
Did the Long and Winding Road break up The Beatles?
To John Lennon’s immense chagrin, it was Paul ‘Mr Beatle’ McCartney who formally applied to break up The Beatles. One of the six reasons he cited in the petition was a breakdown in trust in the treatment of his songs, naming The Long and Winding Road as the most egregious example of this.
So was it all Phil’s fault? John Lennon certainly didn’t think so. In his famous 1970 Rolling Stone interview, he came stoutly to Spector’s defence:
“He was given the shittiest load of badly-recorded shit with a lousy feeling to it ever, and he made something of it."
In the end The Beatles did not break up because of a few bum bass notes or because an unstable producer overdid the strings. The marriage had broken down due to irreconcilable differences. They had reached o the end of the long and winding road.
