"The Long and Winding Road"

Song: “The Long and Winding Road”

Album: Let it Be (1970)

“The Long and Winding Road” was the Beatles’ 20^th (and final) number one song in the United States and the last single released by the band while all members were still alive.  While immensely popular upon its release, Paul (the song’s primary composer) was enormously displeased with Phil Spector’s production of it—so much so that he cited Spector’s treatment of the song as one of six reasons for the legal split of the Beatles.

Paul wrote the song at his farm in Scotland during a time of growing tension in the band (providing its metaphorical heft), but the “long and winding road” is also said to be a physical reference to the B842 road running along the east coast of Kintyre into Cambeltown in Scotland.  

Paul cut an early demo of the tune in September 1968 during The Beatles (The White Album) sessions.  The final recording was cut on January 26 and 31, 1969, just days before and a day after the legendary rooftop concert. In early 1970, Spector was presented with the tapes from the Get Back sessions to remix the songs for an album. He gave particular attention to “The Long and Winding Road.” Citing John’s poor bass performance on the track, he remixed it with an orchestration that included 18 violins, 4 violas, 3 cellos, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 guitars, and achoir of 14 women, which was arguably a bit overkill for a seemingly minor problem (and certainly in direct opposition to the Beatles’ stated “back to basics” intent for the album).

A simpler mix was released with the Beatles Anthology in 1996. And in 2003, The Beatles and Yoko Ono release Let It Be…Naked, which contains “stripped down” cuts of all of the album tracks, including (and probably, especially) “The Long and Winding Road.” This version of the album contained no strings or other instrumentation that wasn’t played in the studio during the original recordings, which brought the album in line with (or, at least, much closer to) its intended form.

Ringo, who never had any problem with the sting arrangment Spector added (beyond Spector’s odd, eccentric behavior during the mixing process), liked the Naked version of the tune, saying that it’d been over thirty years since he’d heard it without all of the added instrumentation, and it blew him away. Spector has criticized Paul for being so overly sensitive about the original album version, citing that McCartney had no problem accepting the Oscar for the Let It Be soundtrack or adopting some of Spector’s arrangement when performing the song on tour in the years since. 

The closing lyrics in the single version of the song include Paul’s refrain, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” fittingly harkening back to the Beatles’ early hits as they played off into the sunset.