The Long and Winding Road

• 1. Introduction

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  "The Long and Winding Road" arrived as the Beatles were already falling apart. Paul McCartney wrote it at High Park Farm, his property near Campbeltown, Scotland, sometime in 1968, sitting alone at a piano while the band he had helped build was cracking under the weight of its own tensions. He later recalled imagining it performed by Ray Charles. It became, without anyone quite intending it, the Beatles' final number-one hit in the United States.

  The song's journey from that quiet Scottish farm to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 was anything but peaceful. A producer hired to salvage an abandoned album would add orchestral overdubs McCartney never requested. A telegram McCartney signed giving approval would later be cited as evidence against him. And the dispute over what Phil Spector did to the recording would eventually be laid before the English High Court as one reason to dissolve the most famous band in the world.

  How a piano ballad written in solitude became the flashpoint for the Beatles' legal breakup is a story about creative ownership, unresolved bitterness, and what happens when four people who no longer trust each other still share a catalogue.

• 2. Scotland and the Song

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  McCartney purchased High Park Farm in 1966, and its remote Highland surroundings shaped the piece from the very first image. He said the phrase came to him during an early visit there, inspired by a road stretching up into the hills, set against lochs and distant mountains. The landscape gave him both the title and the mood.

  When he finally sat down to write the song in 1968, McCartney later explained to his biographer Barry Miles that it was "all about the unattainable; the door you never quite reach... the road that you never get to the end of." Author Howard Sounes, drawing on other McCartney interviews, concluded that the lyrics also reflected anguish about the direction of McCartney's personal life and a backward look at the Beatles' collective history.

  In a 1994 interview, McCartney was frank about why sad songs suited him: "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." John Lennon, speaking in 1980, offered a more pointed take. He suggested McCartney had a creative surge just before the breakup, and that "The Long and Winding Road" was part of what he called "the last gasp" from his bandmate.

  The song's composition is built on "slightly jazzy" chord changes, as McCartney described them, that he associated with Ray Charles's style. It is set in E-flat major and draws on the relative C minor. There is no traditional chorus. Musicologist Alan Pollack noted that the structure is genuinely ambiguous: the opening stanza sits so loosely in the form that a listener cannot be certain whether the song has just started, is in the verse, or has reached the bridge.

• 3. The January 1969 Sessions

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  McCartney premiered the song on the 7th of January 1969, during filmed rehearsals at Twickenham Film Studios. The band had been gathering footage for what would eventually become the documentary Let It Be, and the cameras caught this early run-through.

  After abandoning plans for a return to live performance, the band moved to their Apple Studio in central London and recorded multiple takes on the 26th of January and again on the 31st. The lineup was McCartney on lead vocals and piano, John Lennon on six-string bass, George Harrison on electric guitar run through a Leslie speaker effect, Ringo Starr on drums, and guest keyboardist Billy Preston on electric piano. Lennon, who rarely played bass, made several mistakes during the recording.

  After the 26th of January session, the band talked openly about adding an orchestral accompaniment. As seen in the documentary Get Back, McCartney described hearing the song in his head with a Ray Charles-style arrangement, with brass and strings. Harrison backed the idea specifically for the brass parts, suggesting sustained chord movements. These conversations would take on a complicated resonance later, when the question of who had sanctioned what kind of orchestration became a matter of legal dispute.

  Glyn Johns, asked to compile an album from the sessions, chose the 26th of January take. The 31st of January take, recorded with Johns in an unofficial producer role and featuring slightly different lyrics, was the version used in the film.

• 4. Phil Spector's Overdubs

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  In early 1970, Lennon and Harrison brought American producer Phil Spector in to salvage the Get Back recordings, hoping to produce an album to accompany the Let It Be film. McCartney had grown estranged from his bandmates partly over their decision to appoint Allen Klein as manager, and several weeks passed before he responded to messages asking for his approval.

  Spector's most dramatic intervention came on the 1st of April 1970, which turned out to be the last ever Beatles recording session, held at EMI Studios. Ringo Starr was the only Beatle present. Balance engineer Peter Bown recalled a session marked by chaos: Spector required tape echo on everything, took a different pill every half-hour, and kept his bodyguard nearby. The orchestra grew so frustrated with Spector's demands that the musicians at one point refused to play. Bown himself left for home and had to be persuaded by telephone to return, after Starr told Spector to calm down.

  Spector nonetheless finished the overdubs. The final instrumentation for "The Long and Winding Road" included eight violins, four violas, four cellos, three trumpets, three trombones, two guitars, and a choir of fourteen women. The score was written and conducted by Richard Hewson, a young London arranger who had worked with Apple artists Mary Hopkin and James Taylor. Technical engineer Brian Gibson later said Spector removed one of McCartney's vocal tracks to make room. Authors Jean-Michel Guesdon and Philippe Margotin noted that Harrison's guitar and Billy Preston's piano also disappeared in the final mix.

  On the 2nd of April, Spector sent each of the Beatles an acetate of the completed album with a note offering to make further changes. All four Beatles, including McCartney, sent telegrams expressing their approval.

• 5. The Dispute

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  By late April, McCartney had changed his mind. On the 14th of April 1970, with manufacturing already underway for Let It Be, he sent Klein a terse letter demanding the harp be removed from "The Long and Winding Road" and that the other added instrumentation and voices be reduced. The letter ended with the words: "Don't ever do it again."

  Klein tried to phone McCartney, who had changed his number without telling Apple. Klein then sent a telegram asking McCartney to contact him or Spector. The reply that came back, according to Klein, was that "the letter spoke for itself." With the album already scheduled for release, Klein allowed Spector's version to proceed.

  In an interview published by the Evening Standard in two parts on the 21st and the 22nd of April 1970, McCartney said publicly that he had been sent a remixed version of his song with harps, horns, an orchestra, and a women's choir added without his knowledge. "I would never have female voices on a Beatles record," he said. Their regular producer George Martin called the remixes "so uncharacteristic" of the band. Glyn Johns described the embellishments as "revolting... just puke."

  Harrison and, according to journalist Bill Harry, Lennon saw things differently. Spector went on to work on Lennon's solo album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and on Harrison's All Things Must Pass, suggesting their working relationship remained intact. Spector later argued he had been forced to cover the poor quality of Lennon's bass playing, and that McCartney had in fact been consulted prior to release regarding the choice of musical arranger.

  When McCartney took the dissolution of the Beatles' partnership to the High Court in early 1971, he cited ABKCO's imposition of changes to "The Long and Winding Road" without his consent as one of six reasons for the split. Starr's affidavit countered that McCartney had initially said the album was "OK" by phone, and had only objected two weeks later. Author Nicholas Schaffner noted the awkward fact that McCartney personally accepted the Grammy Award for Let It Be in March 1971, while simultaneously contesting the album's production in court.

• 6. A Final Number One

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  "The Long and Winding Road" appeared on the Let It Be album on the 8th of May 1970, one month after McCartney's announcement of the breakup. On the 11th of May, Apple issued it as a single in the United States with "For You Blue" as the B-side. It was the last single the band released in the US while still legally active, though not issued in the United Kingdom.

  In the US, radio play for "For You Blue" was strong enough for Billboard to chart the two songs together as a double-sided hit. The same double A-side listing applied when it topped Canada's singles chart. On the 13th of June 1970, "The Long and Winding Road" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, where it held for two weeks. This was the band's twentieth and final chart-topper on that chart, and it set the all-time record for number of number-one singles on the Hot 100. The Beatles had achieved that record across a span of less than six and a half years, beginning with "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on the 1st of February 1964, topping the chart roughly once every six weeks across that period.

  The single also reached number one on the charts compiled by Cash Box and Record World, giving the band their 22nd and 23rd chart-toppers on those rankings. Despite the historic chart performance, contemporary US sales were not sufficient for gold accreditation at the time. The song was certified platinum by the RIAA in February 1999, for sales of one million copies.

• 7. Critical Ears

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  Let It Be drew poor reviews, and Spector's work on "The Long and Winding Road" attracted particular scorn. Richard Williams, writing in Melody Maker, said McCartney's songs were "getting looser and less concise" and that Spector's orchestrations added to a "Bacharach atmosphere", with the harps going too far. Rolling Stone reviewer John Mendelsohn described Spector's additions as "hideously cloying strings and a ridiculous choir" and called the overall effect "oppressive mush." Mendelsohn acknowledged the song might have eventually grown on listeners without that treatment, but felt the production had rendered it "virtually unlistenable."

  Not everyone agreed at the time, and the critical view shifted over the years. In 1973, musicologist Wilfrid Mellers argued that the lush scoring worked because the feeling in the song had genuine integrity. Ian MacDonald, in his book Revolution in the Head, praised the song as "one of the most beautiful things McCartney ever wrote," pointing to its "heart-breaking suspensions and yearning backward glances." MacDonald also gave a frank assessment of Lennon's bass playing on the recording, calling it "atrocious" and suggesting it amounted to "sabotage when presented as finished work."

  In 2006, Mojo placed the song at number 27 on a list of the greatest Beatles songs. Rolling Stone ranked it at number 90 in a similar 2011 list. Brian Wilson contributed to the Mojo rankings by calling it his all-time favourite Beatles track, praising its "heart-and-soul melody" and closing with the remark that when the Beatles broke up, "I was heartbroken. I think they should have kept going."

  Spector, for his part, remained unrepentant. In 2003 he called McCartney's ongoing criticism "hypocritical," pointing out that McCartney had performed the song using Spector's string and horn arrangements throughout twenty-five years of solo touring.

• 8. After the Breakup

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  McCartney's relationship with the song continued to evolve across the decades following the Beatles' split. He had initially resisted performing his Beatles catalogue with Wings, but "The Long and Winding Road" appeared in fragments during One Hand Clapping and was part of the set list for Wings' 1975-76 world tour. A live version appeared on the 1976 album Wings over America.

  For his 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street, McCartney re-recorded the song with George Martin producing and a saxophone-accompanied Las Vegas-style arrangement. A second studio recording, made in 1989, became a B-side for releases from his Flowers in the Dirt album. On his 1989-90 world tour, the live version he performed was, in author Kenneth Womack's assessment, an attempt to replicate the very Spector string arrangement McCartney had publicly opposed. The live recording released on Tripping the Live Fantastic was the only song drawn from his two April 1990 concerts at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.

  In 2003, McCartney persuaded Starr and Yoko Ono to release Let It Be... Naked, and he said his long-standing dissatisfaction with "The Long and Winding Road" was part of the motivation. The album used the 31st of January 1969 take, without any added instrumentation, closer to what the band had originally intended. Starr reflected on hearing that version: "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."

  The song also provided the working title for the early version of the Beatles' own documentary series. Apple executive Neil Aspinall had called his draft of what became the 1995 TV series The Beatles Anthology by that name, but Harrison objected in the 1990s to the project being named after McCartney's song, and the title was changed. In July 2005, McCartney closed the Live 8 concert in London with the song, and it was one of only two songs released as a digital single from that event.