The song that split up The Beatles
When ‘The Long and Winding Road’ was released, The Beatles had already officially announced their break-up and moved onto pastures new. While the song wasn’t the sole reason they decided to part ways, their nightmarish journey to complete the track undoubtedly contributed to their demise and stoked tensions within the camp.
Paul McCartney wrote the track about a subject very close to his heart, the idyllic countryside near his rural Scottish property. He once explained the song’s writing process: “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’s lyrics in ‘The Long and Winding Road’ can also be interpreted as him attempting to cope with the imminent break-up of the band and his life-changing decade-long journey with The Beatles coming to an end. Given that it’s a highly personal track, McCartney had a clear vision of what he wanted to song to be, and he became incensed when it was secretly tampered with behind his back by their manager, Allen Klein.
Without his knowledge, Klein had the track re-recorded and produced by Phil Spector, with the assistance of McCartney’s bandmates. At this stage, Macca had grown apart from the rest of the group, and he was outraged to learn they had teamed up with Spector to alter ‘The Long and Winding Road’.
In a furious interview with the Evening Standard in 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. But a few weeks ago, I was sent a re-mixed version of my song ‘The Long And Winding Road’, with harps, horns, an orchestra and a women’s choir added. No one had asked me what I thought. I couldn’t believe it”.
He added: “I would never have female voices on a Beatles record. The record came with a note from Allen Klein saying he thought the changes were necessary. I don’t blame Phil Spector for doing it, but it just goes to show that it’s no good, me sitting here thinking I’m in control because, obviously, I’m not. Anyway, I’ve sent Klein a letter asking for some of the things to be altered, but I haven’t received an answer yet.”
Producer George Martin was equally as upset, and he said in Anthology: “That made me angry – and it made Paul even angrier because neither he nor I knew about it till it had been done. It happened behind our backs because it was done when Allen Klein was running John. He’d organised Phil Spector, and I think George and Ringo had gone along with it. They’d actually made an arrangement with EMI and said, ‘This is going to be our record’.”
However, at the time, Lennon believed nobody did anything wrong, and McCartney’s contribution wasn’t up to the high standard which The Beatles had set themselves. He told Rolling Stone in 1971: “He was given the shittiest load of badly-recorded shit with a lousy feeling to it ever, and he made something of it.”
While their split was already inevitable before the completion of ‘The Long and Winding Road’, the messy process of making the track highlighted the issues within the band, showing they could no longer function as a unit.
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