The Long and Winding Road - Role in The Beatles' Break-up

Role in The Beatles' Break-up

When McCartney first heard the Spector version of the song, he was outraged. Nine days after Spector had overdubbed "The Long and Winding Road", McCartney formally announced the Beatles' breakup. On 14 April, he sent a sharply worded letter to Apple Records business manager Allen Klein, demanding that the inclusion of the harp be eliminated and that the other added instrumentation be reduced. McCartney concluded the letter with the words: "Don't ever do it again." These requests went unheeded, and the Spector version was included on the album.

In an interview published by the Evening Standard in two parts on 22 and 23 April 1970, McCartney said: "The album was finished a year ago, but a few months ago American record producer Phil Spector was called in by 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." The Beatles' usual producer, George Martin, agreed, calling the remixes "so uncharacteristic" of the Beatles. "It was an insult to Paul," engineer Geoff Emerick recalled. "It was his record. And someone takes it out of the can and starts to overdub things without his permission." McCartney asked Klein to dissolve the Beatles' partnership, but was refused. Exasperated, he took the case to court, naming Klein and the other Beatles as defendants. Among the six reasons McCartney gave for dissolving the Beatles was that Klein's company, ABKCO, had caused "intolerable interference" by overdubbing "The Long and Winding Road" without consulting McCartney.

Spector claimed that he was forced into remixing "The Long and Winding Road", because of the poor quality of Lennon's bass playing. While the poor quality of the bass playing has been noted by other sources (in his book Revolution in the Head, a track-by-track analysis of the Beatles' records, Ian MacDonald described it as "atrocious" to the point of sabotage), its basis as the full-scale re-working of the track by Spector has been questioned. McCartney has argued that Spector could have merely edited out the relevant mistakes and rerecorded them, a technique Spector used elsewhere on the album. Specifically, it would have been a simple matter of having McCartney overdub a more appropriate bass part to replace the Lennon bass line that was judged to be inadequate, or even using the more polished version initially rejected by Glyn Johns.

The controversy surrounding the song did not prevent a chart-topping single from being released in the United States on 11 May 1970, joined by "For You Blue" on the B-side. 1.2 million copies were sold in the first two days, and the song began its ten-week long chart run on 23 May. On 13 June, it became the Beatles' twentieth and final number one single in America, according to Billboard magazine. "The Long and Winding Road" brought the curtain down on the Beatles' six years of domination in America that began with "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in 1964. The Beatles achieved twenty number one singles in a mere space of 74 months, achieving an average of one number one single per 3.7 months.