Follow along in the book HERE. Today's song is at #21 and is featured on pages 148-152.
"The Long and Winding Road"
Let It Be
1969
If you know me and my own personal musical tastes at all (or have casually read about them on the blog), then you could probably guess that "The Long and Winding Road" was not one of my favorite Beatles songs. Like all of my "least favorite" Fab Four tunes, I profess a dislike and then hear it and end up humming along to the song in my head the rest of the fucking day. So it's not like I actually hate "The Long and Winding Road." I sound like a broken record at this point in the Phony Beatlemania project, but: it's all relative, man.
So yeah, not one of my favorite. Spignosi and Lewis say it's the 21st-best, and who am I to argue with the description of "best"? I'm just talking about "favorite." And it's not one of my favorite, according to this very subjective criteria of "what I like and what I don't." What got me today, though, was a deep self-reflection about why that is. Why is it that, historically, personally, I tend to shy away from "slow ballads"? Not that I've never loved a slow song, but more so that a slow song has a higher hurdle to clear than a fast song in terms of earning my love. Why?!
The short answer is that I do not know. I could take a good guess but it would remain a guess, because I just don't understand myself on that level. I don't know what causes personal preference to form. I don't even know if it's anything other than a unique cocktail of chemicals in your system determined by genetics. I.e., is it nature or nurture? If it's the former, then we're done here. If it's the latter, then I don't know... maybe I consciously and subconsciously use music as validation for a life that I need to be as exciting as possible, and quicker tempos mean fast heart rates, and if the blood is moving then my brain associates that with excitement, like a hit of adrenaline during a moment of sudden stress, and a decade of constant music listening requiring higher and higher doses of that adrenaline, to the point where the slow songs just don't fucking do it for me anymore. Something like that? I don't know.
The irony is that Paul McCartney actually wanted this song to be slower and sparser and even more boring, but a future murderer went behind his back and layered on a bunch of orchestral flourishes. You probably know the story about Let It Be, if you are at least a mid-level Beatles fan. Originally intended to be the final Beatles album, but the four members fought too much, and the project was shelved. They ended up being civil enough to get through the Abbey Road sessions, and then broke up. And then, the tapes were taken off that shelf and put in the hands of one Phil Spector, he of the "Wall of Sound" production style, who lived up to his reputation and put those walls of sound all over the tracks that ended up on the (first) version of Let It Be. Later, he shot and killed actress Lana Clarkson, but if you ask Paul McCartney, he'd probably say something like "but the real murder was that of my poor, poor Let It Be songs."
So yeah, not one of my favorite. Spignosi and Lewis say it's the 21st-best, and who am I to argue with the description of "best"? I'm just talking about "favorite." And it's not one of my favorite, according to this very subjective criteria of "what I like and what I don't." What got me today, though, was a deep self-reflection about why that is. Why is it that, historically, personally, I tend to shy away from "slow ballads"? Not that I've never loved a slow song, but more so that a slow song has a higher hurdle to clear than a fast song in terms of earning my love. Why?!
The short answer is that I do not know. I could take a good guess but it would remain a guess, because I just don't understand myself on that level. I don't know what causes personal preference to form. I don't even know if it's anything other than a unique cocktail of chemicals in your system determined by genetics. I.e., is it nature or nurture? If it's the former, then we're done here. If it's the latter, then I don't know... maybe I consciously and subconsciously use music as validation for a life that I need to be as exciting as possible, and quicker tempos mean fast heart rates, and if the blood is moving then my brain associates that with excitement, like a hit of adrenaline during a moment of sudden stress, and a decade of constant music listening requiring higher and higher doses of that adrenaline, to the point where the slow songs just don't fucking do it for me anymore. Something like that? I don't know.
The irony is that Paul McCartney actually wanted this song to be slower and sparser and even more boring, but a future murderer went behind his back and layered on a bunch of orchestral flourishes. You probably know the story about Let It Be, if you are at least a mid-level Beatles fan. Originally intended to be the final Beatles album, but the four members fought too much, and the project was shelved. They ended up being civil enough to get through the Abbey Road sessions, and then broke up. And then, the tapes were taken off that shelf and put in the hands of one Phil Spector, he of the "Wall of Sound" production style, who lived up to his reputation and put those walls of sound all over the tracks that ended up on the (first) version of Let It Be. Later, he shot and killed actress Lana Clarkson, but if you ask Paul McCartney, he'd probably say something like "but the real murder was that of my poor, poor Let It Be songs."
So there are two other mixes of "The Long and Winding Road" out there. One was on the Anthology series from the mid-'90s (more on that later, when the new song from that collections lands suspiciously high on this Top 100 list). The other was on the 2003 album Let It Be... Naked, which is a McCartney-spearheaded alternate mix of Let It Be, stripped of the Spector of it all (Paul pulled the trigger on his pet project less than a year after Phil Spector pulled the trigger of the gun with intent to kill). I've listened to both of those mixes, and to my ears, I can't tell them apart from each other. But both are much quieter than the original mix. If you put a gun to my head (whoops), then I'd take the original version, easy.
I mean, I'd take fucking anything to break up the monotony of another sad piano ballad from the Beatles' sad piano balladeer. And I'll definitely take eighteen violins, four violas, four cellos, one harp, three trumpets, three trombones, two guitars, and fourteen female voices. I fail to see where how any of this makes the song anything other than more bearable. For once, I agree with John Lennon, who said that he heard the Phil Spector mix of the song and—direct quote—"didn't puke." I don't puke either. I puked the first time I heard "Revolution 9," but that's it as far as Beatles puke stories go. "The Long and Winding Road" is boring, but it could've been worse. The orchestra makes it better.
That's just a personal preference, though. We all have our own personal preference. I disagree with Paul McCartney and I definitely disagree with Spignesi and Lewis. This shit is way too high. But you knew that already, because you knew what I like and what I don't like. And I sure as shit don't like slow songs.
BEATLES TRIVIA: At the time of this publishing, I'm settling into the operating table to get my vasectomy. There's probably a joke somewhere here. Something about my vas deferens being a long and winding road? Is that anything?
BETTER BEATLE: We're at the point where I can start referencing songs I've already covered in this space. In the interest of comparing the two big popular slow ballads on Let It Be, I'll say here that I at least agree with the authors of the book that "Let It Be" is better than "The Long and Winding Road," even though they are both ranked way too high on this list. Instead of a #3 compared to a #21, we should be talking about these songs at like #87 and #114.
NEXT TIME: "And Your Bird Can Sing" at #22
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