From the ashes of the Get Back recording sessions in 1969, who would have guessed that the most controversial reworking for the Let It Be LP would be Paul's simple yet emotionally powerful Long And Winding Road? Paul's legal case to end The Beatles listed Phil Spector's tinkering with this song as one of six reasons for the dissolution. On most counts I prefer the Naked versions of the Let It Be songs, but in this one case I have to disagree strongly with Mr. McCartney. Perhaps this is due to my memories of this song on the radio back in 1970, released just after the world learned that The Beatles were no more. The tugging of Richard Hewson's mid-song string arrangement just works for me on so many levels. When I listen to the untouched version I still hear the strings deep in my head. Paul's little ode to a broken heart begging to be let back in is perhaps his most touching late Beatle's moment, and one of the few times he was given free reign to bare his soul.
Shel Talmy, 1937-2024
7 hours ago
3 comments:
Gotta disagree -- once I heard the naked version, I could never go back. It's true, like you said I still hear those bombastic strings in my head. But at least they're muted!
No worries, that's the beauty of opinions Holly. Normally I would side with Mr. McCartney, after all it is his song, and it was a cruel trick played upon him by the others as a way of punishing him for bailing from the "business" of running Apple. But the memory of the Spector version is too burned into my memory for me to let it go.
I always felt that Paul had written a song that was nearly there, but not.
It goes nowehere, and doesn't quite deliver.
Mister Spector covered that nicely, giving it a shimmer that almost no one can forget. Indeed, the strings make the recording.
With my apologies to Holly. . . .
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