The Long and Winding Road

The words include a question ('Why leave me standing here?'), and the lyric touches the motifs of plea and self reflection, most at home in the Beatles' 1968 songs. The lyric turns to extended metaphor (road as life's journey back to lover). A triple rhyme arrives once, "away/day/way". The title is sung in the refrain, and the language is poetic. Curiously, the line "A long long time ago" turns up in one other Beatles song, 'Your Mother Should Know'.

'The Long and Winding Road' is a ballad song in E♭ major, around 63 BPM, and it owes something to Ray Charles and gospel. This is one of only 5 Beatles records in that key, the earliest of them 'Girl'. It makes room for an orchestral group, a habit 3 years old by this point, and 16 songs deep. Then, listen to the shape and you find it never settles into verses and choruses. Interestingly, the chords run Fm → B♭7 → E♭ → E♭7 → A♭, a shape 'Real Love' also uses, there as Fm → B♭ → E♭ → E♭7/D → A♭. 'Good Night' plays D7 → G → Bm → Em and 'Golden Slumbers' plays G7 → C → Em → Am, the same progression in different keys, which this song also makes.

Tracked at Apple Studios during the Get Back sessions with Billy Preston, the guest musician, on organ. Spector added the orchestral and choir overdubs at EMI Studios a year later. The Beatles started it in January 1969 and finished it in April 1970, and the Blüthner grand piano was played by Paul McCartney. Only four Beatles recordings have been through wall of sound, and this is one. Two songs came off that day's tapes, the 187th and 188th of the career.

McCartney wrote this one and sang it. There is a role swap on it, Lennon on 6 string bass, as on 'Helter Skelter' and 'Dig It'. It has its producer on an instrument (Phil Spector). Billy Preston on electric piano came in to play on it. Strings, brass and woodwind sit behind the track, and the record has a Lennon on Fender VI six-string bass.

This track was issued as a US-only single in May 1970 and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Not released as a UK single. You can hear it in the Let It Be film too, and on the soundtrack. This song was the 11th of the 12 records the Beatles released in that year, and the 213th they ever made.