Долгая и извилистая дорога (The Long and Winding Road)

1970 single by the Beatles

"The Long and Winding Road" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1970 album Let It Be. It was written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney. When issued as a single in May 1970, a month after the Beatles' break up, it became the group's 20th and final number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States. The main recording of the song took place in January 1969 and featured a sparse musical arrangement of piano, bass, guitar and percussion. When preparing the tapes from these sessions for release in April 1970, producer Phil Spector added orchestral and choral overdubs. Spector's modifications angered McCartney to the point that when he made his case in the English High Court for the dissolution of the Beatles' legal partnership, McCartney cited the treatment of the song as one of six reasons justifying the split. Later versions of the recording with simpler instrumentation were subsequently released by the Beatles.

[[Image:Crossaig north of Carradale on B842, Kintyre. geograph. org. uk 63443. jpg|thumb|250px|left|Coastline of the Kintyre peninsula, where McCartney's farm High Park is situated. He said he drew inspiration from "the calm beauty of Scotland" when writing the song. The composition takes the form of a piano based ballad, with conventional chord changes. The song's home key is E flat major but it also uses the relative C minor. The opening theme is repeated throughout. The song lacks a traditional chorus, and the melody and lyrics are ambiguous about the opening stanza's position in the piece. In this way, according to musicologist Alan Pollack, it is unclear whether the song has just begun, is in the verse, or is in the bridge. He also told his biographer Barry Miles in the 1990s that the song was "all about the unattainable; the door you never quite reach the road that you never get to the end of".

McCartney premiered "The Long and Winding Road" on 7 January 1969 during the Beatles' filmed rehearsals at Twickenham Film Studios. After they abandoned thoughts of returning to public performance, and instead decided to make a new album,

In May 1969, Glyn Johns, who had been asked by the Beatles to compile and mix the Get Back album from the sessions, selected the 26 January recording. The 31 January take, which had slightly different lyrics and was recorded with Johns in an unofficial producer's role, was used in the film, subsequently titled Let It Be.

In early 1970, Lennon and Harrison asked the Beatles' manager, Allen Klein, to turn over the January 1969 recordings to American producer Phil Spector, He later said he was forced into orchestrating "The Long and Winding Road" to cover the poor quality of Lennon's bass playing; Spector also denied that McCartney was not consulted, saying that he had first contacted McCartney about the choice of musical arranger. In his book Revolution in the Head, Beatles scholar Ian MacDonald wrote: "The song was designed as a standard to be taken up by mainstream balladeers It features some atrocious bass playing by Lennon, prodding clumsily around as if uncertain of the harmonies and making many comical mistakes. Lennon's crude bass playing on 'The Long and Winding Road', though largely accidental, amounts to sabotage when presented as finished work." nor did he have any problem in using my arrangement of the string and horn and choir parts when he performed it during 25 years of touring on his own. If Paul wants to get into a pissing contest about it, he's got me mixed up with someone who gives a shit."

The song was released on the Let It Be album on 8 May 1970. On 11 May, only one week before the album's North American release, Apple issued "The Long and Winding Road" as a single in the United States with "For You Blue" on the B side. The single was released in several European countries but not the United Kingdom. In the context of the recent news regarding the Beatles' split, the song captured the sadness that many listeners felt. In the US, "For You Blue" gained sufficient radio airplay for Billboard to chart the two songs together, as a double sided hit. The record was similarly listed as a double A side when it topped Canada's singles chart. On 13 June 1970, it became the Beatles' twentieth and final number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and held the top position for a second week. The band thereby set the all time record for number of chart topping singles on the Billboard Hot 100. The Beatles achieved this feat in a period of less than six and a half years, starting with "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on 1 February 1964, during which they topped the Hot 100 in one out of every six weeks. "The Long and Winding Road" also topped the US charts compiled by Cash Box and Record World, giving the band their 22nd and 23rd number one hits on those charts. The single had a relatively brief run on the Billboard Hot 100 and its contemporary US sales were insufficient for gold accreditation by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In February 1999, "The Long and Winding Road" was certified platinum by the RIAA for sales of 1,000,000.

Let It Be received largely unfavourable reviews from music critics, many of whom ridiculed Spector's use of orchestration, particularly on "The Long and Winding Road". In his album review for Melody Maker, Richard Williams wrote that "Paul's songs seem to be getting looser and less concise, and Spector's orchestrations add to the Bacharach atmosphere. The strings add a pleasant fullness in places, but intrude badly near the end and the harps are too much." Rolling Stones reviewer, John Mendelsohn, was especially critical of Spector's work, saying: "He's rendered 'The Long and Winding Road' virtually unlistenable with hideously cloying strings and a ridiculous choir that serve only to accentuate the listlessness of Paul's vocal and the song's potential for further mutilation at the hands of the countless schlock mongers who will undoubtedly trip all over one another in their haste to cover it." Mendelsohn said that while the song was a "slightly lesser chapter in the ongoing story of McCartney as facile romanticist", "it might have eventually begun to grow on one as unassumingly charming" without Spector's "oppressive mush". In 1973, musicologist and critic Wilfrid Mellers wrote: "The music has a tremendous expectancy Whether or no Paul approved of the plush scoring of 'The Long and Winding Road', it works not because it guys the feeling but because the feeling has integrity." MacDonald said: "With its heart breaking suspensions and yearning backward glances from the sad wisdom of the major key to the lost loves and illusions of the minor, 'The Long and Winding Road' is one of the most beautiful things McCartney ever wrote. Its words, too, are among his most poignant, particularly the reproachful lines of the brief four bar middle section. A shame Lennon didn't listen more generously." According to Williams, writing in his book Phil Spector: Out of His Head, Spector's mistake was in "taking McCartney at his face value" and emphasising the sentimental qualities that George Martin's orchestral arrangements for the Beatles had successfully tempered. Williams added: "Some might say that this track, above all others, epitomises Paul McCartney, and that when Spector sent the saccharine strings sweeping in after the first line of vocal, he was merely highlighting the reality." In a 2003 review for Mojo, shortly after the announcement that McCartney planned to issue "a string less Let It Be", John Harris opined: "As someone who experiences a Proustian rush every time the orchestra crash lands in 'The Long and Winding Road', I can only implore him to think again. Besides, underneath all the Wagnerian gloop, John's bass playing is horribly out of tune " Referring to the version subsequently released without the controversial overdubs, Adam Sweeting of The Guardian said the song was "indubitably improved by the removal of Spector's wall of schmaltz" but "still teeth clenchingly mawkish". In 2011, Rolling Stone placed "The Long and Winding Road" at number 90 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Beatles Songs". On a similar list compiled by Mojo in 2006, the song appeared at number 27. In his commentary for the magazine, Brian Wilson described it as his "all time favourite Beatles track", saying that while the Beatles were "genius songwriters", this song was distinguished by a "heart and soul melody". Wilson concluded: "When they broke up I was heartbroken. I think they should have kept going."

Since the original release in 1970, there have been six additional recordings released by McCartney. After he had resisted playing any of his Beatles songs with his band Wings, he included "The Long and Winding Road" in the set list for Wings' 1975–76 world tour. A live version appeared on the 1976 album Wings over America. McCartney re recorded "The Long and Winding Road" for the soundtrack to his 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street. George Martin produced the track, which includes saxophone accompaniment and what authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter describe as a Las Vegas style musical arrangement. A second new studio recording of the song was made by McCartney in 1989 and used as a B side of single releases from his Flowers in the Dirt album, starting with the "Postcard Pack" vinyl format of "This One". On McCartney's 1989–90 world tour in support of Flowers in the Dirt – his first world tour since 1975–76 – the song was performed with a musical backing that, in Kenneth Womack's view, "clearly attempts to replicate" the strings added by Spector in 1970. The version released on the live album from the tour, Tripping the Live Fantastic, was the only song taken from McCartney's two April 1990 shows at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. The live single version was also included on The 7" Singles Box in 2022. The 1996 Beatles' outtakes compilation Anthology 3 includes the original 26 January 1969 take, without Spector's overdubs. "The Long and Winding Road" provided the working title for Apple executive Neil Aspinall's early version of the documentary film that became the 1995 TV series The Beatles Anthology. The title was changed in the 1990s after Harrison objected to the project being named after McCartney's song. In 2003, McCartney persuaded Starr and Ono (as Lennon's widow) to release Let It Be Naked. Starr said of the Let It Be Naked version: "There's nothing wrong with Phil's strings [on the 1970 release], this is just a different attitude to listening. But it's been 30 odd years since I've heard it without all that and it just blew me away." On his 2009 tours, McCartney played it as part of a nostalgia filled set that included tributes to Linda, Lennon and Harrison. In the case of "The Long and Winding Road", the performance was accompanied by screen projected photos taken by Linda of the family's Arizona ranch, including the horse trail she and McCartney rode shortly before her death.

"The Long and Winding Road" was one of several McCartney compositions from the Beatles era that became widely covered by easy listening artists and persuaded adults that the younger generation's musical tastes had merit. A version by Bud Shank with the Bob Alcivar Singers was released in March 1970 on the album Let It Be, which preceded the Beatles' version by two months (released in May on their twelfth album Let It Be). A version by British singer Ray Morgan reached number 32 on the UK Singles Chart in 1970. As McCartney had originally envisaged, Aretha Franklin released a recording of the song on her 1972 album Young, Gifted and Black, a version that Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield calls "the greatest of all Beatle covers". Cilla Black released a version on her 1973 Martin produced album Day by Day with Cilla; McCartney described this recording as the definitive version of the song. Other versions include a cover by Leo Sayer on the 1976 All This and World War II soundtrack, a 1978 recording by Peter Frampton for Robert Stigwood's film Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a 1999 performance by George Michael at the Royal Albert Hall memorial concert for Linda McCartney, and a 2010 performance at the White House by Faith Hill when Barack Obama gave McCartney the Gershwin Prize. In 1985, a recording by Billy Ocean peaked at number 24 on Billboards Adult Contemporary chart. In 2002, British Pop Idol series one contestants Will Young and Gareth Gates recorded a version released as a double A side with Gates' version of "Suspicious Minds"; the single topped the UK Singles Chart and the Scottish Singles Chart. The duet by itself also reached number 4 in Ireland.