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| Image from discogs.com I claim Fair Use |
With a great deal of
humility, I offer that my preferred version of “The Long and Winding Road”,
released on May 11 in 1970, is the Phil Spector reproduction.
I just sensed a disturbance in the
gravitational field of all of Beatledom.
I was fourteen when I
first heard the song on WLS radio station of Chicago. This was the formative
version of the recording to which I was introduced. Other people may have had
their first experience from the “Let It Be…Naked” album of 2003 which. I admit, had a
simpler, more faithful to original recording production.
But the Spector
reproduction to my fourteen-year-old self, having followed the Beatles since
that first Ed Sullivan show, seemed like the Beatles at full maturity.
From the
stage-performable “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, to the studio intense “Tomorrow
Never Knows”, to trend-setting ‘Hey Jude”, this Spector reproduction of LWR,
with his fullness of choir and orchestra, which seems to escort the listener
from the end of one lyrical phrase to the beginning of the next, causes the
group to rise above ordinary pop/rock music to unprecedented cultural apex.
Yes, those were my actual
words that I wrote in my journal at the time of my first
hearing the song. I was hoping to become a rock music critic.
As to McCartney’s lyric,
I will say that the best phrase ever I have heard in a pop/rock song follows…
“The wild and windy night
that the rain washed away has left a pool of tears, crying for the day. Why
leave me standing here, let me know the way.”
Much respect to those who
prefer the original recording done in January of 1969.
But to reinforce my argument, the Beatles pretty much shelved that music and left it somewhat
abandoned. I see no transgression committed by Allen Klein or Phil Spector in making
LWR an even better recording than the concurrent “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, which seems to have similar production value.
I mean no transgression in my preference for the Spector reproduction.
Peace, all.
