A furious letter sent to Allen Klein from Paul McCartney shows exactly what The Beatles member had wanted from the Let it Be tapes.
McCartney, who had a tumultuous time with the fellow Fab Four members and record label Apple Records following the completion of Abbey Road, sent a letter to Klein warning no one could “add to or subtract” from his works without explicit permission. The furious letter, which saw producer Phil Spector and lawyer John Eastman c.c.’d, noted the four changes McCartney wanted for the Let it Be album. His troubles would continue as Apple Records tried to change the release date of his debut solo album, McCartney. This letter mentions only The Long and Winding Road, with the problems surrounding the recording of the song and its mix highlighted by McCartney.
He wrote: “In future no one will be allowed to add to or subtract from a recording of one of my songs without my permission. I had considered orchestrating The Long and Winding Road but I decided against it. I therefore want it altered to these specifications.” McCartney’s four specifications were as follows:
“Strings, horns, voices and all added noises to be reduced in volume. Vocal and Beatle instrumentation to be brought up in volume. Harp to be removed completely at the end of the song and original piano notes to be substituted. Don’t ever do it again.”
McCartney has been known to intervene when changes to his or The Beatles’ work are made without permission. A use of Twist and Shout in the Matthew Broderick-starring Twist and Shout heard an addition of brass, which McCartney says was a “lousy” choice.
He said: “I liked [the] film but they overdubbed some lousy brass on the stuff! If it had needed brass, we’d had stuck it on ourselves!” Fans of The Long and Winding Road, which received an updated release on Let it Be… Naked, decades after the Spector recording, have since pointed to a specific part of the song they think McCartney took issue with.
A post to the r/Beatles subreddit shed a light on what may have irked the Wings frontman most of all. One user suggested: “He clearly had an issue with specifically the harp.” Another added: “Seriously, the harp is what makes the whole thing sound almost like a parody.
“It’s more like one of those ‘Beautiful Music’ covers of Beatles songs they used to play in supermarkets than an actual Beatles song.” A third added: “The harp is easily the worst thing about the orchestration.”
McCartney's very angry letter to Allen Klein & Phil Spector demanding they undo changes they made to 'The Long And Winding Road'…"don't ever do it again"
byu/rock_attack inbeatles
Some have defended the Spector-mixed version of the song, however, and suggested there is no “ideal arrangement” for The Long and Winding Road.
One user wrote: “The sad reality is there isn’t really an ideal arrangement of the song. The Naked version is perhaps a little undercooked, but Spector’s version is, at least to me, sappy to the point of almost unlistenable. I dream of what a George Martin string arrangement could have been.”
Another added: “I’d say the definitive version of the song (for me) is Wings’ live version from 1975 – 1976, it’s a lovely arrangement, and the brass does a much better job than the whole orchestra thing, the classic Wings harmonies also fit the song pretty well.”
