The Long and Winding Road – Brent Carter
Recorded on September 11, 2010, original version recorded on January 30, 1969.
Brent Carter: Vocals
Roger Greenawalt: Ukulele
Produced by Roger Greenawalt at Shabby Road Studio in Brooklyn, NY
Essay by Roger Greenawalt
About the Song
The Long And Winding Road is a valedictory of unrequited love. A devotional from Paul McCartney to John Lennon. It is the best kind of beauty, a useless beauty, a beauty dashed against the rocks uselessly. The love of your love of your life is never coming back. Which makes this piece so poignant, so beautiful, so tragic, and true.
The Long And Winding Road, along with Hey Jude, Let It Be, and Maybe I’m Amazed, comprises the soulful heart of Paul McCartney’s awesome songwriting achievement. These pieces, The McCartney/Negro Spirituals, were composed circa 1968-1971, the period of maximum turmoil, anger, pain and frustration for him professionally. The band was dying, against his will. To co-create this unprecedented juggernaut of fame, fortune, and power, and then to have that platform snatched away from you by a sullen, unstable partner on heroin, must have been a terrible experience. It wasn’t fair. In his mind, I am sure McCartney, like many spurned lovers before him, felt as if he was doing his best, unable to realize that the harder he pressed for action, commitment, and cooperation, the faster and more completely Lennon withdrew from him. To John, it came down to a gut determination. Paul was just too uncool to hang around with anymore.
Paul McCartney, just wasn’t, and still isn’t, cool. A musical genius? Yes. An entertainment business visionary? True. But cool? Not cool. Paul, like Sally Field, cares desperately, too desperately, about being liked. Caring what people think is patently uncool. Kurt Cobain was cool. Keith Richards is cool. They didn’t and don’t give a fuck. Paul McCartney, not cool.
But boy oh boy can he write. And sing. And play. This song is amazing. The chord progression is wondrous, hovering between minor and major, achingly sad and pretty. Paul nails the Celtic sense of beloving the beauty of the world through a mist of tears. The original (superior) Phil Spector orchestration featuring a female chorus in the sky-high soprano register evokes Grand Opera in its utter pathos. This is a great unrequited love dying here; I’m talking serious love died in vain. The love affair between Lennon and McCartney is one FOR THE AGES. And what they made together, like all magic, was inexplicably bigger than both of them. So we mourn, and celebrate.
“The Long And Winding Road, that leads, to your door, will never disappear.” This is so typical of the spurned lover. Everything he says is wrong; it is the opposite of true. The Long And Winding Road may lead to a door, but that door is marked Exit. Your love must disappear. This is what love does. Love is not about the lover at all, it is an awareness. It is all in your mind, like 99.999% of life. The lover is just a prod, a pole to react against, or a hole to dive into, which helps you remember things that are always true anyway, with or without them.
“I’ve seen that road before, it always leads me here, leads me to your door.” There is a subconscious flaw here, a telltale tiny mistake where McCartney stops believing his own lies for a split second. There is no road, it does not exist, everything is over. He is pretending to himself and for public consumption, putting on the reflexive brave PR face. The flaw is the word “that”. He should say, “I’ve seen this road before it always leads me here.” But he says that road; a road over the rainbow somewhere, not the road he is on…here we see the soggy truth leaking through a wet tissue of lies. And in the end it makes me like and pity Paul all the more, he is unable to admit the most basic elemental truths about a painful situation. So human, so weak, so real, so forgivable.
“The wild and windy night, that the rain, washed away, has left a pool of tears.” That is just exquisite. The rhythm of the melody is so pensive, so halting, melodically the line ends in tension, the repeating w words wild/windy/washed trailing into the l sounds of “left a pool” and the watery imagery of “rain, washed”, connecting to tears works on a every level. This sentence is like real life too; it ends in “tears”. It is a good description of a final fight. I wish there were witnesses to Lennon and McCartney’s private arguments and most vicious cutting remarks to each other as they broke up. How close did Lennon come to punching him? Did it get physical? I can’t help but think that Lennon just toyed with him. Like a cat with a mouse.
“Many times I’ve been alone and many times I’ve cried. Anyway you’ll never know the many ways I’ve tried.” This is the bridge and only makes sense if the singer understands that the relationship is over. This is another short burst of reality bursting through the fog of denial.
“You left me standing here, a long long time ago. Don’t leave me waiting here, lead me to your door.” Pathetic. Poor bastard. So broken hearted.
McCartney’s name will be known, should our species survive, on distant worlds not yet discovered millions of years hence. This is his undying glory. His work will get to Andromeda by being half of the greatest artistic partnership the human race has yet produced. But his undying shame, his constant albatross, is that he was much the lesser of the two. He will remain alive alone with this awful knowledge, as he has these thirty years gone, and for the next ten or twenty he has left on earth.
In the end, all we have is life and death. John is dead and Paul is not. Why does John always get shot in 1980 and why does Paul always live well into the 21st century?
Paul Is Not Cool Enough To Kill.
The New Improved Roger Version of The Long And Winding Road features the mighty voice of Brent Carter. Brent Carter is a national treasure. He has sung with everybody. He can sing anything. I love it whenever he comes over to record. Never less than stunning. We don’t do it enough. You know how you can tell when someone is really really really good? They are always excellent. And fast. This was done in two takes, each drastically different. We kept the second one. Ten minutes tops.
Jo Jo #
All entertainers want to be liked. They want to be seen–Attention whores, all of them–Vanity at its extreme. This includes YOU. You have talent, and you want your gift to be “liked”. I doubt that you “don’t give a fuck” or I wouldn’t be able to post this comment.
JL, a talented musical genius, was an asshole. People think that’s cool. Then he got murdered. Coolness forever enshrined in glory! Plus, you guys push this narrative to death. That’s what you do. By the way, it ain’t never cool to be murdered. You can bend and stretch it how you want.
JL gave a fuck. Why start a band? Why work to make it big? Why use your talents and expose them to the world and be successful and start a movement and be seen. Why? Because (look at me, look at me). The entertainer’s mantra! All entertainers!
Yes, Paul gave a fuck (no apologies), but the cool thing was he actually didn’t give a fuck–didn’t sign the document, risked being crushed by narrative (even though it hurt); saved his (and subsequently the whole groups’) fortune. He didn’t run away. He kept going. We still like the concerts, buy the music. That makes him happy. It makes us happy. That’s the entertainer’s dream.
Finally, about the songs you dissected – I do believe it an expression of scorching pain: The loss of his mother at 14; the loss of his band-brothers a relationship beginning at 15 and lasting until he was 27. The pain felt the same. He’s carried that weight ever since. For me, that’s the definition of cool. Thumbs up!