"And Still They Lead Me Back"

So I've been listening to the Beatles pretty much non-stop since Friday night. Why? I can't really explain (though I feel no need to explain why I'm listening to the Beatles--they just make good music. It's pretty self-explanatory).

The trick is that I've only been wanting to listen to very specific albums and very specific versions of certain songs.

Lemme explain--the final Beatles album released, Let It Be, has a song on it called "The Long and Winding Road." This is actually one of the more contentious songs in the Beatles' catalogue. Why? Because of what Phil Spector, one of their producer/mixer guys did to it.

See, the original tune was recorded during the ill-fated Get Back/Let It Be sessions, which means it was supposed to be a very back-to-basics song. Fair enough. Piano, bass, guitar, drums, vocals. Simple, right? Well, then Phil Spector got hold of it during post-production, and made a mess of the whole thing by adding strings, horns, and a freakin' choir. Spector managed to turn what was an emotional, honestly-delivered song with poignant lyrics and a beautiful melody into overly-sentimental clap-trap. Which isn't to say the Spector version is bad, per se; with the exception of Revolution #9, which is less a song and more a sonic collage of some sort (or whatever the hell you want to call that experimental crap Lennon did). It's just that the un-Spectored version is far superior, yet was never released until the Anthology series came out back in 1995. Thankfully, Anthology 3 contains the un-altered original version of "The Long and Winding Road," and it's great. Damn-near perfect, you could even say.

Anyway, the point of that rambling historical account was that I've been wanting to hear the original version of "The Long and Winding Road" ever since Friday, when I watched a Paul McCartney Live DVD I got for Christmas last year. It's the companion piece to his Back in the U.S. double-disc live set (yes, this is the concert I didn't get to go to back in October 2002. Yes, I'm still pissed). It's got a version of "The Long and Winding Road" that he did on the last night of the tour and choked up because of his crew being all sentimental and stuff. Very touching and affecting, but I wanted more than ever to hear the original version after that.

Well, I dug out Anthology 3 and got my proverbial shwerve on. But, as often happens with the Beatles (and many other groups I'm obsessed with), that one song was not enough. I wanted more latter-day Beatles now. So I started playing Abbey Road and Let it Be relentlessly, and gave the ol' White Album (aka The Beatles) a couple of spins over the weekend. All of this adds up to two things:

(1) I'm really, really ready to hear the new Let it Be...Naked that was released a few weeks ago. Sadly, I have to wait until Christmas, when dad or I one gets it.

(2) I'm in the mood to listen to early Harrision solo stuff. Why? "The Long and Winding Road" isn't a Harrison tune, it's a McCartney tune through and through. Well, in the process of listening to Anthology 3, I heard a couple of Harrison's late Beatles tunes, and a couple of songs that wouldn't surface until George's solo debut, All Things Must Pass. So now I really want to listen to All Things Must Pass. This would be just fine, except that Clif swiped my copy of it (which I'd copied off of Dad's original CDs a couple of years ago, and habitually listened to like a crack addict going back for another hit day after day) the last time I was in Clarksville, and I forgot to grab Dad's while I was at home Thursday. So I'm George-less, which is annoying as hell.

The moral of the story--I really need to get all the Beatles/solo Beatles stuff on CD for myself so I don't have to keep borrowing from Dad, and so Clif will stop stealing my copies. As it stands, he stole all my copies of the Beatles albums (I still own a couple of the albums myself, and still miraculously have my old copies of Let it Be and Magical Mystery Tour) a couple of years ago. Well, now that he has them, he can't steal them again, right? Perfect time to get my own original copies.

Besides, I'll be heading off to another grad school soon. Who knows exactly where that school will be. All I know for sure is that it won't be close. Long story short, I'll be too far away to borrow many of Dad's CDs anymore, and that's sad in a way. It's always been nice to be able to dig through his collection when I'm at home; I won't be able to do that anymore if I'm going to school half a country (or across an ocean) away.

So, to recap--"The Long and Winding Road" is a good song, if you can find the un-adulterated version. Latter-day Beatles work is really good, if you like the very precise production they used and can stand the rather meloncholy sense you get by listening to it and realizing they were falling apart at the seams as a band and that there's no chance of them ever making music again.

Now that everyone's thoroughly depressed (or at least, I am), I'm gonna go back to listening to Anthology 3. "Glass Onion" is next. Woo!

Oh, on a semi-related note, I got new headphones last night after work, so that crisis has been weathered. Say what you will about the faceless corporate machine, 24-hour Wal-Marts are convenient.

~chaos cricket

Song of the Moment: The Beatles, "Glass Onion"