Talk:The Long and Winding Road

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[edit] This page can crash Mozilla

All attempts to do a Print Preview of this article's page (NOT this discussion page) on Mozilla at a display ratio other than "Shrink to Fit" cause Mozilla to crash. I don't know enough about HTML and web-design to know how to fix this. Perhaps someone else could fix what is wrong.

[edit] Article content location

Suggest including this on the Beatles page or on a Beatles miscleaneous topics page.

There are a bunch of articles about Beatles songs...they should probably go on their respective albums' articles though. Adam Bishop 05:53, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with well-done articles on particular, notable songs; care needs to be taken not to repeat too much of the information already present in the album or artist listing, though. Jgm 15:44, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

This is a very good article, and I also see nothing wrong with articles on important and well-known songs, but this article, in my opinion, goes well beyond the scope of the song "The Long and Winding Road". Perhaps the information not directly related to the song could go on a separate breakup of the Beatles page? I'm sure a lot of other information could be added to such a page. Or else make a clear "Breakup" section in the History of the Beatles article, and transfer some of this information there? -R. fiend 16:07, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've done an edit with R.'s comments in mind; specifically I've tried to limit the material to the song, with just enough framing info for context. Much of what I cut out would be a valuable addition to the Let It Be article, I think, or, as R. suggests, the History of the Beatles article. I've also made some general structure and wording changes and copy edits and added some material from a primary source (Lewishon's book). There are still some awkward bits (ie. the explanation of the difference between the Billboard and Cashbox charts) that could use fixing.

To quote: "McCartney claimed that his longstanding dissatisfaction with the released version of "The Long and Winding Road" (and the entire Let It Be album) was the catalyst for his decision." But isn't a catalyst something that speeds a process up? How can longstanding dissatisfaction, thirty years or so, be a catalyst? Brendanfox 04:07, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Break up reasons

What were the other five reasons he cited in court to break up the Beatles? -Rwv37 05:38, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] OnStar commercial

This is kinda old, so it'll be a bit hard to verify, but I believe that an instrumental version was the background music for an OnStar commercial a few months ago ("few" is used loosely, as I don't know exactly when it was). It was the commercial where there were a whole bunch of kids (separately) telling about their various experiences with OnStar and how it saved their family members, etc. Can anyone confirm or deny this? Does anyone even know what commercial I'm talking about? —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 09:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] linking to copyvio

I have again removed external links from this article to material in violation of copyright, per #5 under the "Links to be used occasionally" section at Wikipedia:External links. Performances and transcriptions of lyrics are protected by copyright. Unless the owner of the copyright has placed the material on the web themselves, or approved its publication on some unofficial website, it should not be linked from Wikipedia. -- Mikeblas 02:20, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Link rot

some of the citations are suffering from link rot, being new to wikia I did not continue further <notably reference 8> 75.15.195.164 20:38, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anthology 3 and Let It Be… Naked

The version on Anthology 3 is the same take which received Spector's overdubs, whereas the Let It Be Naked version is a different take, previously unreleased. This information is correctly stated on the Let It Be… Naked page. Sonitus 04:13, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Authority does not equal quality

The following quote - and the article it is quoted from - is a prime reason why "quoting authorities" is simply not good enough to create a viable reference.

>The song takes the form of a piano-based ballad, with an unconventional structure and some of the most inventive and sophisticated chord changes heard in The Beatles' catalogue. The song's home key is in E-flat major but spends ample time in its relative minor, the key of C minor.[2]

To put it crudely, it's wack BS. The "unconventional structure" is Verse/Verse/Bridge/Verse/Repeat last verse.

The "sophisticated chord changes" are purely diatonic, with a couple of dominant seventh chords and a single altered bass (Ab chord over Bb bass), in one key. The only "relative minor" in the song is the first phrase of each verse, which is sung over a minor chord. Only in the most strict interpretation of a small part of the classical music tradition does a single minor chord define a minor tonality.

The rest of the "Let It Be" album is heavily influence by the Beatles early rock influences, so in the context of the album, it sounds sophisticated, but compared to the songwriting on Abbey Road, the White Album, - anything post-LSD, to be blunt - it is a simple, straightforward song. No key changes, no altered notes, no "jazz" chords, nothing special except Paul McCartney's ability to deploy such simple materials in an elegant, appropriate fashion.

Perhaps I'm not sufficiently bowing down to Pollack's authority, but his article in general reminds me of A.J. Weberman's obsessive projection into Dylan's music, more so than mainstream musical analysis.

24.17.180.126 09:28, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I may not be as musically knowledgeable as you, but I had much the same reaction. I've always been intrigued by unusual song structures (I wrote a recent blog entry on the topic), and when I read those words in the article, I stopped short. I had to listen to the song again, and I found--as you did--that it has a perfectly standard structure consisting of verses, a bridge, and a short instrumental section substituting for a repeat of the bridge. I suppose one could argue that the verse itself has slightly irregular qualities (which might be what this critic was referring to). But "irregular" isn't the same as "unusual" or "exceptional." As you indicate, the song is nothing compared to the experimentation that characterized much of the later Beatles catalog. marbeh raglaim 10:47, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scoring

I'd be curious to know the exact scoring of the orchestra. I'm surprised to see no mention of a French horn, as several times it really sounds like that to me. The notes are far too high for a trombone, and too mellow (to my ears) for a trumpet. Perhaps a trumpet using a loose plunger or hat or something? Can't find much on the web, which doesn't prove much. This refers to a 36 piece orchestra plus vocalists, whereas our article makes it 34: 18+4+4+3+3+2 . Stevage 06:04, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conflicting info

In the intro, the article currently reads:

It became The Beatles' 33rd and last number-one song in the United States on June 13, 1970.

Then later it reads:

On 13 June, it became The Beatles' twentieth and final number one single in America, according to Billboard magazine

Would somebody like to clarify this asap? I tried a quick google but I'm apparently incompitent (hence the mispelling of both incompetent and misspelling). Cheers, Rothery 22:55, 18 May 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Cleaning

This article needs a good clean with a stiff brush. --andreasegde (talk) 17:54, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I have changed a few things. --andreasegde (talk) 18:08, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I added a missing citation as request on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject The Beatles. While doing so, I noticed that there were a few references to Craig Cross' defunct website. I think Cross took the website down when he decided to publish the book that is also referenced in this article and contains all the material that used to be on his site. I have the book, and I will fix the refs today or soon.
BUT...
The citations in this article are a bit of a mess. I prefer a single "Notes" section where the first reference to a book (for example) lists the complete information and subsequent references (perhaps to different pages in the book) use a shorter entry. Other people evidently like all the Notes entries to be short, and they add a References section that gives the full details. When I edit an article, I try to follow whichever method is already used on the page. In this article, both methods are used, which makes it hard to decide how to add new citations. In addition, the formatting is pretty sloppy. Rather than complain here, I'd prefer to just fix it, but the article has been getting a fair bit of attention lately and I don't want to step on any toes.
Anyway, for the short-term, I'll volunteer to fix the Cross website references, converting them to references to his book, but will await further comment by other editors before doing anything else.
John Cardinal (talk) 16:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
You're right about the references being sloppy. You should go ahead and change them as you think fit, John. I must say it's refreshing to talk about references and the quality of them, and to have (hopefully) passed the POV, vandalism, unreferenced and supposition remarks phase in an article. --andreasegde (talk) 13:14, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

(outdent)OK, part two. I cleaned up some of the citations, mostly Craig Cross stuff but others, too. There are still some problems:

  1. One of the statements supported by the Cross web site (defunct) are not covered by the Cross book as far as I can tell. Evidently, the content of the book does not match the web site exactly, or some prior editor's interpretation of the Cross text doesn't match mine. In any case, I left that citation in place. It's the only one that remains as a link to Cross' site.
  2. The Badman and Miles "Diary" sources/cites are a little confusing. They include published book elements (ISBN, etc.), but the cites are to online versions. Meanwhile, there are full "Notes" entries for both, and a "References" entry that seems to be for the Miles version, but has a different year, a different title, etc. I think the References entry should be removed.
  3. The diary entries don't always support the assertions for which they are cited. For example, the article says "On the 1976 Wings Over the World Tour, where it was one of the few Beatles songs played, it was performed on piano in a sparse and effective arrangement using a horn section", and the source is the Badman diary for 1975. If you actually go read that chapter, it says that McCartney performed the song on his 75/76 World Tour, but it says nothing about the being "performed on piano in a sparse and effective arrangement using a horn section." So--that statement is unsupported unless someone has a different source.

So far, the more I look, the more issues I find. They're mostly minor stuff, but fixing some of them may result in article content changes. John Cardinal (talk) 18:42, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

andreasegde, re: comments above about it being "refreshing to talk about references ...", I completely agree. I appreciate what you've done to clean up the article and I wish I had made that point above. John Cardinal (talk) 13:43, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
There is an old English saying about "I wish I had...". The reply is, "But you will John, you will", meaning that maybe you didn't do it in the past, but you will certainly do it in the future, which is a very nice compliment, and very positive. --andreasegde (talk) 19:41, 29 November 2007 (UTC)