As the 1960s came to an end, so too did The Beatles. Tensions between the band had been rising since the death of their manager, Brian Epstein, in 1967. The songwriting partnership at the centre of the band had been breaking down for years, as John Lennon began to prefer collaborating with Yoko Ono and Paul McCartney often couldn’t seem to see past his own ideas. A breakup was bubbling beneath the surface.
But even when it seemed like things were falling apart between the Fab Four, there as still music to be made. Putting their internal issues and frustrations with one another aside, The Beatles banded together to create the fittingly titled Let It Be in 1970, which would become their final full-length offering as a four-piece.
Perhaps expectedly, there were certain songs on the album that were born out of the urgency and emotion of their impending break-up. As Lennon recalled to David Sheff in All We Are Saying, McCartney penned several songs in this way, including two of the album’s singles, the iconic ‘Let It Be’ and the emotional ‘The Long and Winding Road’.
“Paul again,” Lennon said of the latter, “He had a little spurt just before we split.” McCartney’s former songwriting partner went on to suggest that the “shock of Ono and what was happening gave him a creative spurt,” spawning the two hit singles. “That was the last gasp from him,” Lennon concluded.
McCartney certainly was affected by the inevitability of a Beatles break-up, scrambling to find ways to keep the band together. Let It Be was an example of this, one that would fail in its goal to reunite the band with a return to their roots, but one that would excel as a farewell to the biggest band of all time.
One of the songs McCartney penned during his so-called “last gasp” was the placating ‘Let It Be’, a track inspired by a dream McCartney had about his late mother. She encouraged him to “let it be,” which became the central refrain of the song. It makes sense that the song was born out of McCartney’s final creative spurt with The Beatles, as its lyrics could very easily be applied to their situation.
Against all of McCartney’s efforts to keep the Fab Four going, he would eventually have to stop forcing something that was no longer there, to let it be. Fans, too, could take solace in McCartney’s whispered words of wisdom.
The second song McCartney penned during this creative spurt was ‘The Long and Winding Road’, a lush orchestral track with emotive vocals and soaring strings. Somewhere amidst the grand instrumentation, McCartney sings of a road that leads him to the same door each time, no matter how many times he tries to evade it.
This, too, could be seen as McCartney tackling the issues the band were going through in his songwriting. No matter how hard he tried to get The Beatles back on track, they were always on a long and winding road that would end in a break-up, with a few final hits along the way.
The impending break-up of The Beatles produced some final all-time classics from the band, as McCartney took his “last gasp” with the band before he was left to let it be.
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