Crying for the Day ...

Clockwise from top left:
John Lennon, Paul McCartney,
RIngo Starr, George Harrison

... the sad day, that is, when the world learned the Beatles had broken up.

Paul McCartney filed suit for the dissolution of the Beatles' contractual partnership on December 31, 1970, and the devastating news was finally out for all to cry over. But the Fab Four had pretty much stopped functioning as a unit sometime much earlier. John Lennon had announced his departure to the rest of the group on September 20, 1969, but had agreed to withhold public announcement for a time. His private heads-up came as the group was recording their last studio album, Abbey Road.

But dissension was obviously rife as early as January 1969, as the Beatles were filming the recording of their Let It Be studio album. That album, recorded before Abbey Road, had to be put on the shelf and wasn't released until May 8, 1970. The film shows the Beatles exhibiting their hurt feelings with one another during the recording of it.

But the film had its transcendent moments, such as when the Beatles performed Paul's marvelous song, The Long and Winding Road:

This video manages to overlay the strings and other instrumentation that were added by record producer Phil Spector to the final version of the track after the fact. In the actual film, they were not heard. You will get arguments that Spector's horns and strings ruined the song — Paul notably hated what Spector did. I'm neutral about that subject, but I think the video reveals what I do care about, which is how beautiful the song is.

***

Warning: the following gets very technical ...

One reason it's beautiful is the way Paul's melody strategically wanders between the official home key of E-flat major (Eb) and the relative minor of that key, c minor (c). These two keys use the same set of notes in their scales:

• (Eb F G Ab Bb C D Eb) for Eb
• (C D Eb F G Ab Bb C) for c

But as a major key, Eb is characteristically upbeat; c, as a minor key, is melancholy.

Here's the first verse, along with its chords:

I've shown in blue when the melody touches the note C, which is the tonic note in the key of c minor, and in green when it touches the note E-flat, which is the tonic note in the key of E-flat major. Clearly, Paul's melody spends a lot of time revolving around and often landing on the note C, which shows up at (or near) the end of every line of the verse ... except the last, when E-flat finally reasserts its dominance. (The "be - fo - o - ore" that ends a previous line also ends on E-flat, and then in the next line the C minor tonality reasserts itself.) So the ear becomes unsure what the key of the piece actually is.

This is a sophisticated melody, and the the chords that undergird it are likewise sophisticated.

If you check out the detailed analysis by Alan W. Pollack — see the Section-by-Section Walkthrough of the Verse section of the song — you will find that he renames some of these chords. For example:

• Ab/Bb becomes Bb7/9/11
• C#/Eb becomes Eb7

(Some chords that have "7" after them in the verse as shown above lose the "7" with Pollack; some that don't have a "7" gain one. Whenever there is a "7" after a chord name, it means a "seventh" chord; the ordinary chord, a three-note "triad," adds an important extra note that adds "color" to the chord.)

Here is a table giving the chords as I've named them above, Pollack's names for them, and the functions Pollack attributes to them:

Keep in mind that the key of the music is Eb major. In fact, the last chord shown in the table is Eb, meaning an Eb major chord. It's the triad of three notes built on the tonic note of the song's true key, Eb, and includes the notes (Eb G Bb). In Roman numerals, it's the I chord. It is typical of chord progressions that they wind up on I.

Simple chord progressions accordingly use chords that "point toward" I. But this isn't a simple chord progression. Paul intentionally sets things up so that the ear becomes quickly unsure of the song's key. Is it Eb major, or is it c minor?

The Eb major scale's notes are (Eb F G Ab Bb C D Eb), and the note C — which is the tonic note for the c minor scale — is its sixth note. Paul sets up two internal chord progressions that "point toward" the minor triad that has that note, C, as its root note. This is the triad called Cm or c. Since its root is the sixth note of the Eb major scale, its Roman numeral is vi. The vi is shown in lowercase because this triad contains the notes (C F Ab), and it is a minor triad, not a major triad. The Roman numerals for major triads are shown in uppercase.

The two internal progressions that point toward vi are shown in the table with a reddish background. They're complicated. To be fully understood, they demand a fair amount of music theory. But notice: in each case, the final vi chord is preceded by two chords whose functions are shown partly in parentheses. For example, the immediately preceding Gm or g chord is shown as having function "iii (v-of-vi)." The "of-vi" part tells which chord this one points toward: vi.

So the immediately earlier Ab chord functions as "IV (VI-of-vi)" and likewise implies that the vi chord is soon to come.

In the second progression leading to vi in the table above, just before Ab as "IV (VI-of-vi)" comes C#/Eb, alias Eb7. Its function is "I (V of IV)." So it points toward IV, and sure enough, the very next chord is IV. That chord's secondary function — the one shown in parentheses — is (VI-of-vi), so it in turn points toward vi.

You can see the pattern: often, you can connect the primary (or only) function of a chord with the "of-___" of the preceding chord's secondary function (if there is one).

Now look at the first internal chord progression in the table above that leads ultimately to vi. It's more complicated. Ignoring the initial Eb chord, which rapidly turns into Eb7, notice that the chord with the function "I (V-of-IV)" doesn't lead immediately to the "IV (VI-of-vi)" chord, as in the other example. It first uses an Ab chord as plain, unadorned IV. Only then — at the beginning of "will never disappear" — does this Ab chord turn magically into "I (V-of-IV)." What Pollack is saying is that the very same chord that was heard simply as IV at the end of the preceding phrase ("that leads to your door") has shape-shifted into a IV chord that now has taken on a secondary function: it now points the ear toward vi.

In both these internal chord progressions, when the vi chord is finally arrived at, Paul is singing (or is just about to sing) a note C in the melody. These internal progressions conspire with the melody itself to cast doubt that the scale of the music is really a major scale, Eb major in particular. Instead, the ear is temporarily fooled into believing it's hearing a melancholy c minor scale.

And how fitting! After all, the words of the verse are suggesting that the singer hasn't yet made it "to your door." Maybe he never will. Maybe he's stuck on the "long and winding road" forever. It isn't until the final phrase of the verse ("lead me to your door") that the singer places his trust in a good outcome once and for all — and both the melody and the chords wind up where they "should" wind up: the tonic note and the I chord of the Eb major scale.

Great song, Paul!

*****

P.S. The analysis I have used from Alan W. Pollack is part of his series covering every Beatles recording. It makes fascinating reading ... but it has to be consumed like fine wine, in small sips. For those who want to dip regularly into Pollack's musical wisdom, Ger Tillekens lists every one of Pollack's analyses, in order of each album's or single's original release date, here.