A poignant journey through roads traveled and moments past, captured in a single, soulful medley.
When we speak of the golden age of pop music, of those years when the transistor radio was a portal to another world, we often talk in absolutes. We remember the colossal hits, the anthems that defined a generation. But a deeper dive, a loving excavation of the record store’s dusty crates, reveals treasures that were perhaps less celebrated at the time, yet hold a powerful, quiet beauty. One such gem is a single that appeared on the fringes of the American musical landscape, a song that brought together two of the most emotionally resonant ballads ever written, under the tender and knowing voice of a man who had already helped shape the sound of the 1960s. That single was Mark Lindsay‘s “The Long and Winding Road / Yesterday,” released on Columbia Records in 1970.
This song, which appeared on Lindsay‘s first solo album, Silver Bird, was not a commercial success by any measure, failing to crack the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Yet, for those who heard it, it was a moment of reflection, a quiet echo in a year that was marked by change and division. At the time of its release, Mark Lindsay was at a pivotal point in his career. The flamboyant, Revolutionary War-attired frontman of Paul Revere & The Raiders was in transition, seeking to shed the bubblegum pop image that had made him a teen idol. His solo efforts, like the Top 30 hit “Arizona”, were a bid for a more serious, reflective sound. The choice to cover two Beatles songs, released in the same year, was a bold, almost audacious move—a direct conversation with a band whose shadow loomed over every artist of the era.
The decision to pair “The Long and Winding Road” with “Yesterday” was a stroke of genius. “Yesterday,” of course, is a song so ubiquitous it feels more like a folk standard than a rock song, a lament for a love that dissolved with the morning light. It’s a song about the sudden, shocking finality of an ending. “The Long and Winding Road,” on the other hand, is a farewell to a different kind of journey—the slow, arduous, and sometimes painful path to a destined conclusion. It is a song about persistence and the weight of history. By weaving these two narratives together, Lindsay‘s single becomes something more than a simple cover. It’s a meditation on loss and memory itself, a philosophical statement delivered with a soft-spoken grace.
For those of us who came of age in that tumultuous era, listening to this medley is like flipping through an old photo album. You see the joy and exuberance of youth, captured in the Raiders’ electrifying garage rock hits like “Kicks” and “Good Thing,” and then you come across a later photograph, perhaps a little faded, of a man looking back. Mark Lindsay’s performance here is stripped of the youthful swagger, replaced by a deep, world-weary poignancy. His voice is a thread that connects these two masterpieces, not with the ornate orchestral flourish that Phil Spector infamously added to The Beatles’ version, but with a raw, almost intimate sincerity. He doesn’t try to outshine the originals; instead, he pays them a quiet, heartfelt tribute, inviting the listener to sit with him and simply reflect. It’s an introspective piece of music for an audience that was just beginning to understand that the roads they had traveled were indeed long, and that the yesterdays they were living would one day become the stuff of their own cherished memories.