Paul McCartney Has Heard Prince's Unreleased Cover of 'The Long and Winding Road' and Wants It Released

Paul McCartney has revealed that he has heard an unreleased recording of Prince covering "The Long and Winding Road", and that he is hoping the late musician's estate can be persuaded to make it public. McCartney disclosed the existence of the recording during an appearance on BBC Radio 2's Tracks of My Years, describing it as a rehearsal take that showcases Prince's guitar playing at its most characteristically forceful.

The story of how McCartney came to hear it is itself an unlikely one. Some time after Prince's death in April 2016, a man McCartney believes was Prince's personal photographer told him that Prince had recorded a version of the Beatles track. McCartney said his initial reaction was skepticism, the song is one of his, and he had no knowledge of Prince ever having performed it. "I said, 'Well, no, that's one of my songs. I don't think he ever did it,'" McCartney recalled on the program. The man pushed back, explaining that the recording came from a rehearsal session, something Prince had been working through in preparation for a performance. He offered to send it over. "He sent it to me and it's really great," McCartney said.

The recording, as McCartney described it, is raw and guitar-forward, "kind of rocky," in his words and demonstrates the kind of physical command of the instrument that made Prince one of the most respected guitarists of his generation regardless of genre. "He plays some really good guitar on it," McCartney said. He was generous in situating Prince within a broader lineage, drawing a direct line to Jimi Hendrix as a formative influence while making clear that Prince developed something entirely his own. "He took a lot from Hendrix, but he was a great player. If you watch him play, he's got that sort of style. Bow! It's just there's something about it. You know he knows that instrument."

McCartney said he has floated the idea of approaching Prince's estate about what might be done with the recording and suggested he could see himself being directly involved in bringing it to release. "I could make it into something really good," he said. The two men were not close during Prince's lifetime, something McCartney reflected on with evident regret. He spoke of Prince in the way people tend to speak about artists whose death cut short something that might have been: a relationship, a collaboration, a conversation that never quite happened. "He's a special guy. It's so sad these people, you know, suddenly he's not here, and it always makes me wish that I'd known him better and that I could sort of say, 'Hey, man, come on. What's going on?' It's such a shame because there's such talents."

Whether the estate will act on McCartney's interest remains an open question. Prince's vault, widely described as containing thousands of unreleased recordings accumulated over decades of compulsive work, has been one of the most closely managed archives in popular music since his death. The estate has shared material selectively and on its own terms, releasing individual tracks and projects at a measured pace rather than opening the archive wholesale. Last month it released "With This Tear," a single drawn from a previously unreleased album project, with further vault material expected to surface later this year.

"The Long and Winding Road" was released in 1970 as the final single from the Beatles' Let It Be album, reaching Number One in the United States. It remains one of McCartney's most recognizable compositions, and the idea of Prince, working through it on guitar in a rehearsal room, far from any official release context, is the kind of detail that tends to lodge itself in the imagination of anyone with an interest in either artist.