Too bad, because that guitar solo was Richard Carpenter's idea. In fact Richard & Karen loved that solo so much that they hired the guitar player, Tony Peluso, to join their band so he could play it live on stage every night. Richard wrote the song with John Bettis, a very successful Nashville writer. Bettis co-wrote several of their hits, and Richard was influenced by what was happening musically in Nashville at the time. Peluso originally did a softer guitar solo for the song, and Richard stopped him during the session and specifically told him to add the fuzz effect. That's why you hear the solo not only in the instrumental break, but also repeated at the end. And yes it was controversial, it may have been the first time such a solo was done in a power ballad. But that's also the creative genius of the Carpenters.
Having said all this, the song didn't go to #1, perhaps because of that solo. It peaked at #8 in the Hot 100. The band received hate mail because of the guitar solo from fans who felt they had "sold out" and gone "hard rock." Ironically the song charted best in Billboard's Easy Listening chart, where it peaked at #2.
