While it is possible to beat that command with backslashes until it works, I often just give up and make it a shell script, on the grounds that usually by the time I have something that complicated I want to "watch" I ought to be checking it into source control, or at least have it on disk for the next time I want it. For database stuff like that I've had nearly a 100% hit rate of either reusing such things, or at least consulting them later for the crafting of a related command.
Setting a really large $HISTSIZE can accomplish some of this.
Though I'll admit to occasional traumatic moments when my workstation crashes and bash history is polluted with multiple shells filling it and the stuff I've been ctrl-R invoking (recursive reverse search) for months evaporates.
You should set up a simple cron job to backup your history file (to somewhere else in your home directory) on some schedule (hourly?) and then when this happens just have an short alias that restores the last backup.
It's really handy to have stuff in history. But there's a ton of crap I don't need.
What I need to do is get better about scripting the stuff that I'm invoking frequently. Though zsh probably has an extension that does this for you, and scratches your back.
Mind: virtually all my shell scripts start off as one-liners that I've invoked and re-edited (M-x M-e FTFW) until I've realized I have something worth saving.
