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(c) Ian Hammond 1999
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The Beatles Laid Bare, Filmed In Desperate Straits...

They wanted to show they could still be a live band, or did they want to show that they couldn't be a live band... As with most Beatle projects the goals were a ill-defined and subject to be change on a daily basis. Life is something that happens while you're busy making other plans.

The singular affect of the Let It Be sessions was to get them back to playing eight hours a day. They touched on something like three hundred songs. At the end of Let It Be they achieved a new level of suppleness and dexterity in their playing. Abbey Road reflects that.

As with Magical Mystery Tour, neither Lennon nor Harrison showed great interest. Harrison was content to let the sessions complete with only one of his throw-aways recorded. It was only at the last minute that the Threetles returned to the studio to cut I Me Mine.


I Me Mine
This early Threetles track is evidence that three Beatles were always sufficient. Great rock on a Harrison/McCartney song.

Harrison wrote the verse late one night after watching some Austrian marching piece and reflecting on the utter crap he had to live with during the daily pain with the Beatles. Not much later he marched out the door, telling them he'd see them around in the clubs. Laconica Morosa.

Harrison verse combines that plaintiff [sic] voice with his favorite A minor progression. Great rock polyphony in the verse guitar parts, continuing a White Album tradition.

McCartney's chorus shows that he and Harrison could produce a biting rock tone. One of the best little pieces of late rock the band produced, reminding me of the fast version of Revolution and the verse tune/harmony of Drive My Car

Harrison's guitar tone is the best he ever achieved -- perhaps because he had been playing with other people.

Incidentally, George and John's Cry For A Shadow was the first Beatles original recorded; George and Paul's I Me Mine was the last. 

For You Blue
Harrison sang this harmless ditty more as a joke to his fellow Beatles. It had one overriding desirable feature: it was light, breezy and reasonably fast, something the Beatles were in great need of with a song list that included Let It Be, Don't Let Me Down and The Long And Winding Road.

It starts with Harrison's excellent rhythm guitar which is immediately switched off for the rest of the track so that George could redub the lead vocal, leaving Lennon on slide guitar, McCartney on cutesy prepared piano. Starr shows what he can do with a snare drum. No bass.

Otherwise it's just a twelve-bar with a Kinks-like vocal line and respectable rather than brilliant solos. Sweet forgettable blue.

Old Brown Shoe
Recorded after Let It Be for a B-side, this is a more ambitious song than Harrison had released before because of the demand it places on the singer. Again, it follows a White Album tradition, in this case Savoy Truffle.

Harrison was now a thinking singer. To get the special tone in this song, he rerecorded the lead vocal in a corner of the studio to obtain a natural echo. This was George's first vocal session since losing his tonsils (yes, I know that's a rather precious remark).

Harrison played lead along with McCartney's bass part to provide that distinctive bass sound (Harrison designed the lines in the demo). 

Starr's energy is indefatigable. For comparison, have a listen to McCartney's Titanium Man on Venus And Mars which has a similar groove.

Harrison uses two guitars, or two completely different guitar settings in his ferocious solo. This is real guitar playing folks, not just sliding up and down a single guitar string. It's the most complex bit of finger work on a Beatles' solo.

John in particular was audibly roused by this rocker, you can hear him adding hey's and yeah's all over the place, as if he wanted to sing lead himself. It seems to be Lennon adding under-harmony in the bridge and coda.

Old Brown Shoe has a classic Beatles outro with a manic vocal to match the outro of Ticket To Ride, Drive My Car or Lennon's later Surprise Surprise. Watch for the bass being doubled half way through to give the procession a sudden boost.

Harrison complained that Lennon did not participate on his sessions. But, Lennon's guitar part to this song was discarded, as was his contribution to While My Guitar.

Recorded after I Want You, Old Brown Shoe would have been placed on Abbey Road if it hadn't landed on the flip of The Ballad Of John And Yoko.


Abbey Road
Repeat after me: "George Harrison Was The Most Successful Pop Songwriter On The Beatles' Last Album". Something was an obvious A-side. Here Comes The Sun could have been another.

Harrison had it all worked out: preparing demos of the songs, organizing a remake of Something, supervising his own orchestral sessions. The Beatles never worked harder on Harrison tracks before this album. The difference shows.


Something
Something is Harrison's Yesterday. A lyric masterpieces in every department and the ultimate favorite of the ultimate crooner, Frank Sinatra.

The spartan first verse sets the stately pace, as he woo-ooh-oohs us, adding only Georgia strings to the second verse. Harrison discloses his sudden triumphant revelation in the bridge, falling in the arms of his perfect lyric solo, reaching fulfillment in that exhausted last verse, and closing with just a hint of the passion of the bridge (do I get a prize for that prose effort?). 

Something is the Beatle-song where Harrison finally wrote the melody and words to match the seamless architectures he had long been capable of creating. Ray Charles doesn't do it better.

Like Yesterday, the song was a product of a long gestation period. Harrison began work during the White Album sessions. The song begins with the same lick as You Like Me To Much, but here it returns as part of the song and is used to modulate into the bridge and in two forms to complete the song. Harrison's favorite A minor pattern is embedded in the verse ("don't want to leave you now..."). 

The bridge, in A major, returns to his indecision of whether he will have time or not, but the music? The music transfers his passion for the Lord from Long Long Long to a mere mortal, and is hammered into place with Harrison's best solo on one of his own Beatle songs, again launched from the bridge.

Martin finally produces a score which is the equal of Harrison's tone and worthy of, again, a Ray Charles track, the inspiration of much of the Beatles best lyric work. How much the arrangement was Harrison's can be heard on the Anthology demo track. Harrison ran the orchestral session, recording his classic solo in the process.

Harrison has learned how to soften and quieten his voice and really sing in the verse (as in The Inner Light, Within You...). The bridge is strident as in Long Long Long, with the same kind of harmony.

I bet a proud George would have listened to the final version of this song a hundred times at home. 

Here Comes The Sun
George Unplugged: The last of the Clapton pieces, written in Eric's backyard while Harrison was avoiding a Beatle day in the coliseum. Gentle George discovering nature three albums after the rustic retreat in Rishikesh.

The verse has that pristine simplicity we expect of Buddy Holly. Isn't that fantastic strumming between the picking? The short popish chorus has Harrison's signature passing diminished chord.

The bridge comes from Badge, a song Harrison wrote with Clapton (and with a line from Starr). It's based around a flat-side plagal progression as heard in the Hey Joe return section of A Day In The Life or the verse of Maybe I'm Amazed.

Martin must have been surprised to see George dreary Harrison best fulfilling his dream of sophisticated pop. The instrumental section of Here Comes The Sun is easily the most complex piece of playing on a Beatles band track. John Williams' rendition of this song on Martin's In My Life album is stunning, but not more so than the original.

Harrison invents a new wavering voice for this track, you hear it particularly on "and I say". Dylan may have well been an influence.

In 1969 Harrison was able to pull pop songs out of his pocket, probably in a single writing session, while his brothers labored away at pastiches and lachrimae. Here Comes The Sun could have been another A-side or B-side.

Abbey Road
In 1969 Harrison released a Zapple album with two tracks of synthesizer music entitled plainly Electronic Sounds. I have the album and I've managed to listen to all of it at least once. It's very pleasant electronic music characterized by lots of space. It deserves a more in-depth treatment at some later date.

Harrison cements his avant-garde credentials with this album, not that he seems to make much use of these in his post-Beatles existence.