The Beatles song that Paul McCartney walked out on: “Don’t worry, I’ll do the overdubs”
The ending of The Beatles was never going to be easy for anyone to deal with. Outside of the massive void that the Fab Four left in pop music with their split, every one of the members would end up having to put the pieces back together in their solo careers as well, each having a different approach to music once they left their musical brothers. While Abbey Road marked the last time the band members would play nice in the studio together, Paul McCartney had had enough when working on one classic track.
It’s not like the tensions hadn’t been boiling over before. As far back as the sessions for Sgt Pepper, the group were becoming testy with what would be featured on their albums, with McCartney taking the reins to create the lavish concept album. Although The White Album showed every member getting their material on four sides of vinyl, deciding what to keep off the album became a sore spot, including heated arguments among every member and leasing out different studios so they could record separately.
As the band settled into Twickenham Studios to complete the album ultimately titled Let It Be, the lack of belief in the material caused most of it to stay on the shelf for a few years before being released after they had broken up. Not wanting to leave their audience on a sour note, McCartney helped convince his mates to come together for one final album with George Martin at the helm.
After years of being kept at bay, George Harrison would walk away with the most outstanding tracks on Abbey Road, featuring the perfect love song ‘Something’ and the folk-pop radiance of ‘Here Comes the Sun’. Since John Lennon had been making avant-garde music with Yoko Ono around this time, it only made sense that his contributions were a lot more artistic than what everyone else brought to the table.
Based on the Chuck Berry song ‘You Can’t Catch Me’, Lennon’s song ‘Come Together’ opens the album as a brilliant showcase of the band’s technique. While McCartney may have been responsible for developing the famous bassline that ties the song together, he had no time to work with his bandmates in the mixing stages.
As studio engineer Geoff Emerick recalled, McCartney was unhappy with how the track was headed and elected to leave his bandmates to finish it. Having recorded the bassline, McCartney reached his breaking point when playing the electric piano line in the song’s midsection.
In Emerick’s book Here There and Everywhere, he explained, “[Paul] would normally be manning the keyboards even if they were recording a Lennon song. Finally, in some frustration, he blurted out, ‘What do you want me to play on this track John?’. John’s response was, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do the overdubs on this’. For a moment, I thought there was going to be an explosion. Instead, he contained himself, shrugged his shoulders, and simply walked out of the studio–one of the few times he left a session early.”
Another similar moment would come with ‘She Said, She Said’. The track was inspired by an unwelcome meeting with Peter Fonda while tripping. But, in the studio, things were a little tough. Though Lennon had each section of the song completed, it took Harrison to turn it into a completed work, arranging each piece so it flowed like a natural melody rather than sounding forced-in.
After a few disagreements in the studio, though, McCartney decided he had enough of the rest of The Fab Four, storming out of the studio and leaving the rest of the group to complete the song without him. As Macca remembers: “I think we had a barney or something, and I said, ‘Oh, fuck you!,’ And they said, ‘Well, we’ll do it.’ I think George played bass”.
Even though Abbey Road would give the world some of the finest work The Beatles ever made, the tension between McCartney and Lennon finally seemed to reach a breaking point. While they may have been able to make beautiful music together, just like in the old days, they were slowly drifting apart creatively.
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