“Let me just do this”: The Beatles song John Lennon forbid Yoko from watching
Any Beatles fan has always had to grapple with the age-old question regarding Yoko Ono’s involvement with the group. Though she has been the one who divided the world the minute that she walked into Abbey Road Studios with John Lennon, she never seemed responsible for the band’s demise as much as they were for drifting apart creatively. Then again, there were always those rare moments where even Yoko’s presence couldn’t break down what the Fab Four did together.
When looking at the sessions from an outsider perspective, it had to have been strange seeing Yoko adding her two cents to every single track. Many people had seen her as another fellow artist, but the minute that Lennon started working on his own tracks with her, like ‘Revolution 9’, it was clear that he was ready to move on to something more avant-garde than have to suffer through yet another one of McCartney’s granny songs.
If the band was really calling it quits, though, Macca knew that they wouldn’t let Let It Be be the last taste fans heard of new music. They had to give them a proper goodbye, and Abbey Road was everything a Fab fan could have asked for. There were many different highlights like Lennon’s ‘Come Together’ and George Harrison coming into his own as a songwriter on tracks like ‘Something’, but the main piece that everyone will always remember is how the record finishes.
Although Lennon was never that fond of the medley they threw together on side two, it does showcase the best of them as musicians. They had already talked about moving beyond typical rock and roll, and listening to this one tune, they laid the groundwork for later genres like prog while also finding ways to push themselves, especially the final movement that culminates in a solo from every single band member.
While Ringo Starr had to be talked into tearing up his kit on ‘The End’, there’s an unbridled joy that comes from Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison trading licks together. Since most of it was recorded off the floor, it feels like a guitar duel watching all three of them go back and forth, as if they’re listening to what their bandmate played and trying to outdo it with whatever wild lick they have up their sleeve.
And despite all of the tension that had come into the studio by this point, Lennon knew that this was a special enough moment to keep Yoko out, with engineer Geoff Emerick saying, “Yoko was about to go into the studio with John – this was commonplace by now – and he actually told her, ‘No, not now. Let me just do this. It’ll just take a minute.’ That surprised me a bit. Maybe he felt like he was returning to his roots with the boys.”
Maybe it was about getting back together for old time’s sake, but by reconnecting with his old mates, Lennon came out the victor in the guitar battle. His phrasing isn’t necessarily the most technically proficient thing in the world, but hearing him pull licks out of his hollow-body guitar smothered in distortion sounds like the instrument is coming alive in his hands with every single note he plays.
And if this truly was the end of the line for all four of them together, it’s easy to see that camaraderie right up until their final moments. Lennon’s future was all about Yoko, but he couldn’t appreciate the present unless he was reminded about what got him there in the first place.
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