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The Beatles song Paul McCartney was “too embarrassed” to sing live harmonies on

Thu 27 July 2023 18:00, UK

There was plenty of tension still in the air while The Beatles were recording Abbey Road in the summer of 1969. The atmosphere was an improvement from the iciness that often characterised the Get Back sessions, which was later assembled into the Let It Be album, but that didn’t mean that relationships were always at their best.

John Lennon was still insistent on bringing Yoko Ono into every session, and the pair’s car accident during the album’s production caused logistical problems and frequent delays. To compensate for Lennon’s diminished participation, different overdubs were usually recorded without full group participation, something that McCartney would later lament.

“Even on Abbey Road, we don’t do harmonies like we used to,” McCartney admitted to the Evening Standard in 1970. “I think it’s sad. On ‘Come Together’, I would have liked to sing harmony with John, and I think he would have liked me to, but I was too embarrassed to ask him, and I don’t work to the best of my abilities in that situation.”

McCartney might have been put out by the ‘Come Together’ situation, but there seems to be evidence that the band were indeed still recording live harmonies at that time. Photos from the sessions for ‘Here Comes The Sun’ show McCartney and George Harrison messing around in front of the microphone before laying down their harmonies (Lennon didn’t participate in the song’s recording). Other photos from the time also show McCartney, Lennon, and Harrison all gathered around the same microphone, likely recording the intricate harmonies for ‘Because’.

Lennon only contributed three complete songs to the sessions: ‘Come Together’, ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’, and ‘Because’. He was against the album’s climactic medley, throwing in the half-finished songs ‘Polythene Pam’ and ‘Mean Mr. Mustard’. Lennon didn’t contribute at all to the songs ‘Here Comes The Sun’, ‘Golden Slumbers’, or ‘Her Majesty’. In his absence, Harrison and Ringo Starr were given more space to appear on the album.

By the time Abbey Road was released in September of 1969, Lennon had already announced to the rest of the group that he wanted “a divorce”. The rest of the year was devoted to assembling Get Back into Let It Be, with one final recording session featuring Harrison, McCartney, and Starr for ‘I Me Mine’ taking place in January of 1970. McCartney claimed that the band had no further plans to work together in April, effectively bringing The Beatles to an unceremonious end.

Check out ‘Come Together’ down below.