The Beatles were recording Abbey Road in the summer of 1969. During that time there was a lot of tension in the air. The atmosphere was a step up from the iciness that pervaded the Get Back sessions. They later compiled those into the Let It Be album. But that didn’t mean that relationships were always at their best.
John Lennon insisted on bringing Yoko Ono into every session. A car accident during the album’s production caused logistical issues and frequent delays. To compensate for Lennon’s reduced participation, different overdubs were usually recorded without full group participation, which McCartney later regretted.
“Even on Abbey Road, we don’t do harmonies like we used to,” McCartney admitted in 1970 to the Evening Standard. “I believe it is sad. And I would have liked to sing harmony with John on ‘Come Together’. I believe he would have liked it. But I was too embarrassed to ask him. And I don’t work to the best of my abilities in that situation.”
The ‘Come Together’ situation may have upset McCartney, but there appears to be evidence that the band was still recording live harmonies at the time. Photos from the ‘Here Comes The Sun’ sessions show McCartney and George Harrison messing around in front of the microphone before laying down their harmonies (Lennon did not take part in the song’s recording). Other photos from the time show McCartney, Lennon, and Harrison gathered around the same microphone, most likely recording the intricate harmonies for ‘Because’.
John Lennon contributed only 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, inserting half-finished songs ‘Polythene Pam’ and ‘Mean Mr. Mustard’. ‘John Lennon did not write ‘Here Comes The Sun,’ ‘Golden Slumbers,’ and ‘Her Majesty’. In his absence, the album featured an increased presence of Harrison and Ringo Starr.
Lennon had already informed the rest of the band that he desired “a divorce” by the time they released Abbey Road in September 1969. They spent the rest of the year putting together Get Back into Let It Be, with one final recording session for ‘I Me Mine’ in January 1970, featuring Harrison, McCartney, and Starr. In April, McCartney announced that the band had no further plans to collaborate, effectively bringing The Beatles to an end.
