When The Beatles split in 1970, some media made a big deal about the bad feelings between the four members. Nonetheless, the band faced significant power struggles during the recording of its final two albums, Abbey Road and Let It Be, which contributed to its demise. Most notably, in the final months of the band’s existence, a schism developed between George Harrison and Paul McCartney.
When The Beatles’ beloved manager, Brian Epstein, died tragically in August 1967, Paul McCartney took over as de facto manager. McCartney was the Beatles’ dominant creative force throughout their final two albums. As shown in Peter Jackson’s intimate 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back. While John Lennon appeared increasingly preoccupied with his relationship with Yoko Ono, Harrison struggled to write a songcin edgeways.
Despite a schism between Harrison and McCartney near the end of the 1960s, the pair rekindled their friendship. They were back in each other’s good graces by the end of the 1970s. While McCartney’s ideas were somewhat forceful and critical of Harrison’s, his favorite Harrison songs were born during the Get Back sessions.
‘Something’ and ‘Here Comes the Sun’ were two Harrison compositions included on the 1969 album Abbey Road. Regarded as Harrison’s finest songwriting contributions to The Beatles catalogue, they stand alongside ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ from the previous, self-titled album.
During a Reddit AMA session in 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, McCartney responded to what his favorite Harrison composition was. “‘Here Comes The Sun,’ he said.” “It is a brilliant song and the kind of song that’s really good in times like these” .
McCartney has also shown a fondness for ‘Something’ over the years, frequently including it in his solo repertoire. During recent live performances, McCartney has performed ‘Something’ on a ukulele that Harrison once gave him. “I was round at his house one day,” McCartney explained, referring to the track’s debut at Glastonbury in 2022. “We were just sitting there jamming, and I told him, ‘I’ve learned one of your songs on the ukulele. So we played it together that day, and we’d like to play it for you now.”
In 2003, McCartney began working on his 13th solo studio album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. The first solo material written after Harrison’s death in 2001, McCartney lamented a lost friendship, particularly in the song ‘Friends to Go’. He dedicated this song to the late Beatle.
In an interview with BBC Radio 6, McCartney revealed that he wrote “Friends to Go” while pretending to be the so-called “Quiet Beatle”. “The funny thing about it was I felt as if I was almost George Harrison during the writing of that song,” he told me. “I just had a feeling… this is George”. So it was as if I were writing – as if I were George – one of his songs. So I just wrote it – it just wrote itself very easily ’cause it wasn’t even me writing it.”
