July 21: The Beatles recorded Come Together in 1969
“It was a funky record – it’s one of my favorite Beatle tracks, or, one of my favourite Lennon tracks, let’s say that. It’s funky, it’s bluesy, and I’m singing it pretty well. I like the sound of the record. You can dance to it. I’d buy it!”
“The thing was created in the studio. It’s gobbledygook, Come Together was an expression that Leary had come up with for his attempt at being president or whatever he wanted to be, and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t come up with one. But I came up with this, Come Together, which would’ve been no good to him, you couldn’t have a campaign song like that, right?”
– John Lennon (Playboy, 1980)
“Come Together” is a song by The Beatles written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. The song is the opening track on the album Abbey Road, and was released as a double A-sided single with “Something”, their twenty-first single in the United Kingdom and twenty-sixth in the United States. The song reached the top of the charts in the US, and peaked at number four in the UK.
I really love the song, one of John’s masterpieces!
John Lennon: vocals, rhythm guitar, handclaps and tambourine
Paul McCartney: harmony vocals,electric piano and bass
George Harrison: lead guitar
Ringo Starr: drums, maracas
| A-side | “Something“ |
|---|---|
| Released | 6 October 1969 (US), 31 October 1969 (UK) |
| Format | 7″ |
| Recorded | 21 July 1969, EMI Studios, London |
| Genre | Blues rock, hard rock |
| Length | 4:18 |
| Label | Apple |
| Writer(s) | Lennon–McCartney |
| Producer | George Martin |
..nice work by the editors!
and a great John Lennon performance from New York (It is his song after all…):
Musically, Come Together took its “inspiration” from Chuck Berry’s 1956 song You Can’t Catch Me; both songs contain the lines “Here come old flat-top”. John Lennon was sued by Chuck Berry’s publisher Morris Levy. It wasvsettled out of court, and John Lennon agreed to record more songs owned by Levy.
“Come Together is me, writing obscurely around an old Chuck Berry thing. I left the line in ‘Here comes old flat-top.’ It is nothing like the Chuck Berry song, but they took me to court because I admitted the influence once years ago. I could have changed it to ‘Here comes old iron face,’ but the song remains independent of Chuck Berry or anybody else on earth.”
– John Lennon (Playboy, 1980)
Great song, however you see it!
– Hallgeir