"Oh! Darling/ I Want You (She's So Heavy)" Sessions

Nearly finished with the main recording for the upcoming "Abbey Road" LP, a few sessions still took place during the month of August 1969 - for instance, Paul McCartney entered Studio Three at EMI to add some tambourine and guitar to "Oh! Darling" although the guitar is not evident on the released track. Two days later, John, George and Paul added some backing vocals to the song and this was to be the last Beatles recording with John Lennon contributing. The song was mixed into stereo the next day on August 12 1969 and released on the Apple "Abbey Road" LP/CD.
Also being work on was Lennon's "I Want You (She's So Heavy)". The original 35 takes with the backing track had been recorded back in February 22 1969 at Trident Studios in London with Billy Preston. An edit of the backing track takes number 9, number 20 and number 32 were mixed into mono for John to take away. On April 19 1969, both John and George Harrison overdubbed multiple guitars onto this track and eventually the entire thing became take 1. The next day congas and organ (by Billy Preston maybe) were overdubbed onto take 1. On August 08 1969 at EMI Studios, the moog synthesizer white noise was added to the ending of the song but they placed it on the wrong tape reels pre-mix so when the vocal harmonies were added on August 11 1969, the ending was edited from the "She's so..." part so that the moog synth could be brought into the song.
Finally on August 20 1969, "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" was mixed for stereo with the main body of work from the "take 1" and the remainder from the "She's so...."part and the ending. Although the song lasted over 8 minutes, John Lennon decided to have an abrupt ending and asked the tape engineer to cut off the ending at an unspecified time which is how the song suddenly stops at the end of side one on the "Abbey Road" LP.

"Maxwell's Silver Hammer" Final Recording and Mixing

Back on July 11 1969, overdubs for "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" were recorded by adding some extra vocals at the very end of the song singalong. There was also an electric guitar added during the chorus part as well as the end part.
Paul McCartney had decided to add a Moog keyboard part to the final verse of the song so he went in on August 06 and played the part during a reduction mix with take 27 being the one used. This left the task of mixing the song. All songs on "Abbey Road" were given stereo mixes (no true mono mixes exist). The only "mono" pressings are all fold down mixes with a lot of the releases in South America.
"Maxwell's Silver Hammer" was mixed in stereo on both August 06 and August 12 1969. Interestingly, the entire song and the final verse were separately mixed and the tape (with the Moog) spliced onto the rest of the song. Finally, on August 25 1969, the four bar instrumental introduction was removed by editing and the song starts cold into the first verse with Paul's vocal.

"Because" Session

The backing track for the John Lennon composition "Because" consisted of 23 takes with sparse instrumentation. Take 16 was used for the commercial recording. John played his electric guitar along with a Baldwin harpsichord played at the same time by producer George Martin and bass added by Paul. Although you can't hear it, Ringo was tapping his high hats to keep time while the song was being played.
There were two vocal sessions for the tune: one was on August 01 and the other on August 04 1969 with John, Paul and George sharing harmonies. This vocal arrangement was written by George Martin who deserves the credit. The song was recorded at EMI Studio 2 in London.
Bootlegs of the vocal only harmonies are available with such examples as the vinyl "Unsurpassed Masters, Volume 5 & 6" and the CD "Not Guilty" among others. The problem is that there is leakage from the headphones you can still slightly hear the instrumental backing being played. The commercial release of the vocal only version can be heard on the Apple/EMI 3LP/2CD "Anthology 3" as well as a version on the Apple/Universal "Love" soundtrack. The difference between the bootlegs and the commercial versions is that the leakage of the instrumental backing is lessened on the commercial versions using using studio faders in between the vocal sentences to bring the sound down.
The moog sythesizer solo was added from Room 43 (George Harrison's moog brought from his home was used - the same one used on his "Electronic Sound" solo Zapple LP) as an overdub on August 05 1969. The solo was played by George Harrison as well. Finally, "Because" was mixed in stereo only on August 12 1969 and included for the upcoming LP at the time.