Saturday, April 21, 2018

"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.

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