Tidying Up and the "Huge Melody"

A bit of tidying up for the "Abbey Road" sessions was continuing during the month of July 1969. For "Come Together", overdubs including the electric piano, maracas and John Lennon's main vocal on July 22 1969 with Paul adding a harmony in the verses three days later. The lead guitar during the ending was overdubbed on July 30 1969. The stereo mix was completed August 07 1969.
Also in late July, work continued on the side two long medley. It had been decided to use an instrumental written mainly by Paul including a drum solo from Ringo which at this point was entitled "Ending" later to be credited by "The End" on the LP. The basic track including guitars, piano , bass and drums were completed in 7 takes on July 23 1969. Two days later "Polythene Pam/ She Came In Through The Bathroom Window" were recorded in 39 takes with George on electric, John on acoustic, bass and drums as well. The bass and drums would be re-done as well.  Overdubs continued on both July 28 and 30 1969 including more keyboards, guitars, vocals, maracas, tambourine, etc.
Other work included Paul adding his bass to "You Never Give Me Your Money" on July 07 1969; the backing vocals and percussion were added on July 15 and more backing vocals on July 30 1969.
So the main task of the July 30 1969 session was to put together a "test" tape of the huge melody which at this point lasted about 15 and a half minutes. It was decided probably by Paul the "Her Majesty" be removed from it's place between "Mean Mister Mustard" and "Polythene Pam".  The engineer removed the song but tagged it at the end of the medley. Mal Evans took away the tape to Apple whereby it was cut as an acetate for working purposes and the tape was brought back to EMI Studios. Upon hearing "Her Majesty" at the very end of the acetate with the 20 seconds silence, it was decided to keep it that way and the commercial LP actually has the end chord of "Mean Mister Mustard" with the last chord of "Her Majesty" cut just before the last chord as well as the 20 seconds of silence. The original mix of the "Huge Melody" at this point had an organ chord at the end of "Sun King" which would be filled with sound tapes and "The End" is in it's original shorter form.
The July 30 1969 version of the "Huge Melody" can be found on the bootleg CD "Unsurpassed Masters Vol. 05" as well as the CD "No. 3 Abbey Road N.W." (although the difference is the placement of "Her Majesty" for both).

"Ain't She Sweet", "Sun King/Mean Mr. Mustard"

Two sessions were held for the second part of the "Huge Melody" at EMI Studios on July 24, 25 and July 29 1969. This consisted of two songs mainly written by John - "Sun King" and "Mean Mr. Mustard". Two different feels and two different tempos but recorded as one entity. Both John and George on guitars, Paul on Bass and Ringo on drums was the instrumental line up for the basic track. Paul turns on his distortion pedal for the second part.
As the basic track was progressing for the July 24 session, John lead the band into a couple of Gene Vincent covers, namely "Ain't She Sweet", "Be Bop A Lula", etc. The tune "Ain't She Sweet" was released as a track on the Apple/EMI 3LP/2CD "Anthology 3" project.
Overdubs for this medley were conducted over two days; namely July 25/29 in Studio 2 and 3. This included the three-part harmonies for "Sun King", maracas and bongos and an organ of which started the original medley with one note but progressed throughout the song. For "Mean Mr. Mustard" piano and tambourine were added, vocals by John with harmonies by Paul starting in the second verse. It's also interesting to note that the original name of Mr. Mustard's sister was "Shirley" but obviously this was changed due to the running order of the huge melody.

"Come And Get It" - Take One

On July 24 1969 at EMI Studio 2 in London and during the Beatles "Abbey Road" sessions, Paul McCartney had decided to create a demo recording of his new composition "Come and Get It". This song was to be given to the Apple Records Group "Badfinger" to record for the upcoming movie soundtrack to "The Magic Christian" starring Peter Sellers and featuring Ringo Starr as well.
Paul had a spare hour before George and Ringo arrived and recorded the demo with John Lennon in attendance although only Paul participated. Instead of just an acoustic demo, Paul recorded piano and vocal on one track, a vocal overdub and maracas on the second track, bass guitar on the third and drums on the fouth completed the song in one take !! It was mixed in stereo by engineer Phil MacDonald who was also working on the "Abbey Road" project. An acetate was made and given to Badfinger.
This incredible would have made for a great single from the sessions - imagine if The Beatles themselves had all played on it....oh well !
In the early 80s the song was remixed by Geoff Emerick in fake stereo (who knows why he did this when EMI still had the multitrack and the original stereo mix). The song was to be used on the aborted "Sessions" LP but it appeared this way from a secondhand mono tape on the bootleg LP "File Under Beatles". In the middle 80s the song appeared on some of the bootleg "Sessions" LPs with Geoff Emerick's fake stereo mix. Amazingly, when the demo was officially released on the Apple 3-LP/2-CD "Anthology" series, they used the same fake stereo mix once again and considering the superior mix was available to Apple, they screwed it up again.
Lastly, if you want to hear the song in true stereo and original mix, pick up a CD copy of "Another Sessions...plus" and/or "Mythology Vol.3".