Come Together

Lennon wrote it and it is credited to Lennon-McCartney. In May 1969, during the Montreal bed-in, Timothy Leary asked him for a campaign song based on the slogan "Come Together, Join the Party". Lennon used the phrase in July to compose a new song for Abbey Road, based on Chuck Berry's 1956 "You Can't Catch Me". He changed Berry's "Here come a flattop" to "Here come ol' flattop". In a 1987 interview Harrison said he wrote two lines of it.

The basic track was taped on 21 July 1969 in Studio Three with George Martin producing and Geoff Emerick and Phil McDonald engineering. It was Emerick's first session with the group since July 1968. Eight takes were made and take six was marked best. Lennon sang lead, McCartney played bass, Harrison rhythm guitar and Starr drums, with tea towels over his toms. At Lennon's request McCartney played a Fender Rhodes electric piano, and Harrison played a Gibson Les Paul solo in the coda. Mixing was completed on 7 August 1969, and the song was never mixed for mono.

Release

It was issued as a double A-side with "Something", in America on 6 October 1969 and in Britain on 31 October, where it reached number 4. In the United States it topped the Billboard Hot 100 for one week after Billboard changed its counting practice on 29 November, the band's eighteenth number one there and one more than Elvis Presley's seventeen. George Martin said that if he had to pick one song showing the four talents combined he would choose it. Lennon called it "one of my favourite Beatles tracks", and Starr named it his favourite Beatles song in 2021.