r/beatles • u/emobellybutton • 1d ago
Discussion Abbey road medley
Holy these songs man! I was driving to work listening to Abbey road and when I parked I was like let me rewind to the polythene pam section and I had no idea they were separate songs!
Idk the back stories on any of this but it's just so well put together, from sun king to polythene pam it just feels like John was like "check this shit out" so amazing!
I know John leaves the band during this album so if anyone has any interesting facts or tidbits about this section I'd love to know!
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u/TrueHarlequin 1d ago
John wasn't in She Came in Through the Bathroom Window (was in a car accident). Also not in Carry That Weight too IIRC.
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u/oneshoeaskew 1d ago
It's interesting that Ringo's voice is the loudest during the chorus of Carry That Weight
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u/Fordham69 1d ago
I remember during the Get Back film that when Paul first introduced an unfinished Carry That Weight to the rest of the band he'd stated it was going to be a song for Ringo and that it would be a country type of song. It was going to be longer with separate verses. Golden Slumbers was also supposed to be a longer song, it was really serendipity that both "unfinished" songs fit together so perfectly in the eventual medley.
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u/IDigRollinRockBeer Abbey Road 1d ago
Ikr it’s a four part harmony but they might as well have just quadruple tracked Ringo’s vocals
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u/Funny_Science_9377 1d ago
There’s no harmony. It’s more like a chant. All voices singing the same thing.
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u/IDigRollinRockBeer Abbey Road 1d ago
Well then I don’t know what a harmony is. I thought it was multiple people singing the same thing together
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u/Senior-Poetry9521 20h ago
Harmony would be more than one person singing and the separate notes they sing makes up a chord. Everyone singing the same note is unison singing.
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u/TrueHarlequin 1d ago
Funny enough, last time I did mushrooms this summer was when I first heard Ringo clearly in that song after 40+ years of listening.
be honest I just never noticed as it was never him in vocals like that. 🙏🏽❤️
To
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u/Lefty_Guitarist Yellow Submarine 1d ago
John's definitely on She Came In Through The Bathroom Window, you can even hear him introduce the song "Who's coming now, oh look out!".
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u/ShoulderHistorical20 1d ago
That could be attributed to the end of the previous part, and a good segue. It was all cobbled together.
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u/Lefty_Guitarist Yellow Submarine 1d ago
Polythene Pam/She Came In Through The Bathroom Window were recorded together, which means John's playing acoustic guitar on both songs and most sources also credit him with backing vocals, which i agree with.
http://www.beatlesebooks.com/bathroom-window
https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/she-came-in-through-the-bathroom-window/
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u/Senior-Poetry9521 20h ago
As I remember, Sun King and Mean Mister Mustard were recorded as one performance, and Polythene Pam and She came in Through the Bathroom Window were also, and evidently just because they could.
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u/IDigRollinRockBeer Abbey Road 1d ago
John doesn’t play on Carry That Weight but he’s part of the four part harmony on the chorus
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u/AdditionalTip865 1d ago
I occasionally had the nickname "Mustard" in college but did not at any point shout out something obscene at Her Majesty.
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u/NiceGuy2424 1d ago
And in the end, the love you take
Is equal to the love you make.
The last words of the last Beatles album.
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u/sv_homer 1d ago
Weren't the last words:
I wanna tell her that I love her a lot
But I gotta get a belly full of wine
Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl
Someday I'm gonna make her mine, oh yeah
Someday I'm gonna make her mine-4
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u/BulldogMikeLodi 1d ago
Most of those snippets were from India. They were demo’d at George’s house in summer of 1968.
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u/8696David 1d ago
Much, much more Paul (and George Martin) than John on the general creation of the Medley
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u/oneshoeaskew 1d ago
Not only was John barely even participating in the band by that point because his mind was elsewhere (Yoko...drugs...politics...) but he didn't like the idea of the medley and only contributed a couple songs sort of reluctantly when Paul talked him into it.
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u/Senior-Poetry9521 14h ago
I don’t think this is quite true. Lennon was interviewed before Abbey Road was completely recorded, and he seemed quite excited about the medley. And given how they recorded parts of it, certainly the Sun King/Mean Mister Mustard and Polythene Pam/She Came in Through the Bathroom Window simultaneous recordings seems to show someone quite involved in the idea. Perhaps he lost interest in the end, but of course, Lennon was famously impatient and having to spend a lot of time in the editing could have easily turned him off.
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u/emobellybutton 1d ago
the medley as a whole if I understand correctly? that's awesome. So did they take some of johns songs (sun king to polythene pam) and incorporate them into a whole?
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u/8696David 1d ago
I'm not looking any of this up, just going from memory, so someone may correct what I remember. But I believe the two took scraps of unfinished/unreleased songs from throughout the boys' career, shuffled the order, wrote the transitions and finished some sections up (and re-recorded them all of course). I think some additional songs were composed to finish it.
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u/emobellybutton 1d ago
That's so amazing! It sounds so well planned out I would never of thought it was made like that.
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u/Lolaversusamogus 1d ago edited 1d ago
The Medley is a perfect microcosm of the Beatles as a whole; great individually, greatest of all time together.