This was the last of The Beatles’ studio albums.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about it, despite its reputation as a classic.
The first two cuts on the album are among my favorite
recordings ever, so if my feelings are mixed it’s mostly because “Come
Together” and “Something” are such great recordings. They’re both great songs,
but these recordings are particularly good too. From there, though, the
album doesn’t hold up as well as I wish it did. To me, the only real highlight
as a song after “Something” is “Here Comes the Sun.” The other songs on side
one of the album (i.e., everything from “Maxwell’s
Silver Hammer” to “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”) are mediocre. On side two the
extended medley has bits of genius (including the very idea of filling side two
with a medley), but so much of the material is so obviously a grab-bag of
half-finished songs that I get frustrated imagining what would happen if the
composer had spent another three hours finishing this or that idea.
It’s as if The Beatles couldn’t be bothered to
finish songs for one another anymore, which in fact was true, so in that
respect the album has a certain documentary value.
But among the chief virtues of this album, over
(I think) all other Beatles albums, is that it highlights Paul McCartney’s bass
playing and Ringo Starr’s drumming. This is
particularly obvious on the tracks they didn’t write, although Paul and Ringo do a lot for Starr’s “Octopus’s Garden.” “Come Together” and “Something” are such brilliant recordings
mostly because the bass and drums accentuate the essential feel of the songs so
perfectly. “Come Together” begins with a brilliant bass line that defines the
song, but it’s accompanied by a drum riff that is, in my experience performing
the song with Mary’s Garage Band, indispensable for filling out the measure.
And it’s not just the presence of the bass and drum; the production of these
instruments is a breakthrough too. Does any other Beatles recording allow the
bass to resonate so thoroughly? The bass jumps out of the speakers on
McCartney performs virtuoso work on “Something.”
This is among my favorite songs, and of course George Harrison gets all due
credit for writing it, but in this performance of it the bass guitar does much
of the work that a lead guitar might otherwise do. It accentuates vocal lines,
deftly fills breaks, and subtly plays on the basic tune to support the melody.
I think it’s a near-perfect recording, only because I’m holding out room for
improvement. Ringo’s drums, too, play a more
fundamental role in this than in many Beatles ballads. The drums are assertive
in this recording, but deftly mixed by the producer.
By this point in The Beatles’ career Paul
McCartney was spending more time in the studio learning how to produce records,
and it could well be that he influenced the sound of the rhythm section on this
album, but I’ve never heard that expressed by George Martin or the other
Beatles.
No matter how it came about, I think that the
work of McCartney and Starr on