The Beatles scored their 13th US No.1 album with Abbey Road. The final studio recordings from the group featured two Harrison songs; 'Something' & 'Here Comes The Sun'. The cover supposedly contained clues adding to the ‘Paul Is Dead’ phenomenon: Paul is barefoot and the car number plate ‘LMW 281F’ supposedly referred to the fact that McCartney would be 28 if he was still alive. ‘LMW’ was said to stand for ‘Linda McCartney Weeps.’ And the four Beatles, represent; the priest (John, dressed in white), the Undertaker (Ringo, black suit), the Corpse (Paul, barefoot), and the Gravedigger (George, in jeans and a denim shirt).
In a new interview with BBC 6 Music, Starr has now also confirmed this was the case and that the bad wanted to go on recording into the 1970’s.
Starr said: “We did do Abbey Road and we was like, ‘Okay that’s pretty good…but none of us said, ‘OK, that’s the last time we’ll ever play together’. Nobody said that. I never felt that.
“We’d made this record, and then we would go off and do whatever we wanted to do. And then Paul would call us and say, ‘Hey, you want to go in the studio lads?’ and we’d do another one.
“So it was not the end – because in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make. So I never felt it was in stone.”
“And you think that John is the one who wanted to break them up but, when you hear this, he isn’t. Doesn’t that rewrite pretty much everything we thought we knew?”
“It’s the best. I love playing with him…We played a lot together in ‘that band’ and he’s still in the most melodic player. He’s still incredible, for me, I feel the emotion when [he] plays.”
Starr uncovered the song after it was highlighted to him by music producer Jack Douglas. Starr added: “I had no idea about this song…I bumped into Jack this year and he says, ‘Did you ever hear the cassette?’ I said, ‘What cassette?’ He said, ‘Of John doing the songs! Doing the demos in Bermuda!'”
Starr added: “I love the song. It’s very romantic and so it’s probably, I’m guessing, written for John and Yoko.”
Excerpt from the Guardian - article by Richard Williams -
The Beatles weren’t a group much given to squabbling, says Mark Lewisohn, who probably knows more about them than they knew about themselves. But then he plays me the tape of a meeting held 50 years ago this month – on 8 September 1969 – containing a disagreement that sheds new light on their breakup.
They’ve wrapped up the recording of Abbey Road, which would turn out to be their last studio album, and are awaiting its release in two weeks’ time. Ringo Starr is in hospital, undergoing tests for an intestinal complaint. In his absence, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison convene at Apple’s HQ in Savile Row. John has brought a portable tape recorder. He puts it on the table, switches it on and says: “Ringo – you can’t be here, but this is so you can hear what we’re discussing.”
We hear John suggesting that each of them should bring in songs as candidates for the single. He also proposes a new formula for assembling their next album: four songs apiece from Paul, George and himself, and two from Ringo – “If he wants them.” John refers to “the Lennon-and-McCartney myth”, clearly indicating that the authorship of their songs, hitherto presented to the public as a sacrosanct partnership, should at last be individually credited.
Then Paul – sounding, shall we say, relaxed – responds to the news that George now has equal standing as a composer with John and himself by muttering something mildly provocative. “I thought until this album that George’s songs weren’t that good,” he says, which is a pretty double-edged compliment since the earlier compositions he’s implicitly disparaging include Taxman and While My Guitar Gently Weeps. There’s a nettled rejoinder from George: “That’s a matter of taste. All down the line, people have liked my songs.”
John reacts by telling Paul that nobody else in the group “dug” his Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, a song they’ve just recorded for Abbey Road, and that it might be a good idea if he gave songs of that kind – which, John suggests, he probably didn’t even dig himself – to outside artists in whom he had an interest, such as Mary Hopkin, the Welsh folk singer. “I recorded it,” a drowsy Paul says, “because I liked it.”
Lewisohn has the minutes of another business meeting, this time at Olympic Studios, where the decision to ratify Klein’s appointment was approved by three votes to one (Paul), the first time the Beatles had not spoken with unanimity. “It was the crack in the Liberty Bell,” Paul said. “It never came back together after that one. Ringo and George just said, whatever John does, we’re going with. I was actually trying, in my mind, to save our future.”
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