How George Harrison Made Himself Known With the Recording of ‘Here Comes the Sun’

Raymond Schillinger of You Can’t Unhear This looked back at the history of “Here Comes the Sun”, a seminal song by The Beatles that was both perfect and unusual in so many different ways.

Here Comes The Sun has become one of the most popular and treasured Beatles songs, a gateway into their music for many new fans. This 3-minute gem of unforgettable songwriting is also packed with intriguing anomalies, production quirks and even a mystery.

The song was written entirely by George Harrison in 1969, rather than John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Harrison, who wasn’t yet known for his incredible song writing skills, took the reins that summer, both musically and lyrically, by adding new and innovative instruments like the Moog synthesizer, running his guitar through a rotating Leslie speaker made for keyboards, and adding vari-speed pitch control to the final song.

With just days to go before the album was set to be mixed, George  felt that his song needed one final ingredient: the fabulous and otherworldly sounds created  by a new electronic instrument called the Moog.…With all of the pieces finally in place  on the packed 8-track tape, the beautifully layered recording of Here Comes the Sun was  finally ready to be mixed…where of course the anomalies continued… This intentional adjustment, often  called vari-speed, was occasionally used by The Beatles to lend a special texture to their studio recordings.

George also played a guitar solo that he ultimately decided wasn’t right for the song. It was later found.

A different electric guitar part from these August sessions didn’t make it into the final mix. In 2011 this intriguing lost overdub was rediscovered  during the filming of a documentary about George’s life. George ultimately felt the guitar solo didn’t really fit and instructed  the EMI engineers to leave it out of the final mix.

There was also some confusion with Lennon’s “Here Comes Sun King”, but it was never resolved.

We don’t know when John wrote the lyrics, but we do know that “Sun King” was recorded a few weeks after “Here Comes the Sun”. Adding to the confusion are a couple  of entries in the Beatles newsletter from that that summer where the two songs are referred to  under a single title. It’s also labeled this way  on the tape box. Neither John nor George ever spoke  about this uncanny connection, so we may never know  

via Kraftfuttermischmerk