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Thu 2 October 2025 9:02, UK
The Beatles’ repertoire has been so mythologised over the years that it’s easy to think that everything they ever did was perfect.
No matter how many technical problems are present on the final recording, the blemishes only serve to give the tracks character nowadays, as if the Fab Four designed every minute detail whenever they were tracking their finest work. While George Martin usually had to rein in their more outlandish ideas whenever they went into the studio, he believed that ‘Come Together’ was the ideal example of them using every member’s strengths.
As the group was just getting started, Martin was as much a songwriting coach as he was a proper producer. It was his idea to bring up the tempo for ‘Please Please Me’, and once they got their first major motion picture underway, he also suggested having the massive ringing chord that opened up ‘A Hard Day’s Night’.
By the time they started working on more experimental records like Sgt Pepper, Martin seemed like a vehicle for them to channel their own ideas. They might not have been able to translate everything they wanted on every song, but having Martin explain to session musicians what they wanted was what made tracks like ‘A Day in the Life’ work so well.
Once The White Album was released, though, Martin had had enough of the group’s bickering. Having to operate many different sessions simultaneously was never going to be great for his psyche, and even when working around the studio for what would become Let It Be, he thought that Phil Spector did an atrocious job putting together the album’s final mix.
Yoko Ono, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. (Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
None of the band members were satisfied with going out on that note, but if they were going to ask for Martin back for Abbey Road, he had one condition: it had to be completed like the old days. Right from the start of the album, ‘Come Together’ keeps everything close to the ground and grooving, almost like they were shaking off the more rustic feel of the Get Back sessions.
Looking back on the tracks, Martin thought that ‘Come Together’ cobbled together everything that featured the group at their best, telling Rolling Stone, “If I had to pick one song that showed the four disparate talents of the boys and the ways they combined to make a great sound, it would be ‘Come Together’.”
There has recently been a suggestion that Lennon wrote the song about each member of the band. In the first verse are references to Ringo Starr being the funny member of the group with rhythm, the second is more spiritual and is a clear nod to Harrison. The third verse includes a reference to Yoko Ono and can be attached to Lennon, while the final verse seems to pay tribute to his “pretty” songwriting partner, McCartney. It provides a nice symmetry with Martin’s own assessment of the track.
Adding: “The original song is good, but with John’s voice, it’s better. Then Paul had this idea for this great little riff. And Ringo hears that and does a drum thing that fits in, and then there’s George’s guitar at the end. The four of them became much better than the individual components.”
The song even managed to get a few compliments from Lennon, who considered it one of his favourite tracks that he had ever sung.
But the piece is much more than just his voice. The Beatles probably knew that this record would be one of the final times that they would ever be in a studio together, so as one last hurrah, they were making every bit of their time together count.
Lennon said of the track: “‘Come Together’ changed at the session. We said, ‘Let’s slow it down. Let’s do this to it, let’s do that to it,’ and it ends up however it comes out. I just said, ‘Look, I’ve got no arrangement for you, but you know how I want it.’ I think that’s partly because we’ve played together a long time. So I said, ‘Give me something funky and set up a beat, maybe.’ And they all just joined in.”
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