The Beatles shared two unreleased versions of “Come Together,” the classic that opens the legendary Abbey Road album. Both are part of the disc’s 50th anniversary edition, which will be released on September 27th.
The first of these, which appears under the subtitle of “Take 5”, features an interesting snippet early on by John Lennon still working on the lead vocals. The group’s performance in the song is very raw, palpable and exciting, as for example when the leader’s voice fails in the “He holds you in his arms, you can feel his disease” part.
Hear The Beatles “Take 5” below:
The second new release of “Come Together” features a new mix made by producer Giles Martin (son of George Martin, responsible for producing The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) and sound engineer Sam Okell.
Hear Giles Martin mixing below:
Abbey Road’s 50th anniversary will feature new variants of all the songs on the album, as well as 23 alternative versions that were dropped during the official tracklist pick, demos and a book with an introduction by Paul McCcartney himself.
Come Together history
“Come Together” started as Lennon’s attempt to write a song for Timothy Leary’s campaign for governor of California against Ronald Reagan, which promptly ended when Leary was sent to prison for possession of marijuana:
At the time, he said:
“The thing was created in the studio. It’s gobbledygook; Come Together was an expression that Leary had come up with for his attempt at being president or whatever he wanted to be, and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t come up with one. But I came up with this, Come Together, which would’ve been no good to him—you couldn’t have a campaign song like that, right”