The ending of The Beatles plays out like a musical Greek tragedy. After each of ‘The Fab Four’ started to slowly grow apart, they each started to resent their place in the band, leading to one of the most high-profile breakups in the history of rock music. While it might feel like common knowledge that these guys were at each other’s throats most of the time, they never stopped writing in that timeframe, and some of their future solo projects leaked through.
When assembling footage for The Beatles: Get Back, Peter Jackson captured some of the most intimate moments between the band, including Harrison’s outburst about leaving the group. While the notorious moment doesn’t happen on camera, fans can hear Harrison express his frustration and leave in a huff, after which the band play as a three-piece and get all of their creative energy and frustration out in whatever way they can.
As opposed to John Lennon and Paul McCartney growing apart as a songwriting team, Harrison was fast ascending as a songwriter, making future classics that were to be reserved for his solo album All Things Must Pass. When the band are toying with different ideas at Twickenham Film Studios, they are also hard at work on other songs that would appear on their solo albums as well. At the beginning of the sessions, Lennon is toying with the song ‘Child of Nature’, which would turn into ‘Jealous Guy’ on Imagine, while McCartney is messing around with songs like ‘Another Day’ and ‘Back Seat of My Car’.
Midway through the sessions working on tracks like ‘I’ve Got a Feeling’ and ‘Dig a Pony’, Lennon is hard at work on another tune that features long rambling verse sections. Throughout the woodshedding, a song is quickly forming, but McCartney offers some guidance on some of the rapid-fire verses mentioning ‘short-haired yellow-bellied’ as some of the placeholder words.
In the documentary, the band decided to leave the song where it was and focus on other material, but Lennon had other plans for the tune. As the political upheaval went on in the US at the dawn of the ‘70s, Lennon dusted off the song and put more pointed lyrics to it, turning it into the song ‘Gimme Some Truth’.
During the documentary, Jackson mentioned being shocked to find out how much McCartney was involved with it. Even more shocked was Macca himself, who had no memory of adding anything to the song, quickly correcting Jackson before he was shown the footage. Since it was a good song, McCartney was all too happy to take credit for it now.
These cross-references between Beatles songs were far from uncommon, even in the early days. Though McCartney might have gotten credit for writing a song like ‘And I Love Her’, Harrison was responsible for the iconic guitar line. Additionally, Lennon’s ‘Come Together’ may have been attributed to him, but the song didn’t come alive until McCartney added his signature bass line to the final product. The Beatles may have become more individualistic as the years went on, but whenever someone brought a song to the table, it was always up to the four of them to create something memorable on tape.
