George Harrison really knew how the play. Whether due to a wealth of natural talent, the pedigree of his Sitar tutor Ravi Shankar or a combination of the two, he was able to come up with some of the greatest riffs and solos of the 1960s. Here, we’ve bought you a guitar-only version of ‘I Me Mine’ from Let It Be, The Beatles’ final album.
‘I Me Mine’ was the last song The Beatles recorded for the famously tense Let It Be sessions. According to Harrison, who composed the number, it was inspired by an LSD-induced revelation. In the 1980 book I Me Mine, Harrison explains that having LSD was like “someone catapulting me out into space. The LSD experience was the biggest experience that I’d had up until that time.”
It also led to a serious case of ego death: “Suddenly I looked around and everything I could see was relative to my ego, like ‘that’s my piece of paper’ and ‘that’s my flannel’ or ‘give it to me’ or ‘I am’,” Harrison recalled. “It drove me crackers, I hated everything about my ego, it was a flash of everything false and impermanent, which I disliked. But later, I learned from it, to realise that there is somebody else in here apart from old blabbermouth. Who am ‘I’ became the order of the day. Anyway, that’s what came out of it, ‘I Me Mine’.”
At the time it was recorded, ‘I Me Mine’ was felt to be little more than filler. Later, however, perhaps partly because of The Beatles’ ego-induced split, Harrison offered a reappraisal of the song, standing by its philosophical sentiment: “I Me Mine’ is the ego problem. There are two ‘I’s: the little ‘i’ when people say ‘I am this’; and the big ‘I’ – ie duality and ego. There is nothing that isn’t part of the complete whole. When the little ‘i’ merges into the big ‘I’ then you are really smiling!”
The Beatles recorded 16 takes of ‘I Me Mine’, though Lennon was absent for most of them. Harrison took the lead, then, singing a guide vocal for Lennon and providing acoustic and electric guitar. McCartney and Starr, meanwhile, provided bass and drums. The final touch was a 27-string and brass section, which provided Harrison’s compositions with a lush wall of sound.
Below, you can listen to Harrison’s guitar as Ringo, Paul, and John would have done before the orchestra section was added.
