‘Don’t Let Me Down’ is among the most thoroughly-archived songs in The Beatles‘ catalogue. The song was John Lennon’s main project throughout the sessions for Get Back, which would eventually turn into the band’s final album, Let It Be. When The Beatles entered the cold recesses of Twickenham Studios in early 1969, Lennon had little more than the title of the song and a basic chord progression.
Over the next month, Lennon begins to put the pieces together. All the while, he privately struggles with heroin addiction and some potent writer’s block. Lennon often arrives at sessions ready and willing to participate, but he would also appear groggy or disinterested in whatever the rest of the band was working on.
“It was a very tense period: John was with Yoko and had escalated to heroin and all the accompanying paranoias and he was putting himself out on a limb,” Paul McCartney remembered in the book Many Years From Now. “I think that as much as it excited and amused him, and the same time it secretly terrified him. So ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ was a genuine plea… It was saying to Yoko, ‘I’m really stepping out of line on this one. I’m really letting my vulnerability be seen, so you must not let me down.’ I think it was a genuine cry for help. It was a good song.”
At some point throughout the project, Lennon brought the composition home with him and began workshopping the song’s verses. Leaning on the same F#m-E chord progression that would later appear in the Abbey Road track ‘Sun King’, Lennon figured out the tricky timings that would be featured in that section of the song. Lennon and McCartney were almost exclusively writing separately at this point, and ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ was no exception.
“We recorded it in the basement of Apple for Let It Be and later did it up on the roof for the film,” McCartney added. “We went through it quite a lot for this one. I sang harmony on it, which makes me wonder if I helped with a couple of words, but I don’t think so. It was John’s song.”
Despite being Lennon’s biggest project for the album, ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ was ultimately cut from Let It Be. Instead, the song was featured as a B-side to the ‘Get Back’ single. According to Lennon, another famous singer would eventually rip off a key part of the track.
