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The Beatles · S10 E6
Here Comes the Sun
Written in Eric Clapton's garden on a spring afternoon. George's most hopeful song, and the one that would become the most streamed Beatles track of all time
A spring afternoon in 1969. George Harrison walks out of a miserable Apple Corps board meeting, drives to Eric Clapton's house in Ewhurst, borrows an acoustic guitar, and sits in the garden. The song arrives in one sitting.
"Here Comes the Sun" (George Harrison, Concert for Bangladesh, 1971). Two years after writing the song in Eric Clapton's garden, George performs it live at Madison Square Garden for the first major charity concert in rock history. Stripped down to just George and his acoustic guitar, this is the song at its purest: one man, one melody, and a lyric about surviving the long, cold winter and coming out the other side. It's the sound of relief.
Here Comes the Sun, The Beatles (1969)
The opening acoustic guitar figure was written in Clapton's garden in a single afternoon, and it barely changed between that first sitting and the final recording. George used a capo on the seventh fret, which gives the guitar its bright, ringing quality. The Moog synthesizer was programmed by George himself, one of the first times a Beatle operated the instrument directly rather than asking an engineer. Listen for the way the time signature shifts between the verse and the bridge: the rhythmic hiccup makes the song feel like it's catching its breath before exhaling.
Sources
Harrison, George. "I, Me, Mine." Chronicle Books, 2002.
Lewisohn, Mark. "The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions." Hamlyn, 1988.
The Garden
George is exhausted. Apple Corps is collapsing, the band can barely look at each other, and every meeting involves lawyers and accountants shouting about money. He drives to Clapton's house to get away from it all, and the moment he picks up a guitar in the garden, the tension lifts. "Here comes the sun" is literally what he feels: the warmth returning after a terrible winter.
Sources
Harrison, George. "I, Me, Mine." Chronicle Books, 2002.
The Beatles. "The Beatles Anthology." Chronicle Books, 2000.
“It was such a lovely sunny day and it was one of the first nice days we'd had that year. It seemed like years since there had been any sun. That song just came to me.”
— George Harrison
TAP TO REVEAL: What record does 'Here Comes the Sun' hold in the streaming era?
Hurtwood Edge, Ewhurst, Surrey
Eric Clapton's country estate where George Harrison wrote "Here Comes the Sun" in the garden on a spring afternoon in 1969.
Here Comes the Sun
Sun King, The Beatles (1969)
The dreamy opener of the Abbey Road medley, recorded during the same sessions as "Here Comes the Sun." John, Paul, and George layer their voices into a warm, hazy harmony over a gently pulsing guitar, then dissolve into fake Italian and Spanish that means absolutely nothing. George Martin called it "a musical postcard from a Mediterranean holiday." It captures the same sun-drenched optimism that George channelled in Clapton's garden.
Sun King, The Beatles (1969)
"Here come the sun king, everybody's laughing, everybody's happy." The opening harmony is heavily influenced by Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross," which John had been listening to obsessively. The gibberish "Italian" section ("quando paramucho mi amore de felice corazon") is the three Beatles improvising fake romance language, and it sounds so convincing that listeners have spent decades trying to translate it. There's nothing to translate. It's pure sound, shaped to feel like warmth.
Where did George Harrison write 'Here Comes the Sun'?
April 10, 1970. Paul McCartney includes a self-interview with his new solo album in which he states he has no plans to work with the Beatles again. The press picks it up, the world reacts, and the greatest band in history is over.
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