"I've been through this one for about six months!" he moans. "Just say whatever comes into your head each time.until you get the word." He demonstrates with the less-than-romantic "attracts me like a cauliflower." Harrison counters with "attracts me like a pomegranate," which mercifully doesn't make the final cut either. "Attracts me like a…?" Lennon suggests a stream of consciousness approach. "What could it be, Paul?" he wonders while trying to finish the opening line. In a touching display of camaraderie, the band rallies around Harrison as he struggles to fill the gaps in the lyrics. Though never attempted as a formal take, this earliest known recording of "Something" is an intimate insight into the creation of a classic. The song was still only partially complete when Harrison offered it up for consideration during the Get Back sessions on Jan. I like to say, 'I liked your song so much I went home and wrote it myself!'") (Taylor bore him no ill will, later telling PEOPLE: "I like to joke about it.
He was helped along by another Apple signee, 19-year-old James Taylor, who had just recorded a track for his own debut album called "Something in the Way She Moves." Harrison, who played on the record, used the title as lyrical inspiration for his own work in progress. Harrison would produce Lomax's debut LP that fall, but he ultimately held onto "Something," which was still far from complete. Though these tentative musical sketches weren't recorded, studio staff recall Harrison tinkering with the melody on a harpsichord in between takes for another of his compositions, "Piggies." At this early stage, he toyed with giving the song to singer Jackie Lomax, a friend from the Liverpool clubs who had recently been signed to the Beatles' record label, Apple. He debuted the initial musical fragments for "Something" over a year earlier, during sessions for the White Album on Sept. Harrison took his time when crafting this future standard, which became his first - and only - A-side single for the Beatles in October 1969. You can't recreate that intimacy and magic." They're not locked in a hotel room together on tour anymore. Plus, they've got so many other things going on. "It's a bit like Usain Bolt going, 'Okay, I'm going to run the 100 meters in under 10 seconds now.' They weren't match fit. That's the thing that strikes me about them: no one believes in the Beatles' ability more than the Beatles do." In their defense, they had previously banged out stone-cold classics like Rubber Soul during brief breaks in their tour schedule. "I think they thought they could do that again," says Martin. We haven't got any songs yet and we haven't got a place to play it in, but this is the plan, guys! Oh, and we're going to film it as well.' But the Beatles had complete confidence in their own abilities.
"The idea is, 'Okay, in two-and-a-half weeks we'll do our first live show in years. It's tempting to dub the entire endeavor doomed from the start. That's what makes us happy.' And that's what they planned to do." So they said, 'Let's go back to being four guys in the Cavern Club. "I think they'd just grown tired of being the Beatles. "They're trying to find the spark they once had," Martin explains. True to its working title of "Get Back," the production was intended as a return to their rock 'n' roll roots in a last-ditch attempt to restore a sense of unity amid the business and personal turmoil. "The fact of the matter is that everyone sees Let It Be as the Beatles' breakup album," says Martin, "but they were back in the studio weeks later doing 'I Want You/She's So Heavy' for Abbey Road." Instead of a breakup, he compares the Let It Be sessions to a date night. Though production delays made it the final album they released, the band stayed together long enough to record another album, Abbey Road, released in September of 1969.
The myth that Let It Be was the Beatles' coup de grâce has persisted despite a major flaw in logic.