I Want You (She's So Heavy)

I Want You (She's So Heavy) has the simplest lyrics of any song in the Beatles catalog, and has often been the subject of ridicule for this very reason.  The extended coda has also been criticized as unnecessary and monotonous.  Yet listen to the band playing together as a tight unit again, right on the heels of the ragged Get Back sessions.  In fact, the song emerged from those sessions in the last days of January 1969.  Lennon only had the bluesy verses at that time, but bootleg tapes reportedly reveal a few jams of the number highlighted by some great interplay between John and keyboard player Billy Preston.

On February 22nd, Preston reunited with the Beatles at Trident Studios as they set about making a proper recording.  With Glyn Johns as producer, the five man band laid down thirty-five takes before calling it a night.  A listening session the next day resulted in Lennon deciding to splice together parts of takes nine, twenty and thirty-two to create the master, which ran 8'04" at this point.

While this was the first track to be recorded for Abbey Road, there were no plans for such an album at the time.  The song might even have been intended to flesh out a potential Get Back album, according to some sources.  Yet it did not appear on the first attempt by Glyn Johns to compile an album from those sessions, though in its current state, it would have fit in with the no overdubs, live-in-the-studio concept.

All of that changed on April 18th at Abbey Road Studios with Chris Thomas now producing.  After finishing work on Harrison's B-side Old Brown Shoe, John and George remained to overdub guitars onto the coda of I Want You (She's So Heavy), creating a massive sound as they played the riff over and over many times.  On April 20th, Ringo added conga drums and John played a second Hammond organ part in addition to that of Billy Preston on the master.

By August 8th, the group was finally nearing completion on an album to be called Abbey Road, with George Martin back in the producer's chair.  John now chose to pull out the original Trident Studios tape, minus most of the April overdubs, and had George Harrison add the white noise effect from his Moog synthesizer onto the last minute or two of the recording.  August 11th saw John, Paul and George add the layers of "she's so heavy" vocals.  John was indecisive as to which version he preferred, so the vocals were put onto both.  Ringo also added some more cymbal crashes for good measure.

On August 20th, John made some crucial decisions.  After having Ringo use an old-fashioned wind machine (such as theaters use backstage) to augment the white noise effect, he had engineer Geoff Emerick splice the two versions together, with the April overdubs for the bulk of the song and the Trident master serving as the coda.  Then, while listening to a playback, he told Emerick to cut the tape at the 7'44" mark, the result being the shocking, unexpected end of the song.  On this date, that would also have been the end of the album, as sides one and two were reversed at the time.

While many fans will continue to dislike the song, there is no doubt that the group is in fine form throughout.  John's simultaneous singing and playing is quite good, Paul's bass work is nothing short of tremendous and Billy Preston's mastery on the keyboard, especially during the "she's so heavy" sequence, once again adds an element that none of the Beatles could have provided.