Oh! Darling

Among Paul McCartney's best vocal performances on recordings by the Beatles are such standouts as Hey Jude, Long Tall Sally and I'm Down, but this one might be the absolute best.  Of course, John Lennon, never shy about airing his opinions, thought that he could have sung it better.  And in his book Here, There and Everywhere, even engineer Geoff Emerick, who usually sided with Paul on most matters, agreed that John should have had his chance.  None of that should take away from what we have here - a vocal for the ages.

Like several other numbers that wound up on the Abbey Road album, McCartney originally aired this song at the Get Back sessions in early January 1969 at Twickenham Film Studios.  Though the group worked on the song numerous times over the course of that month, they never got it in good enough shape to make it into the rooftop concert setlist.  Anthology 3 contains a four minute version of the Beatles and Billy Preston rehearsing the number on January 27th.  John sings a harmony line in the verses, and Paul goes into falsetto for the bridges, while Billy plays some nice fills on electric piano throughout.  The feel is laid back compared to the recorded version we all know, and it would have been interesting to see how it turned out if they had continued down this path.

On April 20th, the new arrangement was officially recorded with Chris Thomas sitting in as producer.  The liner notes for the 50th anniversary edition of Abbey Road state that Billy Preston was there on this date and played Hammond organ on some of the twenty-six takes.  The rest of the lineup consisted of Ringo on drums, John on guitar, George on bass and Paul on piano.  This differs from the lineup in The Beatles: Recording Sessions book, where Mark Lewisohn has John on piano, George on guitar and Paul on bass, with no mention of Billy Preston.  Yet the 50th anniversary edition includes take four, and Preston's Hammond can clearly be heard. 

Chris Thomas was once again in the producer's chair when Paul recorded his lead vocal onto take twenty-six on April 26th.  (Most of this session was spent on the backing track of Ringo's Octopus's Garden, covered in my last post.)  As with Ringo's song, Oh! Darling was now considered complete and set aside for possible inclusion on Glyn Johns' Get Back album.     

By July, the group had shifted attention to a new album with full production values, as opposed to the stripped-down Get Back project.  The songs begun in April were now to receive additional attention.  For Paul, that meant getting the perfect lead vocal on this track, something he felt he had not yet achieved.  He began attempting it before the others arrived (he lived nearby and was usually the first at the studio) on July 17th, and did so again on the 18th, the 22nd and the 23rd.  He was seeking a rough quality that he felt he could only get before even getting warmed up.  And he had learned that it was counterproductive to have the others sitting around while he made multiple attempts at a vocal as he had done on Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da the previous year.  He finally nailed it on the 23rd, then double-tracked his vocal in places.

On August 8th, Paul added some guitar and tambourine to the track.  On the 11th, Paul, John and George recorded the backing vocals, possibly wiping out some earlier backing vocals from April 26th sung by just John and George.  For me, these delicate harmonies are at odds with Paul's raucous lead vocal - they sound too clean, too pristine.  A rougher feel overall, more akin to the January 27th runthrough, would have better served the song and transformed it into a true old-fashioned rock and roll number. 

The song precedes Octopus's Garden on side one of Abbey Road, thought the two tracks were reversed in the original running order of the album.