The four Beatles came and went in a whirlwind eight years. While several problems were likely to blame for their breakup — including disagreement over management, financial problems with Apple Corps and a desire to pursue other creative interests — the most likely factor was each member’s emerging sense of individuality. After years of looking, dressing and creating as a group, the four Beatles were each coming into a sense of their own possibilities as solo artists.
John Lennon became interested in pursuing art rock with Yoko Ono. Ringo Starr was developing a new career as an actor. Paul McCartney had moved to fill the void left by the 1967 death of manager Brian Epstein and had by the end of 1968 become the one Beatle with any strong ambitions left for their future.
And then there was George Harrison, easily the most independent of the group. It was Harrison who, in 1966, began exploring sitar with Ravi Shankar, and who subsequently quit playing guitar for a year, unless required to for recording sessions. And it was Harrison who led the others into the study of Transcendental Meditation, a practice that had a transformative effect on each of them.
Finally, there was Apple Corps, the group’s multimedia conglomerate. More than any other Beatle, Harrison had risen to the challenge of finding and developing new talent for the firm’s Apple Records label, and he was the first to create his own solo albums with the release of his Wonderwall Music soundtrack in 1968.
Through it all, Harrison continued to write music for the Beatles, although little of it made it on to their records. From the start, Lennon and McCartney had cemented their place at the core of the band’s songwriting, an indelible partnership that feels as potent today as it did decades ago.
And yet, ironically, it was Harrison who would have the last word when it came to the Beatles’ recordings. Disregarding the recent, AI-powered “Now and Then,” the final song recorded during the Beatles’ existence as a group was actually a Harrison tune: “I Me Mine,” from their 1970 swan song, Let It Be.
And, not surprisingly perhaps, it is a song about ego, the very thing that was tearing the group apart.
As Harrison explained in 1995’s Anthology film, “I Me Mine” is all about “the ego problem” engulfing the Beatles. He, in particular, was tired of having Lennon and McCartney veto his songs, and fed up with McCartney’s bossy nature, which caused Harrison to briefly quit the group during Let It Be. His frustration led him to write “I Me Mine” almost spontaneously.
“It is a very strange song which I wrote the night before it was in the film you see,” Harrison told the BBC of its origins in 1970. “At this time we were at Twickenham and I wrote this song; it took five minutes just from an idea I had.”
Like many of Harrison’s other songs, “I Me Mine” was rejected by Lennon and McCartney. In fact, it wouldn’t have even been recorded had a snippet of the song not made it into the Let It Be film directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. In the scene, Harrison, McCartney and Starr rehearse the song at Twickenham Film Studios in London — where shooting began for the Let It Be film — while Lennon and Ono dance to its waltz-time beat.
“I went into the studio and sang it to Ringo,” Harrison explained,” and they happened to film it. And that film sequence was quite nice, you see, so they wanted to keep that sequence in the film. But I hadn’t really recorded it in Apple (Studios) with the rest of the songs (on the album), so we had to go in the studio and record it.”
The song was tracked on January 3, 1970. By then, the Beatles were as good as finished. Lennon who doesn’t feature on the track, had quit in September, although it was agreed his departure would not be immediately publicized.
Let It Be was released the following May, a month after Lennon cast the first stones of his solo career with John Lennon/Plastic Ono Banddawning a new era for the Fab Four.
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