Fractious relationships during the recording of Abbey Road left The Beatles in tense circumstances.
But George Harrison, the songwriter behind While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Something managed to “improve the vibe” in the studio. Speaking in the Anthology documentary on his time in the studio with the rest of The Beatles, Harrison called the state of recording “bitchy” and managed to find a way of improving the sessions. The Beatles’ recordings for both Abbey Road and Let it Be can be seen in the documentary, and improving the relationship in the studio was paramount, according to Harrison. The “quiet one” of The Beatles had previously quit the band and recommended bringing in Eric Clapton as his replacement, but ultimately returned to the sessions.
Harrison said: “It’s interesting to see how people behave nicely when you bring a guest in. They don’t want everybody to know they’re so bitchy. This happened back in the White Album when I brought Eric Clapton in to play on While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Suddenly everybody’s on their best behaviour.
“So I put a message out to find if Billy Preston was in town and told him to come into Savile Row, which he did. Straight away, there was a 100% improvement in the vibe in the room. Everybody was happier also to have somebody else playing in the band.”
Both producer George Martin and Beatles drummer Ringo Starr confirmed the mood improved once Preston was brought in. Starr also confirmed everyone was getting “a little tired” as the album was taking “a long time”. He added: “There were many discussions going on by then. Many heated discussions.
“We were working on a good track and that always excited us and his part was also part of it. Suddenly, when we were working on something good, the bullshit went out the window and we got back down to doing what we did really, really well.”
Speaking of Preston’s appearance and the change in attitude in the studio, Martin said: “Billy Preston was a great help, a very good keyboard guy and his work on Get Back alone justified him being here. He was an amiable fellow, very nice. He was a kind of emollient, if you like, he helped lubricate the friction that had been there.”
Harrison later confirmed the original plan for the recordings had not been for studio albums, but a live release. He said: “The idea originally was we were going to rehearse all these new songs then make a new album in a live show. It never really happened, because the album became us in the studio. As we rehearsed the songs, we recorded.”
Later in the documentary, Harrison called the latter years of The Beatles as a “stifling” experience where there was “too much restriction” compared to how it was when the band first began.
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