On this day · 57 years ago · 1969
57 Years Ago Today: The Beatles Push Here Comes the Sun and Something Toward the Finish Line
Two George Harrison songs, one long day at Abbey Road. On July 16, 1969, The Beatles overdubbed harmonium onto Here Comes the Sun and re-recorded Harrison's lead vocal for Something, pushing both toward the versions the world already knows.
By Axel, Classic-rock desk · Edited by Cadence ·
On July 16, 1969, The Beatles spent a 10-hour Abbey Road session finishing two George Harrison songs for the Abbey Road album. From 2:30-7pm in Studio Three, they overdubbed harmonium and handclaps onto Here Comes the Sun. From 7pm to 12:30am in Studio Two, Harrison re-recorded his lead vocal for Something, with harmony from Paul McCartney, and the band built reduction mixes to free up tape tracks for George Martin's orchestral overdubs.
A 10-hour day finishing two songs that changed how the band saw Harrison
On Wednesday, July 16, 1969, The Beatles worked a long split session at EMI Studios on Abbey Road, with Glyn Johns producing, according to The Beatles Bible's detailed session log. From 2:30 to 7pm in Studio Three, the band overdubbed harmonium and handclaps onto take 15 of George Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun," adding the handclaps to track eight and Harrison's harmonium part (later erased from the final mix) to track five. Work then shifted to Studio Two from 7pm to 12:30am, where the focus was Harrison's other Abbey Road standout, "Something." Harrison scrapped a reduction mix that had been made five days earlier and re-recorded his lead vocal from scratch, with harmony from Paul McCartney and handclaps from Harrison, McCartney, and Ringo Starr. Two fresh reduction mixes followed, condensing piano and lead guitar onto one track, drums and percussion onto another, and guitar routed through a Leslie speaker onto a sixth, freeing up space for George Martin's orchestral overdubs still to come.
Written in Eric Clapton's garden, on Eric Clapton's guitar
"Here Comes the Sun" wasn't written that day. Per Wikipedia's sourced account of the song, Harrison wrote it months earlier, likely in April 1969, after skipping a business meeting at the Beatles' Apple Corps offices. He walked over to Eric Clapton's house, Hurtwood Edge in Ewhurst, Surrey, picked up one of Clapton's acoustic guitars, and wrote the song wandering the garden. Harrison later described it in his autobiography, I, Me, Mine: with Apple "getting like school" and London's winter dragging on, the relief of the spring sun and a day away from accountants produced the song almost immediately. Clapton himself recalled watching it happen in the 2011 documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World, saying he felt "very proud that it was my garden that was inspiring it."
The songs that put Harrison level with Lennon and McCartney
Together, "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something" did something no earlier Harrison song had managed: they got him taken as seriously as a songwriter as his two more famous bandmates. Frank Sinatra was so taken with "Something" that he recorded it twice and, per multiple accounts of his live introductions, occasionally (and inaccurately) called it one of Lennon and McCartney's best songs, per Wikipedia's account of the song's reception. Both tracks anchor Abbey Road, released September 26, 1969, and "Here Comes the Sun" carries the distinction today of being the most-streamed Beatles song on Spotify worldwide as of 2025. Harrison kept "Here Comes the Sun" in his rare solo live sets for the rest of his life, including at the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh.
If the acoustic side of this session is what you're chasing
Harrison wrote "Here Comes the Sun" on a borrowed acoustic in a garden, not in a studio. If that's the sound you're after on your own flat-top, a standard phosphor bronze light set is the reliable modern starting point; his own documented electric-side gauge across the Beatles catalog runs .010-.046 nickel-wound, per his full CYS profile.
EJ16 Phosphor Bronze Light (.012–.053)
Why this one: The standard acoustic light gauge for exactly the warm, strummed tone Harrison's garden-written original called for, not a claim about which strings were on Clapton's actual guitar that day.
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