A retro-style rocker written by Paul McCartney, ‘Oh! Darling’ was originally attempted by The Beatles during the Get Back/Let It Be sessions, but was eventually released as an album track on Abbey Road.
Having been some years since he deployed the larynx-shredding rock ‘n’ roll stylings of ‘I’m Down’ and ‘Long Tall Sally’ (1968’s ‘Helter Skelter’ being a notable exception), McCartney broke his voice back in carefully.
Living in Cavendish Avenue, just two streets away from Abbey Road, McCartney got in the habit of arriving before the other Beatles to record his vocals for the song.
Paul came in several days running to do the lead vocal on ‘Oh! Darling’. He’d come in, sing it and say, ‘No, that’s not it, I’ll try it again tomorrow.’ He only tried it once per day, I suppose he wanted to capture a certain rawness which could only be done once before the voice changed. I remember him saying, ‘Five years ago I could have done this in a flash,’ referring, I suppose, to the days of ‘Long Tall Sally’ and ‘Kansas City’.
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn
In 1969 McCartney thought his voice was too clear to do the song justice, and claimed he “wanted it to sound as though I’d been performing it on stage all week”.
I mainly remember wanting to get the vocal right, wanting to get it good, and I ended up trying each morning as I came into the recording session. I tried it with a hand mike, and I tried it with a standing mike, I tried it every which way, and finally got the vocal I was reasonably happy with. It’s a bit of a belter, and if it comes off a little bit lukewarm, then you’ve missed the whole point. It was unusual for me, I would normally try all the goes at a vocal in one day.
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
John Lennon rated the song highly, though he was characteristically guarded in his praise.
‘Oh! Darling’ was a great one of Paul’s that he didn’t sing too well. I always thought that I could’ve done it better – it was more my style than his. He wrote it, so what the hell, he’s going to sing it. If he’d had any sense, he should have let me sing it. [Laughs.]
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
In the studio
The Beatles first rehearsed ‘Oh! Darling’ on 27 January 1969, during a session at the Apple Studio in London’s Savile Row. With Billy Preston on keyboards, the somewhat ragged recording turns into an improvised jam, ending with John Lennon’s announcement that “I’ve just heard that Yoko’s divorce [from Tony Cox] has just gone through. Free at last!”
As preserved on Anthology 3, Lennon then sang, to the tune of ‘Oh! Darling’:
I’m free
This morning
Baby told the lawyer it’s OK
Believe me when I tell you
I’ll never do you no harm
The Beatles began recording the song properly at Abbey Road on 20 April 1969, under the working title ‘Oh Darling (I’ll Never Do You No Harm)’.
They recorded 26 takes of the rhythm track, the last of which was chosen as the basis for the album version.
The eight-track tape had George Harrison’s bass guitar on track one; Ringo Starr’s drums on two; Billy Preston’s organ on three; Paul McCartney’s piano on four; John Lennon’s guitar on five; and McCartney’s guide vocals on six.
Preston only played on some of the takes. One such attempt, take four, appears on some editions of the 50th anniversary reissue of Abbey Road. Furthermore, take seven from this date was in fact a cover version of ‘The Games People Play’ by Joe South, a contemporary hit.
On 26 April McCartney made his first attempt at a lead vocal, though this was unused, as were two takes of backing vocals.
McCartney returned to the song on 17 July, beginning a series of single-take attempts in the early afternoon. The final lead vocals were recorded on 23 July.
The three-part doo-wop vocal harmonies were taped by McCartney, Lennon and Harrison on 11 August, after which ‘Oh! Darling’ was complete. 11 August, incidentally, was John Lennon’s final Beatles recording session.
Well … if you listen quiet closely to Oh Darling and Healter Skelter you can see the amount of work and training it took Paul to form his voice into what it was in this song . There’s a lot more flexibility and control over the voice even though it was placed years after the other songs with such notes , Paul handled the notes perfectly even though he didn’t do the recording his style it came out to be a rarely beautiful track which wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Mac’s hard work and also his inspiring way of thinking .
Other than how incredible this song is there should be credit to George fo great instrumenting as always .
Next I would mention that I believe that John always credited Paul for his songs even when he was performing them solo . This wasn’t much about a feud between them it was mostly about how John always praised himself and his mischievous sense of humor also how things weren’t as good after the disbanding! So I believe it was never such big matter !
Still this song is golden and very dear to me ??????
New info from the Abbey Road box set states that Lennon is on guitar, McCartney on piano, Harrison on bass
Really ??? Very interesting . I wonder how di they get to that conclusion, only listening to the sessions, I guess …
Now with the abbey road 50th, documentation seems to imply that it’s Paul on piano, which I’ve always suspected since it’s not an easy part, George on bass and it’s john playing the lead guitar, which also does sound like him.
you read this documentation ?
Sound more like Paul on guitar.
Always thought it was Paul-piano, John-guitar, George -not sure. But knowing he played bass on She Said She Said (which is excellent) then I’ll go with George on bass.
I agree with John on guitar. It has his feel. Paul on piano. George in bass. He was a fine bassist.
One of the things that become clear with the remix is the last line of the bridge, which goes : “Well you know I nearly FELL down and died ” , while everyone thought it was like the first line : ” I nearly broke down”.
I’ve always heard it as “fell”, remix or no, and “everyone” I know has always sung it that way.
I noticed that too. I always thought it was “broke down “.
Imagine Paul had given John the vocal for the second bridge (“When you told me…”). Wouldn’t that’ve been something.
oh gosh, he would have ROCKED the heck out of it wouldn’t he!
Personally I always thought that Paul insisted on singing this when John could of nailed it in one take because the lyrics refer either consciously or sub consciously to Lennon and the disintegration of their relationship – “when you told me that you didn’t need me anymore you know I nearly broke down and cried”.
I’ve heard versions of this great tune with John singing an under-harmony part on the last verse. Doesn’t seem to have made the final version though. Any ideas where it might be located?
Interesting about the revised personnel list. I’ve always thought the guitar playing sounded a lot like John and not much like George. Oddly, the percussive piano part also sounds a lot like John to me, though of course it was normal for Paul to play piano on his own piano-dominated tracks. And yes, the bass sounds a lot like George–kind of a clumpy sound that is fairly similar to George’s playing on Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.
On Let It Be, John played the bass on Paul’s piano ballads, but his part on Long and Winding Road has been widely criticized, and Paul overdubbed over his part on Let It Be, so it makes sense that George seems to have played bass on 3 of Paul’s piano-dominated songs on Abbey Road–probably Paul thought he would get better parts off of George than John.
I agree with you that the aggressive piano playing sounds more like John, but I have compared the bass tone to that on “Sun King” and I would think that it’s Paul playing his left-handed Fender Jazz Bass. Also, I think that George is very likely on lead guitar, considering the controlled distortion tone and the echoed guitar sound at the end, and I doubt that he would’ve swapped guitar and bass roles with Paul.
Kevin Howlett may have based his line-up on some press anecdote from a New Zealand band called The Fourmyula and not a facsimile of studio logs, but how they reportedly knew who played what is beyond me, since they were working in another studio at EMI while The Beatles worked on “Oh! Darling”.
I agree with you that it’s likely to be John on the piano, but I’m pretty sure that Paul is playing the bass and George is playing guitar, since they both did so at the Savile Row session.
It’s almost certainly John on guitar; the slides as the notes die are a distinctive John touch, also seen in Honey Pie (intro and lead), the end of the solo on Come Together (pretty sure that first solo is John), and basically every time he touched a bass. The arpeggiated pattern is also VERY similar to his part on Gimme Some Truth (off of Imagine). John played nearly all the arpeggios on Abbey Road (probably this, Octopus’s Garden, I Want You, Because, YNGMYM, Sun King)— it really adds to the atmosphere of the album.
George actually played bass on nearly all of Paul’s songs on Abbey Road (Maxwell’s, Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight, Oh! Darling). The only Paul songs Paul played bass on were YNGMYM (overdub) and The End (vocal overdubbed). Also, upon listening to isolated tracks (at 10:12), the piano plays the bass melody in the left hand, which is not something John would have done if he had played piano on this song. Paul clearly had a bass line in mind that he imparted to George (also played, by Paul this time, on the takes they did during the Let it Be sessions in January ’69).
As I said, it’s okay to have different opinions or guesses on who played what and I totally respect that.
Paul also played bass on “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window”, being recorded as one song with “Polythene Pam” and as I said, perhaps Kevin Howlett possibly based his line-up on “Oh! Darling” on a press statement from a New Zealand band called The Fourmyula. I was replying to a comment from Matthew Ward and it was regarding his opinion on John possibly playing the piano on “Oh! Darling”.
“Golden Slumbers” and “Carry That Weight” were recorded as one song.
George actually played the guitar solos on “Come Together” and as I did state, until any studio paperwork is or personally handwritten notes from George Martin are unearthed and conclusively discloses once and for all who played what on each song, it’ll just be perpetual guesswork and conjecture.
I know that lots of authors base their hunches on who played what on the usual routine in the studio (George and John on guitars, Paul on bass and Ringo on drums) or post-1970 recollections that are not always correct.
Paul McCartney wrote and sang Oh, Darling great. John was just trying to seem better when he said that he thought he could sing it better which at that time he and Paul were arguing. Anyhow the song is a gem and only Paul had the range to sing it. He had the highest voice range out of all the Beatles and could sing in many different styles
He actually played Oh, Darling live in 2019 in Santiago Chile. Here’s the video link on you tube
https://youtu.be/6DL2u_ffyT4
Of course Paul was going to sing it – he wrote it. Why would John think that Paul was going to relinquish the lead vocals to him, never mind he didn’t write it? It would’ve been very unfair to Paul by reducing him to only one lead vocal on side 1 of “Abbey Road” had John taken the lead vocal on “Oh! Darling”.
John’s belief that the vocal on “Oh! Darling” was more suited to his style than Paul’s, despite not writing it, is just preposterous and it didn’t work that way in the group’s hierarchy when it came to John and Paul writing their own songs separately, despite the Lennon/McCartney credit. Usually, the one singing it was its primary or solitary author – e.g. John wrote and sang “In My Life”, “Nowhere Man”, “Come Together”, “Revolution”, “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “Not a Second Time”, “Please Please Me”, “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “All You Need is Love”, “Across the Universe” (one of his best) and “The Ballad of John and Yoko” (it was about his and Yoko’s wedding, duh) and Paul wrote and sang “And I Love Her”, “Yesterday”, “Let it Be”, “The Long and Winding Road”, “Lady Madonna”, “The Fool on the Hill” and “Hey Jude”.
It’s a recording! Played prevoius to the show, it was not live!
John could never have sung this in this key. It was simply out of his range. (Paul barely makes it either, but just, which is part of the fun here!)
You said it and like I said, Paul wrote “Oh! Darling”, so naturally, he was going to, quite rightly, sing it.
I also thought that John was on piano, Paul was on bass, and George was on guitar
I agree with you, Dylan. As I said, perhaps Kevin Howlett or Giles Martin based the 2019 SDE line-up on a press release from the Fourmyula and not replicated studio paperwork or handwritten notes to confirm who actually played what – even these SDE line-ups have their share of errors or omissions.
The hard-hitting piano playing is clearly more typical of John’s style (he had previously played acoustic or electric piano on some of Paul’s songs in the past, namely “The Night Before”, “Helter Skelter” and “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”) and as I already said, George’s distorted guitar tone tended to be more controlled.