abbey road: the making of her majesty

[chris]

full disclosure...i found this online...wikepedia to be exact...so i will not vouch for its accuracy. but it might be right. and i thought it was interesting.

"Her Majesty" is a song written by Paul McCartney (although credited to Lennon/McCartney) that appears on The Beatles' album Abbey Road. "Her Majesty" is the final track of the album and appears fourteen seconds after the song "The End", but was not listed on the original sleeve. As such, it is considered one of the first examples of a hidden track in rock music.


Recording
The song was recorded in three takes on 2 July 1969, prior to The Beatles beginning work on "Golden Slumbers"/"Carry That Weight". McCartney sang and simultaneously played an acoustic guitar accompaniment. The decision to exclude it from the Abbey Road medley was made on 30 July.[1]


Structure and placement
The song was originally placed between "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam"; McCartney decided that the sequence did not work and the song was edited out of the medley by Abbey Road Studios tape operator John Kurlander. He was instructed by McCartney to destroy the tape, but EMI policy stated that no Beatles recording was ever to be deleted. The fourteen seconds of silence between "The End" and "Her Majesty" are the result of Kurlander’s lead out tape added to separate the song from the rest of the recording.

The loud chord that occurs at the beginning of the song is the ending, as recorded, of "Mean Mr. Mustard".[2] "Her Majesty" ends abruptly because its own final note was left at the beginning of "Polythene Pam". Paul applauded Kurlander's "surprise effect" and the track became the unintended closer to the LP. The crudely-edited beginning and end of "Her Majesty" shows that it was not meant to be included in the final mix of the album; as McCartney says in The Beatles Anthology, "Typical Beatles - an accident." Consequently, both of the original sides of vinyl closed with a song that ended very abruptly (the other being I Want You (She's So Heavy)).

The CD version also mimics the original LP version in that the CD contains a 14-second long silence immediately after "The End" before "Her Majesty" starts playing. However, if the song is jumped to from another song on the CD or played on a CD player or MP3 player in shuffle play, the song starts immediately.

At 23 seconds long, "Her Majesty" is the shortest song in the Beatles' repertoire (contrasting the same albums' I Want You (She's So Heavy), their second longest). The song was not listed on the original vinyl record's sleeve as the sleeves had already been printed; subsequent pressings and the CD edition correct this.[1] The song starts panned hard right and slowly pans to hard left.

[little lamb dragonfly]

It is correct. Its fun to put Her Majesty after MMM when listening to the album on itunes, though it requires some subtle editing.

I am surprised you'd never heard this Chris. I thought we were all pretty big Beatles nerds who knew the stories of all the songs!

[markfeber@yahoo.com]

i kinda knew the story but it was still a fascinating read so thanks chris. i love these kind of stories. never too old to learn more about the fabs.

[chris]

sad to admit you can fill the grand canyon with all the stuff i don't know. while i've loved the band since i was 12 (an old codger of 42 now), i used to read everything i could get my hand on about the band. but that stopped years ago. matter of fact (should i even admit this here?), it had been years, almost a decade, since i listened to an entire beatles album from beginning to end. i just figured i heard it so many times, its like remembering a family dinner. that changed with the remasters, of course...

i feel so...unknowing

[markfeber@yahoo.com]

yeah chris i too feel so unknowing since i came to macca central and met some really serious fans. i used to think i knew it all but have learned i dont since coming here and its so great because there is nothing i would rather talk about then the beatles as anybody who knows me will tell you and its been this way since i was 8 yrs old.

[little lamb dragonfly]

yeah chris i too feel so unknowing since i came to macca central and met some really serious fans. i used to think i knew it all but have learned i dont since coming here and its so great because there is nothing i would rather talk about then the beatles as anybody who knows me will tell you and its been this way since i was 8 yrs old.

I know the feeling. I have a couple close friends who are fellow Beatles fanatics and the Beatles dominate and are given the same reverence and respect in our conversations as most people give prophets and Jesus. But most of the rest of the time, I try to keep my Beatles nerd-dom under wraps. My wife is a good sport though.

[jgkojak]

I keep meaning to do this, but w/remaster out maybe I'll have to:

Edit Her Majesty back between Mustard and Polythene to see how it sounds...

if I do it I'll post it here.

[Bowiebenson]

Outtakes from the Abbey Road Album cover. On Rokpool.com. http://bit.ly/2GJVKn

[eggman1979]

I also love the stories behind a song or an album. One thing has helped me to learn a lot of stuff around The Beatles is Macca-central's section "Today in Beatle History". I visit this great web site since 2002 or 2003 and I remember connecting every single day to print the current day's events untill I got them all, yeah an entire year connecting everyday until I got some kind of Beatles' diary to say so. I'm so thankful. I even remember finding in another site the same stories but not only compressed to the Beatles' years, I mean, the stories were from their solo years as well but sadly this web site no longer exists.

When performing live, Paul tells many annecdotes that are hard to find in another places. I remember hearing the story of Michelle and Driving rain when just when I saw him in concert, those bits never appear in his live DVDs.

I'd love to hear the story of Back seat of my car, anyone knows it? But yeah, that's for another thread.

[markfeber@yahoo.com]

man eggman i have tried like crazy to find out about back seat but no luck. i know john thought the line we believe that we cant be wrong was a dig at him and yoko but i dunno. i sure wish we could get some help about this. mike?