Here Comes the Sun

(Harrison)

Quick Facts

Lead Vocal	George
Recorded	Jul–Aug 1969
Length	3:05
Key	A
Noted Takes	15
Producer	George Martin
Engineer	Geoff Emerick; Phil McDonald

Originally released on

Abbey Road (LP)

Apple — PCS 7088

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Story Section status: Outdated

"Here Comes the Sun" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their eleventh studio album Abbey Road (1969). It was written and sung by George, and is one of his best-known compositions. Harrison wrote the song in early 1969 at the country house of his friend Eric Clapton, where Harrison had chosen to play truant for the day to avoid attending a meeting at the Beatles' Apple Corps organisation.

Harrison wrote it at Eric Clapton's Surrey home in spring 1969 after skipping an Apple Corps business meeting on a sunny afternoon. The song captures a feeling of relief after a long winter — both meteorological and metaphorical (the band's business affairs were chaotic; George was tiring of them). George's 'Here Comes the Sun' emerged as one of the Abbey Road sessions' most instantly appealing compositions, recorded on 7 July 1969 during what Dave Harries recalls as a routine technical-equipment setup session. The song's optimistic major-key melody and sophisticated harmonic movement offered counterweight to both the preceding Get Back's turbulent sessions and the Abbey Road medley's experimental complexity. John's absence from the session enabled uninterrupted focus on Harrison's composition (Lewisohn 1988, p.178). The song's hopeful melodic gesture and technically accomplished songwriting secured Harrison's status as a principal composer within the band's catalog. (Kozinn 1995)

Cut 7 July 1969 at EMI with Harrison on acoustic guitar, McCartney on bass, Starr on drums (Lennon was hospitalised after a car crash in Scotland and absent from this and several other Abbey Road sessions). George overdubbed harmonium and the 1969 Moog Series III synthesizer (the first Moog on a Beatles record) in following weeks. The recording proceeded with characteristic efficiency, requiring only a modest take count to capture the essential arrangement. Dave Harries's engineering notes documented the session's technical simplicity: a straightforward instrumental-vocal capture with minimal multitrack overdubbing, establishing the track as one of Abbey Road's more traditionally recorded numbers. George Martin's production approach emphasized the song's natural melodic strength without elaborate orchestration (Lewisohn 1988, p.178). Emerick's capture of George's fingerpicked guitar established an intimate acoustic presence that provided essential textural contrast within Abbey Road's orchestral framework. (Emerick 2006)

Here Comes the Sun is far more substantial than Maxwell's Silver Hammer.- Allan Kozinn, Kozinn 1995

What's distinctive

At 3:05 it sits in the top fifth by length. One of 28 songs led primarily by George. One of 22 solely Harrison-credited compositions in the canon. Recorded approximately 9 of 17 into the Abbey Road (1969) sessions. Carries the unique tag 'claptons-garden' — no other song shares it. Take count: 15 — the 7 July basic ran to takes 1–13 (take 13 “best”); the 8 July vocal session reduced take 13 into takes 14 and 15, take 15 the “best”; every overdub (harmonium, Leslie’d guitar, orchestra, Moog) was superimposed onto take 15, and the one-and-only stereo remix derives from it.¹

Recording

Here Comes the Sun was built on a single afternoon’s performance and then decorated for six weeks. The 7 July 1969 basic track ran to thirteen takes with three Beatles in the room — George on acoustic guitar and guide vocal, Paul on bass, Ringo on drums, and no John, who was “still in hospital” and “still absent through injury”. It was Ringo’s twenty-ninth birthday, and take 4 preserves him asking the control room to “turn me down a little bit, if you don’t mind”. Take 13 was best, and everything that followed was laid on top of it.¹
The released master is the only stereo mix the song ever received, and it is not running at the speed it was played. The 19 August 1969 remix was “done with the original tape running at approximately 51 cycles per second, bringing the duration of the remixed song down to 3′05″”. The capstan selector at 51 Hz sits about two per cent above the UK 50 Hz mains standard, so the mix captured a slightly sharpened, slightly hurried version of take 15 — and because there is no second mix, every commercial Abbey Road pressing carries that pitch and that running time.^1,2
A second deliberate distortion is printed into the same mix, and it was manufactured mechanically. Editing tape was wrapped in vertical strips around one of the rollers on the BTR2 STEED machine “so that it wowed badly”, and the Moog was sent through it; the result is audible on “some of the fluty Moog parts which have unstable pitch”. The wobble is not the synthesiser drifting and not a tape fault — it is a roller deliberately made uneven, by a tape operator who disliked the idea then and says so still (see the quotation below).²
George produced two of his own sessions on this song, which the session sheets record plainly and which is easy to miss. On 4 August 1969, in the Studio Three control room, the rough stereo remixes of Here Comes The Sun and Something were made with George himself in the producer’s slot on the session sheet, Phil McDonald engineering and Alan Parsons as tape operator. Those roughs “revealed to him that both required additional overdubbing”, and the Leslie’d guitar and drum overdubs of 11 August followed directly from what he heard on them.¹
The sources disagree about when the Moog went on. Kehew and Ryan place the overdub two days after the 15 August orchestral session, which would make it 17 August; the session header dates it to Tuesday 19 August 1969 in Studio Two, with the stereo remix made immediately afterwards in the same booking. The page follows the session paperwork on the date and records the discrepancy rather than resolving it.^1,2

Equipment Section status: Outdated

Studio	EMI Studios, Abbey Road — Studio Two (7/8 July basic + 11/19 August overdubs & mix) and Studio Three (16 July harmonium; 4 August rough remix); Studio One into Studio Two (15 August orchestra)¹
Tape machine	3M M23 eight-track — two tape generations: take 13 (7 July basic) → takes 14 and 15 (8 July reduction, 15 “best”); all later overdubs SI’d directly onto take 15^1,2
Console	EMI TG12345 transistor console (the new solid-state desk of the 1969 Abbey Road sessions, Studio Two)²
Microphones	U47, U67, AKG C12, AKG D19/D20 (drums), STC 4038
Outboard / effects	EMI RS124, EMT 140, Fairchild 660, ADT (on the acoustic guitar), BTR2 STEED chamber send (Moog wow), compression on every channel (TG)
Keyboards / guitars	Gibson J-200 acoustic (George), Epiphone Casino / Leslie’d electric guitar, harmonium, Moog Series III synthesizer (the first Moog on a Beatles record)
Amplifiers	Fender Twin Reverb, Fender Bassman, Vox UL730, Leslie

Recording Timeline

7 July 1969 — backing track, Studio Two (takes 1–13) — Studio Two, 2.30–11.45pm. P: George Martin. E: Phil McDonald. 2E: John Kurlander. Lineup: bass (Paul), drums (Ringo), acoustic guitar/guide vocal (George); John absent — “still in hospital” and “still absent through injury”. “The recording captures that feeling to perfection, right from the opening acoustic guitar chords which ring out, joyously.” Take 4 carries Ringo’s 29th-birthday aside (“Turn me down a little bit, if you don’t mind”); take 13 best; in the last hour George re-recorded the acoustic guitar as an overdub onto take 13.^1,2
8 July 1969 — vocal SI + reduction take 13 → takes 14 and 15 — Studio Two, 2.30–10.45pm. P: George Martin. E: Phil McDonald. 2E: John Kurlander. “The overdubbing of George’s lead vocal, wiping the previous guide track, and of superb harmonised backing vocals by George and Paul, manually double-tracked. These were sufficient to complete the eight-track tape, so take 13 was given a reduction mixdown (done twice to achieve the optimum version) and then a rough mono remix of take 15 was made for George to take away.” K/R specify the ‘sun, sun, sun…’ backing-vocal lyric; take 15 = ‘best’ reduction.^1,2
16 July 1969 — harmonium + handclaps SI, Studio Three — Studio Three, 2.30–7.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Phil McDonald. 2E: Alan Parsons. Recording: SI onto take 15. Lewisohn lists “handclaps and a harmonium being added to ‘Here Comes The Sun’”; K/R add that “George overdubbed harmonium, and then he and Paul double-tracked more backing vocals and handclaps on Tracks 7 and 8” (the per-track attribution is K/R’s).^1,2
11 August 1969 — Leslie’d guitar + drum-overdub SI, Studio Two — Studio Two, 2.30–11.30pm (shared with I Want You (She’s So Heavy) + Oh! Darling). P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick / Phil McDonald. 2E: John Kurlander. “George ended the session by adding more guitars to ‘Here Comes The Sun’”; K/R specify “some Leslie’d electric guitar, along with intermittent drum overdubs by Ringo, reinforcing certain fills and transitions”, catalogued at 0:26, 0:40 and 0:51 into the song.^1,2
15 August 1969 — orchestral SI via cross-studio CCTV (woodwind-led, no violins) — Studio One into Studio Two, 7.00pm–1.15am. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick / Phil McDonald. 2E: Alan Parsons. Recording: SI onto take 15, on the same cross-studio CCTV booking that covered Something, Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight and The End. Orchestra distinct from Something: “four violas, four cellos, one string bass, two clarinets, two alto flutes, two flutes, two piccolos” — NO violins, an 8-piece woodwind section giving the overdub its characteristic colour.¹
19 August 1969 — Moog SI + the one-and-only stereo remix, Studio Two — Studio Two, 2.00pm–4.00am (shared with the medley crossfade/edit work + the Something stereo remixes). P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick / Phil McDonald. 2E: Alan Parsons. “George’s two songs were completed this day, ‘Here Comes The Sun’ receiving a Moog synthesizer overdub onto take 15, played by the composer, and then both this song and ‘Something’ being mixed for stereo.” The Moog (“still installed in Room 43”) went onto two tracks; the stereo remix (remix 1, from take 15) was the song’s sole mix.^1,2

We placed vertical strips of editing tape around one of the rollers on the BTR2 STEED machine so that it wowed badly. That can be clearly heard on some of the fluty Moog parts which have unstable pitch. I hated the idea at the time and I do to this day!— Alan Parsons²

Studio Notes

The 51 cycles-per-second mixdown — The 19 August stereo remix from take 15 was made with the eight-track running at the 51 Hz capstan setting against a 50 Hz mains standard, so playback during mixdown ran about two per cent fast. The pitch rises slightly and the running time falls to the released 3′05″: the mix was “done with the original tape running at approximately 51 cycles per second”. What makes this consequential rather than incidental is that it happened at the only mix the song ever got, so the sped-up version is not one option among several — it is the record.^1,2
ADT that arrives late on purpose — “During mixing, George’s acoustic guitar track was treated with ADT, though the effect wasn’t fully applied until his vocal entered (portions of the guitar were apparently legitimately double-tracked as well).” The engagement is asymmetric by design: the famous opening figure is comparatively dry and narrow, and the guitar widens as the voice arrives. It is a mixing decision doing the job an arrangement usually does — the entrance of the vocal is announced by the guitar changing size.²
What take 15 held, track by track — T1 bass; T2 harmonium and Moog; T3 drums, Leslie’d guitar, drum overdub and Moog; T4 acoustic guitar; T5 strings and woodwinds; T6 lead and backing vocals; T7 handclaps and backing vocals; T8 handclaps and backing vocals. The Moog is on two of the eight, sharing with the harmonium and with the drum-overdub track: George “recorded some Moog on the same track as the harmonium, as well as some on the electric guitar/drum overdub track”. Sharing tracks that way is what a full tape forces, and it means the Moog could never afterwards be balanced independently.²
The Moog was a room, not an instrument you carried in — The synthesiser used on 19 August was George’s own, “still installed in Room 43”. A Moog of that generation was a patchbay-and-cable installation rather than a keyboard that could be wheeled to a session, which is part of why its appearances on Abbey Road cluster into a few days rather than spreading across the sessions.²
Overdubs small enough to miss — Some of the 11 August additions last less than a bar. Twenty-six seconds into the song there is a brief half-measure overdub; more follow at around forty and fifty-one seconds. They are reinforcements of fills and transitions rather than parts, and they are the clearest evidence that the record was assembled in passes: nothing about them belongs to the performance of 7 July.²
The orchestra was in a different room from the band — The 15 August overdub was played in Studio One and monitored from the Studio Two control room, with television used to link the two rooms: “It was a mammoth session,” Alan Brown recalled. “Television was employed to link two studios.” The cueing still came down to a voice on talkback and “the vagaries of” it — “All right, Bert? Are you ready?”. The scoring for this song is unusual in having no violins at all: four violas, four cellos, one string bass, two clarinets, two alto flutes, two flutes and two piccolos, a woodwind-weighted group that is most of why the overdub sounds like light rather than strings.¹
A two-generation tape stack, which is unusually shallow for this album — The released mix sits on only the 7 July take-13 basic and the 8 July reduction of take 13 into takes 14 and 15. Everything after that — harmonium and handclaps on 16 July, Leslie’d guitar and drum overdubs on 11 August, the orchestra on 15 August, the Moog on 19 August — went straight onto take 15 with no further reduction. Compared with the three-tape stack under Come Together, this is a song that stayed close to its own tape.^1,2
The sources disagree about the Leslie’d-guitar session — The session header puts the Leslie’d guitar and drum overdubs on Monday 11 August 1969 in Studio Two. Kehew and Ryan’s narrative instead has George returning to Studio Three “three weeks” after the 16 July harmonium overdub, which would put it around 6 August and in a different room; the real gap is nearer three and a half weeks, so the phrase is loose rather than a competing date. The dated paperwork is followed here on both the day and the room, and the disagreement is recorded rather than smoothed away.^1,2
Two rough remixes that were never meant to be heard, and what they changed — A rough mono remix of take 15 was run off at the end of the 8 July session “for George to take away”, and an “unnumbered rough remix, from take 15” in stereo followed on 4 August — unnumbered because neither entered the numbered remix series, which is the paperwork’s way of saying they were never candidates for release. Neither was ever released and neither is a mix of the song in the listening sense; both were working references, and the second did real work — it “revealed to him that both required additional overdubbing”, and the 11 August guitar and drum session is the answer to it.¹

Releases

There is only one mix of this song, and it has never been superseded in the original catalogue. Every vinyl, CD and compilation pressing below carries the 19 August 1969 stereo remix; the alternatives are a 2019 remake and one previously unreleased take.

1969 UK stereo LP — Abbey Road (26 September 1969, Apple [Parlophone] PCS 7088, side 2 track 1) — The only mix the song received. Acoustic guitar wide and washed with delayed ADT once the vocal enters, close-stacked harmony vocals and handclaps behind it, woodwind rather than strings in the orchestral passages, and a Moog whose pitch visibly wanders. It plays about two per cent sharp and runs 3′05″. Abbey Road was issued in stereo only; there is no mono counterpart anywhere.
1969 US stereo LP — Abbey Road (1 October 1969, Apple/Capitol SO-383) — The same 1969 stereo master, forwarded to Capitol unchanged. No mock stereo, no territorial remix: American and British buyers heard an identical record.
1973 compilation — The Beatles 1967–1970 (Apple PCSP 718 UK; Apple SKBO-3404 US) — The 1969 stereo again, lifted straight across — the song’s first appearance away from the album sequence.
1987 CD — Abbey Road (EMI CDP 7 46446 2) — Still the 1969 stereo mix. The first digital issue changed the medium and nothing else; the 1993 1967–1970 CD (EMI CDP 7 97039 2) carries the same mix a second time.
2009 stereo remaster — Abbey Road (2009, Apple) — A remaster of the 1969 stereo master rather than a new mix. The balance, the ADT, the speed and the Moog wow are all inherited exactly; what changes is transfer and level.
2019 stereo remix — Abbey Road anniversary editions (2019, Apple) — Giles Martin and Sam Okell remixed the album from the original eight-track session tapes, guided by the 1969 stereo mix, with 5.1 surround and Dolby Atmos alongside. Working from the multitrack rather than the 1969 two-track is what makes this the one materially different version: the elements that were locked together in 1969 can be re-set against each other.
2019 session recording — Here Comes The Sun (Take 9) — Issued on the same anniversary editions as a previously unreleased recording — an early take from the 7 July session, before the harmonium, the handclaps, the orchestra and the Moog existed.

Sources

Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (New York: Harmony Books, 1988), 178–80, 184, 187, 190.
Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums (Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006), 522 (“A Closer Look: 7 July 1969”).

Frequently asked

Who wrote Here Comes the Sun?

“Here Comes the Sun” was written by George.

Who sings lead on Here Comes the Sun?

The lead vocal on “Here Comes the Sun” is by George.

When was Here Comes the Sun recorded?

The backing track was cut on 7 July 1969 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road (takes 1–13), with overdubs through August and the one-and-only stereo remix on 19 August 1969.¹

How many takes did Here Comes the Sun require?

The 7 July 1969 basic ran to takes 1–13; the 8 July reduction produced takes 14 and 15, take 15 being “best”, and every overdub and the one-and-only stereo remix derive from take 15.¹

On this page

Story Section status: Outdated

What's distinctive

Recording

Equipment Section status: Outdated

Recording Timeline

Studio Notes

Releases

Sources

Frequently asked