"I Want You (She's So Heavy)" By The Beatles Video Showcase

"I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is a song by The Beatles, from their album Abbey Road. It was written by John Lennon, although it is credited as a Lennon/McCartney collaboration.

The song is an unusual Beatles composition for a variety of reasons, namely its length (nearly eight minutes), its disproportionately small number of lyrics (there are only fourteen different words in the song), its three-minute descension through the same repeated guitar chords (a similar arpeggiated figure appears in another of Lennon's contributions to the album, "Because"), its hard rock sound, and for its instantaneous and unanticipated end.

It is also one of the last songs that the Beatles mixed as a group, on August 20, 1969. David Gates writes of the song, "The hypnotically repeated guitar figure in 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)' is suddenly, arbitrarily cut off, jolting us into embarrassed awareness that we've let a mere recording carry us away."

The sudden end of the song was intentional and orchestrated by Lennon. In the spirit of the band, it was pushing the boundaries of what was 'allowed' on a record; full volume slashes were certainly not the norm.

The song was rehearsed several times during the Get Back/Let It Be sessions; the basic track was recorded at Trident Studios on 22 February 1969, shortly after filming for the film project ended.

Billy Preston remained from these sessions to play keyboards on "I Want You", which was reworked with the heavy guitar overdubs in August and changed "I Want You (She's So Heavy)".

Three takes from February 22 were edited into a master (2nd generation), which was overdubbed, mixed down on April 18 (3rd generation), and overdubbed on April 18 and 20 and August 11. Different overdubs were made to the 2nd generation tape August 8. The mix is the 3rd generation for 4:37 (up to "she's so") and then the 2nd generation tape, which has a white noise added August 8.

Read the Wikipedia article about I Want You (She's So Heavy)...

Photo author: erglantz from flickr.com