Band Lineup
The recording of the song featured all three remaining Beatles (Harrison, Starr and Paul McCartney), though this was expressly a Harrison single. It is one of only a few non-Beatles songs to feature three members of the group. Harrison and Starr recorded the song at Harrison's Friar Park studios between 19 November 1980 and 25 November 1980. After Lennon's death the following month, Harrison removed Starr's vocals (but left Starr's drumming track) and recorded his own vocals with rewritten lyrics honouring Lennon. McCartney, his wife Linda and their Wings bandmate Denny Laine visited Friar Park to record backing vocals. The lineup was rounded out by Al Kooper on keyboards. The album's liner notes also thank the Beatles' producer George Martin and the Beatles' engineer Geoff Emerick, although what contribution (if any) they made to the track is unclear. The track's sweetly elegiac string arrangements suggest Martin's own distinctive style. This was the first time Harrison, McCartney and Starr had recorded together since the three (without Lennon) had worked on Harrison's song "I Me Mine" for the Beatles album, Let It Be. It would be the last time these three would record together until the sessions for "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" for The Beatles Anthology in the mid-1990s.
Read more about this topic: All Those Years Ago
Famous quotes containing the word band:
“And the heavy night hung dark
The hills and waters o’er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.”
—Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1783–1835)