Isn't IT A Pity? - Recording

Recording

Two contrasting versions of the song were recorded in London in mid 1970 during the sessions for All Things Must Pass, both of which were intended for release, from the outset. The so-called "Isn’t It a Pity (Version Two)" is noticeably slower than the better known, seven-minute "epic" reading of the song. Eric Clapton’s lead guitar fills, phased piano from Tony Ashton, and John Barham-arranged woodwinds dominate Version Two, which is also more in keeping with The Beatles’ earlier attempts on the track; as with "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp", it features extensive use of the Leslie speaker sound so familiar from the band's Abbey Road album.

Like the concurrently recorded "My Sweet Lord", the album's other "Isn't It a Pity" betrays the influence of co-producer Phil Spector more so than the comparatively sedate Version Two. It is also the most extreme example of Harrison's stated intention to allow some of the songs on All Things Must Pass to run to a longer length and feature instrumentation to a greater degree than had been possible within the confines of the more pop-oriented Beatles approach to recording. “Isn’t It a Pity” (Version One, in its All Things Must Pass context) starts small and builds − "and it builds and it builds", NME's Alan Smith would soon write. Taping of the backing track took place at Abbey Road Studios on 2 June, and judging by Spector's comments regarding Harrison's early mixes, the orchestral arrangement was not added until late August at the earliest. The first slide-guitar break on the released recording, quite possibly overdubbed some time after the June sessions also, would adopt a near-identical melody to the one Harrison had vocalised when routining the song for the other Beatles on 26 January 1969 − reflecting a quality admired by Elton John in the latter's 2002 tribute to Harrison: "All his solos are very melodic − you can almost sing his solos." Inglis writes that the effect of Harrison's "elaborate patterns" on slide guitar is to "counterbalance the underlying atmosphere of pessimism with shafts of beauty", similar to the "notes of light and dark" provided by Pete Drake's pedal steel on the song "All Things Must Pass".

Now in the key of G (two semitones down from the Get Back performance), “Isn’t It a Pity” begins “dirge”-like with a two-note pedal point provided by layers of keyboards and acoustic guitars. (An electric guitar is vaguely audible also, on the left channel of the stereo mix, which could well be Clapton again, although While My Guitar Gently Weeps author Simon Leng does not credit anyone for the part in his "largely accurate but by no means faultless" player annotations.) Only at the one-minute mark, at the start of verse two, does the rhythm section come in, after which the instruments begin to "break out of their metronomic straitjacket to attain an almost ecstatic release”, as Beatles Forever author Nicholas Schaffner put it in 1977. The "balmy" slide guitar passage, supported by Barham’s string section, follows this second verse, and from that point on − around 2:38 − the same, circular chord structure continues for the remaining four-and-a-half minutes of the song. The long fade-out sees what Schaffner termed the “pseudo-symphonic tension” burst into a frenzy of brass and tympani, further bottleneck soloing, and the "What a pity" mantra joined by “Hey Jude”-style "Na-na-na-na" chorus.

One of the most obvious examples of what Rolling Stone magazine's album reviewer would famously christen "the music of mountain tops and vast horizons", "Isn't It a Pity" featured the largest line-up of musicians found on the album − including three keyboard players, a trio of extra rhythm guitarists, the orchestral strings, brass and tympani, and a male choir. Harrison's former bandmate Ringo Starr and two others with well-established links to The Beatles, Klaus Voormann and Billy Preston, were among the participants, on drums, bass and organ, respectively. Members of Apple band Badfinger provided the "felt but not heard" acoustic guitars (behind Harrison's), consistent with Spector's criteria for his self-styled Wall of Sound technique, while author Bruce Spizer has suggested that Peter Frampton might have been among the rhythm guitarists also. Another possible participant is Maurice Gibb, Starr's Highgate neighbour at the time, who claimed to have played piano on the song.