John Lennon and Paul McCartney Used Unreleased Parts From Other Beatles Songs to Make ‘The End’
The Beatles have plenty of hidden gems that were never released to the public. Some of the unreleased recordings include fragments of other songs that were edited out. While writing “The End,” John Lennon and Paul McCartney combined two Beatles songs to create a song that ended the band on a high note.
‘The End’ is the final song The Beatles recorded together
While “The End” isn’t the final song on Abbey Road, it fittingly was the final song recorded collectively by the four members of The Beatles. It was written by Paul McCartney but is credited to the Lennon-McCartney duo. Initially, the song was meant to end Abbey Road, but the final song was later changed to “Her Majesty.”
Each member had a solo in “The End.” McCartney, Lennon, and George Harrison performed three two-bar guitar solos, while Ringo Starr performed a drum solo, despite normally disliking drum solos. In The Beatles Anthology, Starr recalled being against the idea but was inevitably convinced by the other members.
“Solos have never interested me,” Starr shared. “That drum solo is still the only one I’ve done…I was opposed to it: ‘I don’t want to do no bloody solo!’ George Martin convinced me. As I was playing it, he counted it because we needed a time. It was the most ridiculous thing. I was going, ‘Dum, dum – one, two, three, four…’ and I had to come off at that strange place because it was thirteen bars long. Anyway, I did it, and it’s out of the way. I’m pleased now that we’ve got one down.”
Paul McCartney and John Lennon put unfinished parts from other Beatles songs into ‘The End’
In an interview with Clash, Paul McCartney shared how he and John Lennon composed “The End.” He revealed that aspects of the track were made up of unused fragments from two Beatles songs: “Polythene Pam” and “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window.” “Polythene Pam” Both songs appeared on Abbey Road, but Lennon and McCartney decided to take parts of each track and place them in “The End.”
“We got this idea – John and I – to do the compilation thing at the end, we basically pulled together loads of odds and sods that we had,” McCartney said. “He had ‘Polythene Pam’ and I had ‘[She Came In Through The] Bathroom Window’, and bits and pieces like that, that we hadn’t really finished. So, we hit upon the idea of, ‘Instead of finishing ’em, let’s use them all as fragments and put them all in a big stained glass window – that will be what joins them.’”
McCartney ended the song with a Shakespearian couplet
“The End” ends with the line, “And in the end / The love you take / Is equal to the love you make.” It’s a beautiful line, and McCartney decided it was a good one to end on. It wasn’t until later he realized it was similar to something Shakespeare would write. McCartney studied Shakespeare in school, and the poet had influenced his songwriting before.
“I just thought that was a nice line. Someone pointed out to me recently, ‘Ah, it’s a Shakespearean rhyming couplet, which Shakespeare ended all the acts of his plays on,’” McCartney explained. “But I did study Shakespeare, that was sort of my thing; I got a Literature A-level, which is my only claim to academic fame. I’d studied, but I don’t remember thinking, ‘Aha yes, let’s end on a rhyming couplet’, but it is, and so, I dunno, just somewhere from my subconscious, I thought, ‘Yeah’, but then I’m sure it was just a very practical thing.”
