Here Comes The Sun

As re-recorded by Rick Eagle

Audio Files:
Here Comes the Sun - MP3 | Low Quality (4.4 MB)

Here Comes the Sun - AIFF | CD Quality (32 MB)

Words & Music: George Harrison
Producer: George Martin | Chief Engineer: Geoff Emerick | 1st Engineer: Phil MacDonald | 2nd Engineer: John Kurlander
Album: Abbey Road
Original Recording date: July- August 1969
Album Artwork: Photo by Iain Macmillan

   
The view in the Album cover is the now very famous crosswalk on Abbey Road, London, NW8 looking north. The gates of the Abbey Road Studios are behind the white VW Beetle on the left. And on the right we have "yours truly" standing on the steps of the holy place in 1985. The studios were originally called EMI Studios but were re-named Abbey Road Studios in 1970 following the release of the Beatles masterwork with its iconic cover.

As is now fairly well known, George Harrison wrote Here Comes the Sun while sitting in the garden of Eric Clapton's home (Hurtwood) while escaping from the drudgery of Apple business that had become increasingly acrimonious.

I re-recorded this song as an exercise in mad fun and purposely used the same arrangement and tried to get the same sounds as used by The Beatles, George Martin, and the engineers. All things considered, it came out ok.

Recorded using this gear: Macintosh Mac Pro 3GHz dual Processor Quad Core- Logic Pro 9- Universal Audio UAD-2 card - MOTU Ultralite Firewire - Ovation Legend acoustic - Epiphone Masterbuilt AJ-500RE acoustic - Gibson Les Paul Standard - Fender Jazz Bass - AKG 414B-ULS - AKG C451 - Native Instruments Abbey Road 60's drums - Arturia minimoog-v 2.0 synth - Universal Audio 710 tube preamp - Summit Audio TLA-50 tube compressor - Logic cellos - dynaudio acoustics BM5A near field studio monitors

Recording Notes: Vocals and acoustic guitars, were recorded with the AKG 414 and an AKG 451 respectively. The Les Paul was recorded direct and I used the guitar processing internal to Logic for the bit of electric guitar in the song. The bass was recorded direct as well. I am as sure as I can be that McCartney used his Rickenbacker 4001S on this track. I can find no evidence of exactly what bass Paul used on this track (an I have REALLY looked). It is documented that he had the Ricky, his Fender Jazz and his Hofner in the studio for the Abbey Road sessions but I think he used the Rickenbacker for Here Comes the Sun, just going by my ears. I would have used one myself if I had one or could have got my hands on one. But the Fender Jazz sounds ok on this. I did use the Fairchild 670 (UA plugin) on the bass which I have read was a favorite at times. Was it used on HCTS? Who knows, I just tried to get as close as I could with the gear I had. The bass sound is not the same if you A/B this with the original but it's "in the neighborhood" and I think the playing is very close.

Here's a picture of Ringo and George meesin' with the Moog placed in Room 43 at Abbey Road in contrast to what I used, the synth in a box.

One of my favorite pictures of George and Paul doing the backing vocals for Here Comes the Sun. That is very likely a Neumann U47 large diaphram condenser - tube microphone (very very expensive now) they are standing in front of. EMI (Abbey Road) was a bit behind the times in terms of multi-track but they did have some really steller gear and engineering talent. The Abbey Road album was the first Beatles record to be recorded on an 8-track machine, all previous Beatles recordings had been done on 4-track.

For more info on this Beatles song, check out these links:
Here Comes the Sun - Wikipedia