“Cut out”: The Beatles song that was always meant to be a throwaway…..see more

Not every single note that an artist makes is meant to see the light of day. Although they might have scores of fans that would gladly pick up one of their records even if it was nothing but whale mating calls, it’s still considered a bit of a stain on an artist’s legacy if they try to do the least amount of work for their fans.

The Beatles were never ones to make a note that didn’t belong, but that didn’t mean that everything that turned up on their record got the approval of every member of the band.

When they first started recording, though, George Martin had almost as much input as the rest of the band. He was the one guiding them into every strange sonic detour that they made, and even if they weren’t as savvy about what music theory rules they were breaking at the time, Martin was more than willing to explain things to them or fill in the blanks when they couldn’t do it for themselves.

But by the time they started on The White Album, there was no point in arguing over what a song should sound like. Every one of them had a good idea of how they wanted their song to go, and even if that meant playing the whole thing without the rest of the band, that was what they were going to do.

Still, there were going to be some questionable parts of tunes like ‘Revolution 9’, which Paul McCartney insisted not putting on the album.

Although that tune is at least an interesting listen towards the end of the record, the band knew that they needed a better note to go out on. They had already aborted the sessions for the proposed Get Back project, so Abbey Road was their excuse to make something that served as their last goodbye to the audience. And looking at the final minutes of the record, it’s not like they weren’t prepared to go out with a bang.

Throughout every second of the medley on side two, the band are letting loose with whatever songs they had at their disposal. Some of them may have been nonsense like John Lennon’s ‘Polythene Pam’, but by the time they reach ‘The End’, you can practically feel the hurt in their voices as they sing the final lines, almost as if they subconsciously knew that this would be the last time they were in the studio together. And once everything fades out, ‘Her Majesty’ comes on to cheapen the blow.

While the tiny snippet of a McCartney tune is admittedly pretty funny when listening to the album in full, it was never supposed to exist, with tape operator John Kurlander saying, “We did all the remixes and crossfades to overlap the songs. Paul was there, and we heard it together for the first time.

He said, ‘I don’t like ‘Her Majesty’, throw it away,’ so I cut it out – but I accidentally left in the last note. I said to Paul, ‘What shall I do with it?’ ‘Throw it away,’ he replied. I’d been told never to throw anything away, so after he left, I picked it up off the floor, put about 20 seconds of red leader tape before it and stuck it onto the end of the edit tape.”

Even though the song does disrupt the closure that comes at the end of the record, it would have been far worse had it been kept in the medley. Judging by the lack of an ending note, the song would have most likely been placed in the middle of the medley right before ‘Polythene Pam’, and since that section is about building tension, having a slow ballad in the middle wouldn’t have done it any favours.

But since it comes as the last track on the band’s final true artistic statement, it does a great job of summing up the band itself. Just like the people who played it, ‘Her Majesty’ is the tune that’s delightful while it lasted, wasn’t short of a few musical surprises, and was abruptly cut off before the world suspected it would end.