It is, perhaps, the most radical four minutes in pop history—not because it changed the structure of music, but because it changed the temperature of the soul. In a catalog filled with psychedelic labyrinths (“Strawberry Fields Forever”), raw screams (“Helter Skelter”), and avant-garde experiments (“Revolution 9”), “Here Comes the Sun” stands apart. It is the quiet exhale after a panic attack. It is the first warm breeze after a brutal winter.
“I’m not going back,” he told Clapton. “Let’s just go for a walk.”
“It’s alright.”
The year was 1969. The Beatles, the greatest creative partnership the world had ever seen, were suffocating. Business meetings had replaced bass jams. Yoko Ono sat on an amp. Paul and John weren’t speaking. The “Get Back” sessions had devolved into apathetic silence. George Harrison, the band’s quiet lead guitarist, had finally had enough. He walked out of a meeting at Apple Corps in early June, looked up at the gray London sky, and drove to his friend Eric Clapton’s house in the country. here comes the sun beatles
They strolled through the gardens of Clapton’s Surrey estate. George picked up a borrowed acoustic guitar—a Gibson J-200—and sat on a lawn chair in the weak English sunshine. The clouds parted. Just for a moment. And out came a riff so pure, so childlike, it felt like it had existed forever: dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun…
It is the universal antidepressant. It plays at the end of disaster movies ( Parent Trap ), during post-9/11 charity concerts, and at the funeral of George Harrison himself in 2001—where Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney stood together and played it one last time for their friend.
It is not a song about weather. It is a song about survival. It is, perhaps, the most radical four minutes
Released on Abbey Road (1969), “Here Comes the Sun” was overshadowed at the time by the drama of the Beatles’ breakup. But over the decades, it has become the band’s most-streamed song on digital platforms. Why?
The Dawn After the Long Winter: Why “Here Comes the Sun” Remains The Beatles’ Essential Tonic
And it almost didn’t happen.
The sun is waiting right behind the clouds. And it’s coming.
“Here Comes the Sun,” George later wrote in his autobiography, I, Me, Mine , “was written in the garden at Eric’s house. The relief of not having to go back to the Apple meeting… It was a lovely day.”