• Timothy Leary was a psychologist who became famous for experimenting with LSD as a way to promote social interaction and raise consciousness. Leary did many experiments on volunteers and himself and felt the drug had many positive qualities if taken correctly. When the government cracked down on LSD, Leary's experiments were stopped and he was arrested on drug charges. In 1969, Leary decided to run for Governor of California, and asked John Lennon to write a song for him. "Come Together, Join The Party" was Leary's campaign slogan (a reference to the drug culture he supported) and was the original title of the song. Leary never had much of a campaign, but the slogan gave Lennon the idea for this song.
• After Timothy Leary decided against using this song for his political campaign Lennon added some nonsense lyrics and brought it to the Abbey Road sessions. Paul McCartney recalled in Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs: "I said, 'Let's slow it down with a swampy bass-and-drums vibe.' I came up with a bass line, and it all flowed from there."
• In a 1980 interview with Playboy magazine, John Lennon said: "The thing was created in the studio. It's gobbledygook. 'Come Together' was an expression that Tim Leary had come up with for (perhaps for the governorship of California against Reagan), and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and I tried, but I couldn't come up with one. But I came up with this, 'Come Together,' which would've been no good to him - you couldn't have a campaign song like that, right?"
• John Lennon was sued for stealing the guitar riff and the line "Here comes old flat-top" from Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me."
• The whispered lyric that sounds like "shoot" is actually Lennon saying "shoot me" followed by a handclap. The bass line drowns out the "me."
• The Beatles recorded this on July 21, 1969 and it was the first session John Lennon actively participated in following his and Yoko's car accident 3 weeks earlier. John was so insistent on Yoko being in the studio with him that he had a hospital bed set up in the studio for her right after the accident, since she was more seriously injured than he was.
• The line "Ono sideboard" refers to Yoko.
• The British Broadcasting Company (The BBC) banned this because of the reference to Coca Cola, which they considered advertising.
• This has one of the most commonly misheard lyrics in the history of popular music: "Hold you in his -armchair- you can feel his disease." It's actually "Hold you in his arms, yeah, you can feel his disease." All published sheet music had the "armchair" lyric, including the inner sleeve of the 1967-1970 compilation, which contained lots of other errors too, notably on "Strawberry Fields Forever." After John heard that his lyric was incorrect in the sheet music and other folios, he decided he liked "armchair" better and kept it.
• The Beatles released this as a "double A side" single with "Something."
• In 1969, this won a Grammy for best engineered recording.
• When rumors were spreading that Paul McCartney was dead, some fans thought the line "One and one and one is three" meant that only George, John and Ringo were left. The line "Got to be good lookin' cuz he's so hard to see" was supposed to be Paul's spirit.
• A rotary phone was used to make the sound heard before each verse and after the chorus. The sound was accompanied by the bass Paul played. Kids, ask your parents or grandparents what a rotary phone was.
• The Aerosmith version of "Come Together" made #23 in the US when it was released as a single. When we asked their guitarist Brad Whitford why some folks prefer the Aerosmith version, he replied, "I've actually never heard anybody say that." Whitford added, "But you know, it's funny, I hear our version more on the radio than I do The Beatles' version."

Thanks for reading!

CATW