55 years since the Beatles Come Together *didn’t* signal the downfall of Western Civilisation
It was 50 years ago on 26th September 1969 that the Beatles Abbey Road was released, the last of the music they recorded together (although Let It Be was released later).
It contained two songs that were released as a Double A Side single Something (George Harrison) and Come Together (John Lennon).
Its fair to say that, 55 years on, its probably the former rather than the latter that is most remembered even if Come Together was definitively of the political, social and cultural moment of the end of the 1960s.
Even so in his Beatles discography Revolution In The Head, the late Ian Mcdonald claimed that the form and words of Come Together marked the beginning of the downfall of Western civilisation.
55 years on this seems a somewhat overblown claim and, in addition, if one were looking for a record to have this epithet associated with it, there are many other contenders.
However its worth looking at why Mcdonald said this because it does reflect something of that end of the 1960s moment.
Macdonald says:
With its sex-political title Come Together represents the last of Lennon’s espousals of the counterculture while still in the group… it pitches a stream of self confessed ‘gobbledeygook’ at the violent antagonisms of an unenlightened world..this idea was at the cutting edge of alternative politics in the late 1969
Of the line ‘one thing I can tell is you got to be free’ Macdonald writes:
The freedom invoked here differs from all forms and all norms including left-wing ones
He goes on to argue that Come Together is the archetype of countercultural anti-politics, mentioning figures such as Timothy Leary and R D Laing as influences on Lennon.
Whatever one makes of Macdonald’s claims and the song 55 years on, Come Together is a fascinating snap shot of late 1960s social history
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