The Beatles Golden Slumbers – Carry that Weight – The End | Paul McCartney’s masterful farewell

‘Golden Slumbers‘ is The Beatles lullaby 🍼 for the world, a song that brings peace to children and adults, but if that wasn’t enough, its creator, Paul McCartney, thought it would be much better to create a Medley with more songs to close The Beatles career.

• Thus, he composed ‘Carry That Weight’ and ‘The End’, creating a 3-song musical set.
• We can find the 3 songs closing The Beatles last album in 1969, ‘Abbey Road‘.
• Although the tracks are credited to ‘Lennon/McCartney’, they were written by Paul alone.

‘Golden Slumbers’ is based on the poem ‘Cradle Song‘ by Thomas Dekker, which Paul found one day on the piano in his father’s house.

Paul thought it would be perfect to tie in with another piece of song he was working on (Carry That Weight). As McCartney can’t read sheet music, he created his own melody, retaining much of the original text (in black the original, in blue McCartney’s):

Golden slumbers kiss your eyes – Golden slumbers fill your eyes
Smiles awake you when you rise – Smiles awake you when you rise
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry – Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby – And I will sing a lullaby

The song evokes nostalgia, the loss of innocence and that desire to return home, to a safe place. It is simply beautiful 😪

This contrasts with the second part of the medley ‘Carry that Weight‘, which refers to the problems the band was having internally and with the record company.

• Paul wanted the track to describe the normal problems that everyone has and then conclude, “you have to carry that weight“.
• But it ended up being more autobiographical, referring on the one hand to their LSD use 💊, which in the late 70s was excessive, and on the other hand to the problems with Apple Records.
• Paul couldn’t stand their new manager, Allen Klein, who he refers to in the verse “I never give you my pillow/I only send you my invitations“, alluding to him meddling too much in his music.

The last tune of the Medley is ‘The End’, which closed The Beatles’ incredible career, with words that only Paul McCartney could have written:

And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.

It was unlikely that any Beatle other than Paul McCartney would have ended up writing The Beatles’ epitaph. John Lennon disliked the Abbey Road medley, although he contributed a handful of songs, and at one point wanted his and McCartney’s songs to be on separate sides of the album. George Harrison, meanwhile, had grown tired of McCartney’s dominance within the group and was beginning to devote his energies to other projects. Apart from Ringo Starr, McCartney was the only one who devoted himself fully to the Beatles until the end, and recognised that they deserved a fitting farewell.

• So much so that the Medley recording was on 2 July 1969 without John Lennon who was in hospital for a car accident 🚑 John would join on 31 July for another recording session.