Here Come Old Flat Top

Wen the Beatles began recording Abbey Road in earnest in July of 1969, John Lennon mostly kept to himself and didn't contribute much at first, as he and Yoko had been in a car accident when they were on vacation with their respective children (John's son Julian and Yoko's daughter Kyoko, both six years old then), and both were still recovering. (Yoko was still bedridden, so John had Yoko, bed and all, moved into the studio, much to the shock of EMI staff.) But by late July, John (below, during the recording of Abbey Road) went full tilt boogie with a new song that hit the senses with as much force as John's insatiable appetite for old-fashioned guitar rock, and it makes sense that it was selected to open Abbey Road.

"Come Together" is a steamy, dirty song about sex, drugs and rock and roll - and John Lennon's obsession with all three.  It's a cheeky self-portrait in which John winks and nods as he describes himself as a cokeheaded holy roller who's "one spinal cracker," whose sexual prowess is so great that when he "hold you in his armchair, you can feel his disease."  He's Bag Productions, he's the walrus, he's Yoko's man, he's all of that.  And his fantastically bad grammar, topped with with a guitar and piano arrangement that goes for the burn, is the icing on the cake.  

The song started out as something entirely different.  Acid guru Timothy Leary had asked Lennon to write a song for his planned candidacy for governor of California against Republican incumbent Ronald Reagan in 1970.  John tried, staring with the phrase "Come together," but he couldn't think of anything else to say about Leary's politics or positions that could get people to vote for him, and so, as a campaign song, "Come Together" never got off the ground.  Neither did Leary's campaign for governor of California; he was later arrested for marijuana possession, ending his bid for the governorship of California, so the song never became a campaign tune.  (For the record, Reagan was re-elected governor in 1970 handily over Democratic candidate Jesse Unruh, making Reagan a Republican presidential prospect for 1976 at the earliest.)

So, "Come Together" could have been the first of several anti-Reagan songs that Lennon would have undoubtedly written had he lived to see the Gipper's Presidency.  But the phrase "Come together" was not wasted, as it had another meaning.  Let's just say that it involves two lovers having the same experience simultaneously in the heat of the moment.  (Which is why Walter Mondale would likely not have asked Lennon in 1984, had Lennon lived, to write a song for his effort to make Reagan a one-term President like Leary wanted to make him an one-term California governor - though, by 1984, Mondale's fellow Minnesotan Prince was writing stuff that made "Come Together" sound tame by comparison.)

There was just one thing; "Come Together" wasn't a totally original song.  John had based the opening line - "Here come old flat top, he come grooving up slowly" from a lyric from Chuck Berry's fast-car song "You Can't Catch Me."  (The original lyric - "Here comes a flat top, he was movin' up with me" - refers to a motorist in a low, flat-roofed car trying to pass the narrator's car on the New Jersey Turnpike.)  John and Paul McCartney changed the melody and modified the bass line so it wouldn't sound like the original Berry song.  (Berry - below, with Lennon in 1972 on "The Mike Douglas Show" - may not have minded, but his publisher did, and it led to an ugly episode of suits and countersuits that Lennon ultimately came out of victorious.)

The result was a mean, guttural vibe that Ringo Starr's drums add extra bite to as the song creeps along like a pickpocket in a back alley.  The final touch on "Come Together" was John's repetitive whisper "Shoot me!" As on "Happiness Is a Warm Gun," the reference is not about firearms, and in this case it's a reference to a narcotic firing in the arm.  It makes "Come Together" sound more unsettled than it already is without going over the edge.

Not surprisingly. "Come Together" led to even harder-edged covers.  One of the best known remakes of the song came from Aerosmith, who recorded "Come Together" in 1978 for - shhh!  - the universally and deservedly loathed Sgt. Pepper movie.  Aerosmith's cover takes the Beatles' tough rock into heavy-metal territory, and Steven Tyler's over-the-top vocals are priceless.  When he sings the opening lyric,  he slurs it to the point where he sounds like he's singing "Yeah, come on, flat jaw, he come oozing out soda." More recently, Texas blues-rock guitarist Gary Clark Jr., with help from Dutch producer Tom Holkenborg, recorded a cover of "Come Together" for the 2017 comic-book superhero movie Justice League.  Clark's cover brings the Beatles' music back to the roots of rock and roll in a devastatingly fresh twenty-first-century sound - proof that, if you want to make rock and roll go forward, you have to go to back to its beginnings.