The End

Story

Recording

Equipment

Recording Timeline

• 23 July 1969 — basic + ending section, Studio Three (takes 1–7) — Studio Three, 2.30–11.30pm. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick / Phil McDonald. 2E: John Kurlander. “After John Lennon counted the group in — right from take one this was a tight recording, picking up with some lead guitar notes and paving the way for Ringo’s one and only drum solo on a Beatles song. The group had seven attempts at the song and, interestingly, the style of the drum solo changed with each. The final edition, take seven, was a highly effective one, the solo lasting almost 16 seconds.” Backing track = “John and George’s guitars, Paul’s bass and Ringo’s drums”; the ending section was overdubbed onto take 7 the same evening (“Paul on piano, Ringo on drums, and John and George on guitars”), with Paul’s “brief ascending piano lines at 0:04 and 0:16.” After the 11.30pm wrap the group crossed to the Studio Two control room for a one-hour playback ending 12.30am.^1,2
• 30 July 1969 — rough mix for the Side Two medley test edit — A week after the basic, a rough mix of take 7 was cut for a working medley sequence: “Work then ceased for a week, until a rough mix was created on 30 July for inclusion in a ‘test edit’ of the Side Two medley.” Used internally to validate medley pacing before further overdubs landed.²
• 5 August 1969 — first vocals SI, Room 43 + Studio Two — Abbey Road, Room 43 and Studio Two, 6.30–10.45pm (shared with the Because Moog overdubs — George’s Moog fed via mono cable from Room 43 into Studio Two’s control room). P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick / Phil McDonald. 2E: John Kurlander. SI onto take 7: “The final overdub on this day was of vocals for ‘The End’, the song’s first” — “Paul double-tracking his lead vocal and John and George lending backing vocals.”^1,2
• 7 August 1969 — ‘love you’ vocal chant + electric guitar, Studio Three — Studio Three, 6.00–12.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick / Phil McDonald. 2E: John Kurlander. SI onto take 7: “vocals/electric guitar overdubs for ‘The End’.” The repeating “love you” chant “apparently occupies only one track on the tape” but subjectively reads as several internally-bounced overdubs; “one of these vocal overdubs … was almost certainly carried out with the machine running slightly slow, resulting in some unnaturally high vocal parts on proper playback” — a varispeed touch in the Strawberry Fields Forever tradition.^1,2
• 8 August 1969 — drums and bass overdub, Studio Two — Studio Two, 2.30–9.00pm (shared with the I Want You (She’s So Heavy) SI session and a parallel Studio Three Oh! Darling overdub). P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick / Phil McDonald. 2E: John Kurlander. SI onto take 7: “After the overdub of drums and bass onto ‘The End’, two sessions ran concurrently for the remainder of the evening.” Same morning as the Iain Macmillan zebra-crossing cover shoot at 10.00am.¹
• 15 August 1969 — 30-piece orchestral SI via cross-studio CCTV, Studio One into Studio Two — Studio One into Studio Two (control room), 2.30–5.30pm. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick / Phil McDonald. 2E: Alan Parsons. SI onto take 7, on the same cross-studio CCTV booking that covered Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight. The orchestra for that pair: “12 violins, 4 violas, 4 cellos, 1 string bass, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 1 trombone, 1 bass trombone” — the largest orchestration on the album. Alan Brown: “The orchestral overdub for ‘The End’ was the most elaborate I have ever heard: a 30-piece playing for not too many seconds — and mixed about 40 dBs down.”¹
• 18 August 1969 — Paul’s four-second piano SI + first stereo remixes, Studio Two — Studio Two, 2.30–10.30pm. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick / Phil McDonald. 2E: Alan Parsons. SI onto take 7 + stereo remixes 1–6 from take 7: “Stereo mixing, with one new overdub: Paul’s very brief (four seconds) piano track for ‘The End’, preceding his wonderfully philosophical line ‘And, in the end / the love you take / is equal to the love you make’.” This is the final overdub onto take 7’s eight-track tape.¹
• 19 August 1969 — second stereo remix pass + GSCTW crossfade master, Studio Two — Studio Two, 2.00pm–4.00am (shared with the Something stereo remixes and the one-and-only Here Comes The Sun Moog SI + 51-Hz mixdown). P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick / Phil McDonald. 2E: Alan Parsons. Stereo remixes 1–3 from take 7 + crossfade/edit of Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight and The End for master. Lewisohn flags the numbering quirk: “stereo remixes one to three being made, despite the one to six numbering of the previous day’s attempts.” These mixes almost became the master, but a playback revealed an orchestral-timing defect requiring the 21 August fly-in.¹
• 21 August 1969 — fly-in fix for the out-of-sync orchestral ending — The 19 August remix revealed that “the timing of the orchestra was noticeably off toward the end of the dub; the last note, in particular came in well behind the beat.” The fix: “the last section of the song was bounced over to a four-track tape, the backing reduced to a stereo pair on two of the tracks, and the two orchestra tracks bounced over to the other two tracks. After some slight editing by Phil McDonald, it was then Tape Op Alan Parson’s job to fly the orchestra into a new mix of the song.” Parsons: “That end section was flown-in … It took several attempts to get the timing right.” Lewisohn records a new remix 4 from take 7 that day; the pre-fix version survives on Anthology 3.^1,2
• 25 August 1969 — middle-section re-edit (master), Studio Two control room — Studio Two (control room only), 2.30–8.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick / Phil McDonald. 2E: Alan Parsons. On the substantive editing: “the mix at this point still included the four measures of lead guitar that followed [the] drum solo and preceded the main guitar solo. It was decided to remove those bars and replace them with an edit piece that omitted the lead guitar … Phil McDonald and Geoff Emerick created a new mix of the middle section, omitting the guitar solos completely. Several measures were then edited into the [same] mix [with] guitars, extending the song significantly.” The result: “The original 22 bars of the middle section were extended to 28 bars by duplicating sections via edit pieces” — to hide one duplicate, Emerick panned the inserted “love you” vocals Right, then back Left just before the guitar-solo edit.^1,2

Studio Notes

• True-stereo drum miking — STC 4038 overheads — The 23 July basic captured Ringo’s drums in genuine stereo for the first time in the Beatles catalogue: “for the first time, Ringo’s drums were recorded in true stereo … Ringo’s drums filled the entire stereo picture, a fact most evident during his tom work on his solo. Geoff Emerick recalls using STC 4038 microphones as stereo overheads during the recording of Abbey Road, and it is probably this track that he is remembering.” Contrast Glyn Johns’ Let It Be sessions, which used two drum tracks but not stereo (bass drum one side, overhead/tom/snare the other). The true-stereo capture is what gives the drum solo its tom-work spatial depth.²
• Ringo’s only Beatles drum solo — the multitrack revelation — The released solo runs ~16 seconds and sits on two of the eight tracks, “a major breakthrough” given that Beatles drum tracks usually occupied a single track. The final eight-track tape carries two lead guitars and a tambourine alongside Ringo’s solo — both deliberately mixed out for the released master “to leave the solo just that — solo.” The others had to talk Ringo into the solo at all; it became a highlight of the song.^1,2
• Take 7 eight-track layout — Per the K/R take-7 diagram, the final eight-track carries drums spread across two tracks (the breakthrough stereo capture); bass; electric guitars; ending-section electric guitars; vocals; orchestra; and tambourine. Dedicating two tracks to drums was unprecedented in the catalogue and is what enabled the released drum solo’s tom-work stereo image.²
• Length arc — 1′20″ basic → 2′41″ with overdubs → 2′05″ released — “The ‘best’ take, seven, was only 1′20″ in duration at this stage. Later additions like a lengthy lead guitar solo, more drums, an orchestra, vocals and a piano track doubled that duration to 2′41″, although tight editing of the best mix brought it back down to 2′05″.” The released 2′05″ is the post-25-August re-edit length — net SHORTER than the 2′41″ pre-edit length even though the middle section was extended by six bars, because other material was tightened or removed in the same pass.¹
• Stereo only — no mono LP master — Abbey Road was issued stereo-only worldwide; the EMI mono mandate had fully lapsed by mid-1969 (see also Here Comes The Sun, Something, Come Together). No dedicated mono The End mix exists in the primary-source canon; period mono airplay copies are stereo fold-downs, not separately created mono masters.¹
• Source conflict per §1 — whether the K/R middle-section edit maps bar-for-bar to the released master. Kehew & Ryan acknowledge the uncertainty explicitly — “Though the exact details are unclear” — and present the 22-bars-to-28-bars and edit-piece-timing reconstruction as their best inference from listening, not as session-sheet fact. Lewisohn’s 25 August header records the editing event without enumerating the bar-level reconstruction. Per §1, the page records K/R’s reconstruction as the most detailed primary-source-adjacent account of the released middle section without presenting it as session-sheet fact.^1,2

Releases

• 1969 UK stereo LP Abbey Road (26 September 1969, Apple [Parlophone] PCS 7088, stereo only) — Released master = the edited stereo composite from take 7, assembled across three editing sessions on 19, 21 and 25 August 1969 in Studio Two and Room 4. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick / Phil McDonald. 2E: Alan Parsons / John Kurlander. It carries the 23 July basic + ending-section overdub; 5 August first vocals; 7 August “love you” chant + electric guitar; 8 August drums and bass; 15 August 30-piece orchestral SI; 18 August Paul’s four-second piano; 19 August stereo remixes 1–3 + the Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight crossfade; 21 August fly-in fix (new remix 4); 25 August master edit. Final length 2′05″.^1,2
• 1969 US stereo LP Abbey Road (1 October 1969, Apple / Capitol SO 383, stereo only) — The same edited stereo master forwarded to Capitol for US pressing. Abbey Road was issued stereo-only worldwide; no dedicated mono LP master exists for The End.
• 30 July 1969 rough mix (unreleased, internal use) — “Work then ceased for a week, until a rough mix was created on 30 July for inclusion in a ‘test edit’ of the Side Two medley” — a working reference for the medley-sequencing experiment, not a commercial release.²
• Anthology 3 (28 October 1996, Apple) — the pre-edit version with the out-of-sync orchestral ending intact — “The song as it stood before editing and with the out-of-sync orchestral ending still in place can be heard on Anthology 3” — a rare case where a Beatles compilation documents the very technical defect that motivated a post-mix repair on the released master. Per §1, the 1996 liner-note framing post-dates Lewisohn 1988; the page flags the variant with K/R’s explicit attribution rather than independently characterising it.²
• 2009 Stereo Remasters (9 September 2009, Apple) — Allan Rouse / Guy Massey remaster of the 1969 stereo master. Post-Lewisohn; documented in the remaster project’s liner notes rather than in the primary-source canon; flagged here for completeness.
• 2019 Abbey Road 50th-anniversary remix (27 September 2019, Apple) — Giles Martin and Sam Okell stereo remix from the multitracks, with more flexibility than the single-pass 1969 master to balance the orchestral timing. Post-Lewisohn; documented in the album’s 50th-anniversary liner notes rather than in the primary-source canon; flagged here for completeness.