McCartney said, "I wanted [the medley] to end with a little meaningful couplet, so I followed
the Bard and wrote a
couplet." In his 1980 interview with
Playboy,
John Lennon acknowledged McCartney's authorship by saying, "That's Paul again ... He had a line in it, 'And in the end, the love you get is equal to the love you give,' which is a very cosmic, philosophical line. Which again proves that if he wants to, he can think." Lennon misquoted the line; the actual words are, "And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make..." Recording began on 23 July 1969, when the Beatles recorded a one-minute, thirty-second master take that was extended via
overdubs to two minutes and five seconds. At this point, the song was called "Ending". The first vocals for the song were added on 5 August, additional vocals and guitar overdubs were added on 7 August, and bass and drums on 8 August, the day the
Abbey Road cover picture was taken. Orchestral overdubs were added on 15 August, and the closing piano and accompanying vocal on 18 August. All four Beatles have a solo in "The End", including a
Ringo Starr drum solo. Starr, as with the rest of the band, disliked drum solos, preferring to cater drum work to whoever sang in a particular performance, and in fact this is the only drum solo Starr recorded with the Beatles. McCartney recalls that Starr had to be persuaded somewhat to do the solo, making an exception for the medley. The solos begin approximately 53 seconds into the song.
Geoff Emerick, the Beatles' recording engineer, later recalled: "John, Paul and George looked like they had gone back in time, like they were kids again, playing together for the sheer enjoyment of it. More than anything, they reminded me of gunslingers, with their guitars strapped on, looks of steely-eyed resolve, determined to outdo one another. Yet there was no animosity, no tension at all – you could tell they were simply having fun." The first two bars are played by McCartney, the second two by Harrison, the third two by Lennon, and then the sequence repeats twice. Each has a distinctive style which McCartney felt reflected their personalities. McCartney's was more melodic, Harrison made heavy use of string bends, and Lennon used heavy distortion. Immediately after Lennon's third solo, the piano chords of the final line "And in the end ..." begin. The orchestration arrangement then takes over with a humming chorus and Harrison playing a final guitar solo that ends the song. "The End" was initially intended to be the final track on
Abbey Road, but it ended up being followed by "
Her Majesty". "The End" stands as the last known new recording involving all four members of the Beatles during the band's existence. One additional song, "
I Me Mine", was recorded by three members of the group (Lennon being absent due to having privately left the band in September 1969) in January 1970 for the album
Let It Be. The 1996 compilation album
Anthology 3 contains a remixed version of "The End", restoring tambourine and guitar overdubs mixed out of the original, and edited to emphasise the guitar solos and orchestral overdub. The track is followed by a variant on the long piano chord that ends "
A Day in the Life" (reversed, then played forwards), concluding the compilation and also ending
The Beatles Anthology. ==Musical structure==