On February 9, 2014, The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles, a tribute to the band, aired on CBS featuring an evening full of performances of the Beatles’ songs by Stevie Wonder (“We Can Work It Out”), Eurythmics (“The Fool on the Hill”), Ed Sheeran (“In My Life”), and Katy Perry (“Yesterday”), among other special guests, along with Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
Throughout the concert, which was originally filmed on January 27, 2014, at the Los Angeles Convention Center a day after the 56th Annual Grammy Awards, several artists grouped together for their Beatles renditions with John Mayer and Keith Urban performing “Don’t Let Me Down,” Brad Paisley and Pharrell Williams taking on “Here Comes the Sun,” and Jeff Lynne and Dave Grohl with “Hey Bulldog.”
That evening, Lynne was also joined by Joe Walsh and George Harrison‘s son Dhani to perform the Beatles classic “Something.” Written by Harrison for the Beatles’ 1969 album Abbey Road, “Something” was originally released as a double A-side single, along with “Come Together,” and both singles went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, where they remained for a week.
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[RELATED: 5 Songs You Didn’t Know Jeff Lynne Wrote for Other Artists]
Jeff Lynne Sat in During an ‘Abbey Road’ Session
“Well The Beatles changed my life,” said Lynne before performing alongside Walsh and Harrison. “When I was first recording an album in 1968, I was somehow wondrously invited in Abbey Road Studios to watch The Beatles record. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know how I got in there. I couldn’t sleep for days. They were amazing in that they had this aura about them.”
Lynne continued, “I never dreamed that one day I would work with them, and then one day I would produce them. So, I’m really chuffed about that. It’s the greatest thrill of my career.”
Right after the Beatles’ big opening of “Come Together” on Abbey Road, “Something” slips in, Harrison’s partial ode to his then-wife, Pattie Boyd, and his studies of Krishna consciousness. “Something” was one of two tracks solely written by Harrison on Abbey Road, along with “Here Comes the Sun,” and was written while the Beatles were working on The White Album.
Harrison recorded his first demo of “Something” on February 25, 1969, on his 26th birthday. He reportedly came up with the title and the first line after listening to James Taylor’s 1968 song “Something In The Way She Moves.” Though the song was initially intended for Apple Records artist Jackie Lomax’s album Is This What You Want?, which was co-produced by Harrison, Joe Cocker recorded it first but didn’t release it until a month after Abbey Road was out.
Of all the tracks on Abbey Road, John Lennon considered “Something” his favorite track from the album.
“The words are nothing, really,” said Harrison of “Something” in 1969. “There are lots of songs like that in my head. I must get them down. Some people tell me that ‘Something’ is one of the best things I’ve ever written. I don’t know. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong. It’s very flattering though. It’s nice. It’s probably the nicest melody tune that I’ve written.”
Photo: Jeff Lynne performs with ELO on the Pyramid Stage on day 2 of the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm, Pilton on June 26, 2016 (Ian Gavan/Getty Images)
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