Here Comes The Sun by The Beatles

“Here Comes The Sun” studio recoding

“Here Come The Sun” 1972 live performance

I have lived in the Chicagoland area for the past nine years and I am proud to call it my home.

There is so much to love about Chicago: the art, the food, the history, the neighborhoods and the people. However there are some things, I dislike, no HATE about Chicago: the traffic, the construction, the political corruption, the ridiculous sales tax (11.5% highest in America) and the winter weather.

I enjoy the first snow, the crispness of a winter morning and the magic of an evening snowstorm. That’s all good, but when it snows in April, when the sun never seems to rise and when we have multiple days when its colder in Chicago than in the North Pole, Moscow and Juneau it’s hard to love living in the Chicagoland area.

Yes, I complain a lot about the weather in Chicago. I dislike the drawn-out portions of winter so much I start complaining about it during the summer (I’m not joking, ask my wife). This winter has been especially rough. Multiple heavy snows and extended periods of time when the temperature was below 10 degrees Fahrenheit have a way of physically draining the body and dampening the spirit. So when the groundhog saw it’s shadow and decided we’d have a couple more weeks of winter I was ready to chase down the sucker and well go "Caddyshack" all over his furry keister!

[exhale]

Spring is here, the blanket of snow is gone, the sun is shining and the smiles are returning to the faces. Let’s celebrate how good it feels with The Beatles tribute to the coming of spring, “Here Come The Sun.”

George Harrison composed “Here Come The Sun” after reflecting on a brutal winter in England and his own personal struggles. Harrison in 1969 had his tonsils removed, was arrested for marijuana possession and was beginning to feel bogged down by the business of running Apple records (the Beatles' record label that they had founded in 1968). To escape all of this, Harrison visited his friend Eric Clapton and while walking through Eric’s gardens, composed “Here Comes the Sun.”

Harrison the youngest of the four Beatles (he joined when he was 16 years old) played lead guitar in the quartet. John Lennon and Paul McCartney composed the majority of the songs the Beatles recorded while each Beatles albums featured one or two songs by George Harrison.

In the early Beatles’ albums, Harrison’s songs were solid but not as polished as the other songs. As Harrison grew as an artist his songs came to the forefront. Some of his compositions including “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” became some of the Beatles biggest hits. In the Beatles’ last album Abbey Road it was Harrison’s songs “Something” (the second most covered Beatles song after “Yesterday”) and “Here Comes The Sun” which were that albums biggest hits as singles.

“Here Comes The Sun” feels like a spring morning with the sun gently warming the body as a soft refreshing breeze rejuvenates the spirit. Much of this feeling comes from Harrison’s gentle tenor voice. He voice has a caring quality like a mother softly saying, “I love you.” Behind his words, you can hear a peaceful smile. Harrison’s voice is a calming voice in a crisis, the rainbow after the storm and the sunlight after the darkness.

Sometimes winter seems to last forever and when Harrison describes the cold winter that has felt like years we all know how he feels but Harrison’s optimism and joy at the coming of the sun is something we sometimes forget. The lyrics are simple and direct speaking to our shared feeling of despair reminding us of not only the great feelings that are to come but the beauty of the past.

“Here Comes The Sun” features the guitar, bass guitar, drums, a Moog synthesizer, violas, cellos, double basses, piccolos, flutes and alto flutes. Like other songs the Beatles recorded, “Here Comes The Sun” expands the musical possibilities of popular music utilizing instruments that are normally used to create a unique and refreshing musical landscape. Harrison utilizes the different colors of the string and wind instruments to illustrate the feeling of seeing the sun coming up over the horizon. They play a background role supporting the meaning of the song and don’t bring attention to themselves. This focus on the meaning of the music ties these different sounds in a powerful singular voice.

Harrison utilizes a hemiola pattern switching the songs from a duple feeling like in the verses to a triplet feel “sun, sun, sun here it comes." This change doesn't happen in the way the beats are divided by rather by shifting the accent on the small beats. These triplet sections feel like being lost the sparkle of the sun, a feeling a freedom as the music seems to break away from the beat.

Spring is good times, everything will be all right. Listening to this song and reflecting on the months of ahead, winter does not seem so bad. All the great stuff to look forward to in the coming months outshines the darkness of winter and almost makes me forget how painful the winter was . . . almost.

“sun, sun, sun here it comes”
Glory, Hallelujah