By the time The Beatles finished work on their final album as a band, they had been recording together for almost seven years. In that time, it seemed as though the world had changed completely. But the -penned “Oh! Darling,” more than any other song on the Abbey Road album, had its roots in a time before the world had even heard of the group.

The Beatles - Oh! Darling (2019 Mix / Audio)

For The Beatles, 1969 was about looking back as well as forwards. Take their photo session on April 9. Paul McCartney is wearing a black-and-white shirt that recalls the one he, John, and George can be seen wearing in photos of The Quarry Men around 1958, their matching stagewear an early uniform for the fledgling group.

A decade had passed since then, and so much had happened during those years. The Beatles began their final year together first at Twickenham film studios and then at their own Apple studio. The original concept was for the group, who had spent much of 1968 recording the recently released “White Album”, to return to live performance for the first time since 1966. The plan was to film them rehearsing for, and then performing, a live TV special (one of the ideas was to hire a pair of cruise ships that would take the group across the Mediterranean to an ancient amphitheater in Tunisia), and so they needed to work up a set of songs that could be performed live, without the studio trickery that had characterized their more recent albums.