Within You, Without You | George Harrison ✅

18

August 20th, 1969

As he played the final note, I saw the tears in my husband's eyes. It was the end of an era, the end of a song. The end of an album, the end of a decade.

And what a decade it had been. I had spent the first seven years of it lonely and abused by a boyfriend. I hated to even think of his name now - especially when George was recording - because I knew that he wouldn't be able to comfort me straight away.

And I hated our girls seeing me upset.

Our oldest, Amara Louise Harrison was about to turn two. Our youngest, Sydney Grace Harrison, was a year and a month old. Amara - or Amy, as we called her - could just about walk and talk for herself, though her vocabulary was limited.

Sydney, but we called her Syd, was just learning to walk - she wanted to run and walk and talk with her sister, so she was a little forward for her age.

They were with us at the studio that day. Everybody was, actually.

John and his girlfriend, the Japanese conceptual artist, Yoko Ono (none of us liked her, but she was good with Syd and Amy so George and I tolerated her), Ringo, Maureen and their children; Zak and Jason, and then Paul and his new wife, Linda. I liked Linda a lot. Linda had a daughter from a previous marriage, and Paul had adopted her - but Heather wasn't around today.

As we walked out of the studio, Yoko asked to hold Syd. I handed her over. She asked Amy to walk beside her, and then told John to go and walk with me. Linda told Paul to do the same, and then Ringo followed suit. George, of course, was already next to me. I had two Beatles on either side of me. The other women, and the children, all stood back a little. Linda had bought her camera with her to snap some photos of the final day of recording for The Beatles.

And she snapped the picture of us five. The five of us, together since January 1967, on that rainy day when I had come into Abbey Road Studio for a job interview, hoping to get to spend time with John Lennon... but I had instead met the love of my life, my husband. My other half, the father of my children. My best friend. I had met George Harrison.

Everyday I thanked God for the rain that had come that day... or he might never have spoken to me.