With lyrics like “He wear no shoeshine, he got toe-jam football/ He got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola,” the 1969 track “Come Together,” written by John Lennon, contains some of the most nonsensical lyrics of The Beatles‘ back catalog. Its origin story, however, details perhaps the most pointed political effort Lennon ever attempted as part of the Fab Four.
One of Lennon’s last major contributions to The Beatles before he decided to leave the band in September 1969, “Come Together,” released the following month, was intended as a political campaign anthem for Timothy Leary, the famed psychologist who intended to run for the role of Governor of California against Republican rival and future President Ronald Reagan.
“Come Together” was written in July 1969, just weeks before Lennon’s departure. The late musician had met with Leary, who requested that the former write a song based on his 1970 campaign slogan, “Come Together – Join the Party!” Leary had become an admirer of Lennon’s due to his and his new wife Yoko Ono’s recent “Bed-Ins For Peace” protests against the Vietnam War, and the musician respected the campaigner as an early proponent of LSD.
“I was running for Governor of California against Reagan, and John said: ‘What can I do?’ I said: ‘Write a campaign song,” Leary later recalled (via Louder). “He said: ‘What’s the motto of your campaign?’ I said: ‘Come together – join the party’ which was invented by my wife Rosemary. John immediately picked up on that and began strumming on tape: ‘Come together, right now, over me/ All I can say is you got to be free.’ And that was basically my campaign song.”
“Come Together,” however, was never used in its original context. Leary’s 1970 arrest on a marijuana possession charge resulted in a subsequent sentence of 10 years in prison, effectively ending his campaign for office. Long before the arrest, however, Lennon found difficulty in his early attempts at political songwriting.
“I tried and tried, but I couldn’t come up with one. But I came up with this, ‘Come Together’, which would’ve been no good to him,’ Lennon later said (via thebeatles.com). Despite these initial failures, “Come Together” was a massive commercial success, spending three weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, with the Beatles breaking Elvis Presley’s record for most #1s on the chart.
Lennon’s other political songs, such as the anti-Vietnam War song “Give Peace a Chance,” were also released in 1969, and most famously, “Imagine,” released in 1971, became a universal anthem for the disenfranchised. Unlike “Come Together,” these songs were rooted in broader ideological experiments by Lennon, as opposed to their endorsement of one political campaign, and helped overcome songwriter’s block.
