Today was more or less a repeat of yesterday. First Paul showed up to have another go at his lead vocal for “Oh! Darling,” his second of four attempts. The rest of the session was devoted to “Octopus’s Garden” — in this case lead vocals and drum fills.

At this point the album was beginning to fill out, with “You Never Give Me Your Money,” “Something,” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight,” “Octopus’s Garden,” and “Oh! Darling” all either complete or fairly far along. But John hadn’t contributed much; he didn’t play on most of those songs and had offered no new compositions of his own. That would change soon enough.

Meanwhile, three astronauts were somewhere out in space between Earth and the moon. This was also the day that Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy drove his car off the bridge to Chappaquiddick Island, resulting in the death of one Mary Jo Kopechne and the end of Teddy’s presidential ambitions. This is not Beatles-related in any obvious way, though I am tempted to make an “Octopus’s Garden” joke that would surely be in bad taste. But it was another of the bad omens that accompanied these waning days of the Sixties, and this was just the beginning, really.

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