The first line of the song (Lennon’s homage to a similar line from Chuck Berry’s 1956 rock hit, “You Can’t Catch Me”) and the chorus - “Come together, right now, over me” - became famous pop culture quotations. One thing I can tell you is you got to be free He wear no shoeshine, he got toe-jam football Got to be a joker, he just do what he please He got ju-ju eyeballs, he one holy roller “Here come old flattop, he come groovin’ up slowly Together, they reworked it a bit and changed the lyrics to those all Beatles fans are familiar with: So, Lennon took the song to his bandmates, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, when the Beatles were recording songs for the upcoming Abbey Road album. Leary gave copies to local underground radio stations in California and the song got some airplay.Shortly thereafter, Leary’s campaign got derailed due to his mounting legal troubles from a past marijuana bust, forcing him to, er, drop out of the Governor’s race. Lennon made a demo tape of the campaign song for Leary. The melody was basically like the Beatles song we know today, but the original chorus was different. And, during the Montreal Bed-In days, in addition to writing and recording “Give Peace a Chance,”Lennon wrote an initial version of the song “Come Together.” In June of 1969, while visiting John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their legendary Montreal “Bed-In,” Leary asked Lennon to write a campaign song to go with his slogan.
Leary came up with the tongue-in-cheek campaign slogan, “Come together, join the party.” So, he threw his mushroom cap into the ring and announced that he planned to run against Reagan in the 1970 gubernatorial election. Leary figured that if a Hollywood celebrity could run for Governor and get elected, maybe the times were right for a Hippie celebrity to take a shot at it. Three years earlier, actor Ronald Reagan had been elected Governor of California. The best-known slogan coined by Sixties counterculture celebrity Timothy Leary is the one he created to promote the use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs: “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”In 1969, Leary came up with another slogan that was eventually made famous, though not by him.
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