"[4] Lennon misquoted the line; the actual words are, "And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make..."[5] Recording began on 23 July 1969, when the Beatles recorded a one-minute, thirty-second master take that was extended via overdubs to two minutes and five seconds.

Geoff Emerick, the Beatles' recording engineer, later recalled: "John, Paul and George looked like they had gone back in time, like they were kids again, playing together for the sheer enjoyment of it.

Then the orchestration arrangement takes over with a humming chorus and Harrison playing a final guitar solo that ends the song.

[9] The track is followed by a variant on the long piano chord that ends "A Day in the Life", concluding the compilation.

[18] An eight-bar drum solo as a final statement of recognition to their "steady, solid drummer"[19] ends with a crescendo of eighth notes and bass and rhythm guitar in seventh chords to the chant "Love you.

[21] Gould terms these live studio takes "little character sketches": Paul opens with a characteristically fluid and melodically balanced line that sounds a high A before snaking an octave down the scale; George responds by soaring to an even higher D and sustaining it for half a bar before descending in syncopated pairs of 16th notes; John then picks upon the pattern of George's 16ths with a series of choppy thirds that hammer relentlessly on the second and flattened seventh degrees of the scale.

On this final two-bar solo, Paul plays almost nothing but minor thirds and flattened sevenths in a herky-jerky rhythm that ends with a sudden plunge to a low A; George then reaches for the stars with a steeply ascending line that is pitched an octave above any notes heard so far; and John finishes with a string of insistent and heavily distorted 4ths, phrased in triplets, that drag behind the beat and grate against the background harmony.

[23] The final bars in the key of C involve a I–II–♭III rock-type progression and a IV–I soothing cadence that appear to instinctively reconcile different musical genres.

[24] Richie Unterberger of AllMusic considered "The End" to be "the group's take on the improvised jamming common to heavy rock of the late '60s, though as usual, The Beatles did it with far more economic precision than anyone else.