The Beatles · from Abbey Road (1969) · side-two medley
A study in the blues-rock ♭VI–♭VII–I cadence.
A short, hard-strummed medley rocker in E that keeps borrowing chords from below the key, then hooks its chorus on the classic C–D–E climb.
This is a loud, fast little rock song inside the Abbey Road medley, in a home key of E.
It keeps grabbing chords that live just below the home key, which gives it a tough, bluesy sound.
The catchiest bit is the chorus climb C, D, E, three chords walking up into home.
That walk-up ending, two borrowed chords stepping up to home, is a favorite move in rock music.
Like the other medley songs, it does not really stop. It rolls straight into the next one.
To see the exact chords and key, open Pollack or Isophonics.
The song centers on E but treats the key loosely, pulling in chords from the darker, flat side rather than staying strictly major.
That borrowing gives it a raw, mixolydian rock character instead of a clean-cut major sound.
Across the verse the harmony uses the borrowed ♭3 (G), ♭6 (C), and ♭7 (D) alongside the home E, the vocabulary of hard rock built on the mixolydian and minor-pentatonic worlds.
Those flat-side chords, not any polished progression, are what make Polythene Pam sound tough.
The chorus arrives at the C–D–E move, a ♭VI–♭VII–I climb that steps up into the tonic from two borrowed chords.
This is one of rock's most recognizable cadences, and it is the structural payoff of the whole fragment.
A D–A–E riff recurs through the intro and verse, threading the flat-7 and the subdominant around the tonic.
The song relies on that repeated figure the way the earlier medley rockers rely on a groove.
Polythene Pam is a brief, high-energy panel in the medley, and it drives straight into She Came In Through the Bathroom Window without a full stop.
Its momentum, not a cadence, is what ends it.
| Degree | Chord | Nashville | Roman |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | E | 1 | I |
| b3 | G | b3 | ♭III (borrowed) |
| 4 | A | 4 | IV |
| 5 | B | 5 | V |
| b6 | C | b6 | ♭VI (borrowed) |
| b7 | D | b7 | ♭VII (borrowed) |
Chords sourced from a public transcription, with E as the tonal center.
Reading the numbers: each is a scale degree in E. Plain = major, m = minor, (7) = a dominant-seventh coloring, b-degrees are the borrowed flat-side rock chords. Here the chorus is b6–b7–1 (C–D–E).
The verse and chorus chords (E, D, A, G, B, C) are plain open or barre triads. The two seventh chords used elsewhere in the fragment are shown below.
Prose analysis of the E center, the borrowed rock chords, and the segue.
Open Pollack mirror →Downloadable chord and key files: the exact chords and where the fragment hands off.
Open Isophonics →Roman-numeral function and melody for the riff and hook, if a community tab exists.
Open the Beatles index →