If I Needed Someone

The Beatles spent the vast majority of their studio time on October 16th, 1965 working on the new Lennon-McCartney number Day Tripper, which would wind up as half of a double A-sided single.  It was only during the last hour of the evening session that they finally turned their attention to George Harrison's latest composition, If I Needed Someone.  After some rehearsal, they nailed the rhythm track in a single take.

The next scheduled day of recording was on October 18th, at which time a total of ninety minutes was allocated to perform all of the overdubs necessary to complete the song.  This is indicative of the short shrift that George generally received when it came time to work on one of his numbers.  He made the most of it, however, singing and then double-tracking his lead vocal, getting strong backing vocals from John and Paul, plus adding a second lead guitar line along with some tambourine from Ringo.

The influence that the Beatles had had upon American group the Byrds came full circle here.  David Crosby has recounted how the 1964 film A Hard Day's Night made a huge impact on the Byrds, with Roger McGuinn particularly blown away by the sound of George Harrison's 12-string Rickenbacker guitar.  Now, in late '65, George was impressed by a riff on the Byrds' song The Bells of Rhymney, and used it as the basis for the hypnotic riff that runs throughout If I Needed Someone.  George even played a new 12-string Rickenbacker to capture what was now the distinctive Byrds sound.

If I Needed Someone was placed as the penultimate track on the British version of Rubber Soul, but did not appear on the US version.  American fans had to wait six months for the compilation album "Yesterday"...and Today released in June of 1966 to finally hear the song.

The song was strong enough to replace George's spotlight number Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby in the Beatles' stage act.  It thereby became the only Harrison composition to make the cut during the group's touring years, starting with the British tour of late '65 and remaining in the lineup until their final show at Candlestick Park in 1966.

George resurrected the tune for his 1991 tour of Japan with Eric Clapton.  A performance from this tour appears on the Live in Japan double album.

If I Fell

For me, there is no more beautiful ballad in the entire Beatles catalog than If I Fell.  McCartney's And I Love Her was immediately more popular (If I Fell was relegated to the B-side of the American single featuring both songs), but Lennon's offering was lyrically deeper and even more complex musically.  And the duet is their finest on record, surpassing even Two of Us and the final verse of Hey Jude in my estimation.  John and Paul were never in better form.

The number was among those composed at the George V Hotel in Paris during January of 1964 for the group's upcoming film debut.  While Lennon wrote the bulk of the song, McCartney has since claimed the intro as his own.  It was recorded in an afternoon session at Abbey Road Studios on February 27th with John and Paul standing at one microphone per their request.  Fifteen takes were necessary as tiny adjustments were made to the instrumental arrangement along the way.  Some double-tracking was then done for the vocals before the song was complete.  This resulted in some noticeable differences between the mono and stereo mixes of the song, as only the stereo version has John's intro double-tracked and fails to correct a precious moment when Paul's voice cracks on the word "vain" at the end of the second bridge.

Though it is the most mature of the soundtrack songs, it is played as a joke in A Hard Day's Night, with John singing to a sulking Ringo.  We do hear a good chunk of it again in the concert sequence near the end of the film.

It was released in the UK on the album A Hard Day's Night and on the EP Extracts from the Film A Hard Day's Night.  Aside from the Capitol single, it also appeared in the US on the United Artists soundtrack album A Hard Day's Night and the Capitol album Something New.  The 1977 compilation Love Songs contains the stereo version.  And On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2 presents a new recording of the song for the radio program Top Gear.  John even double-tracked his vocal, including the intro, on this occasion.  This was from July of 1964, only a week after the release of the album in the UK.

Despite the intricacies of the duet, the group added the song to their stage act for the remainder of that year.  They did, however, often laugh their way through the number.  Too bad.  Such a delicate and sublime composition deserved better treatment at the hands of its creators.

I Will

This lovely ballad was among the many tunes that McCartney wrote in Rishikesh, India in the spring of 1968.  He and singer-songwriter Donovan Leitch even spent some time together working on lyrics for it, but Paul eventually abandoned them.  It was not one of the songs that were demoed at George Harrison's house in Esher in May.

Yet, on September 16th, over three months into the sessions for the double album in the works, the tune resurfaced with a fresh set of lyrics inspired by Paul's anticipation of Linda Eastman's impending arrival in the UK.  With acoustic guitar in hand, Chris Thomas in the producer's chair and John and Ringo standing by to provide percussion, Paul launched into no less than sixty-seven takes of the number.  When all was said and done, take sixty-five was determined to be the best.  On the following day, Paul performed all of the necessary overdubs himself.  These included a harmony vocal in places, some lovely fills on a second guitar and, most interestingly, a clever vocal bass line in lieu of his usual electric bass guitar work.

The September 16th session has become rightfully known for the occasional ad libs between proper takes of the song.  Anthology 3 fades in a wonderful performance of Step Inside Love, which Paul had written as the theme song for Cilla Black's television show.  Once this concludes, a remark by John immediately prompts Paul into a silly ad libbed number called Los Paranoias.  In addition to continuing his percussion throughout, John tosses in a few odd vocalizations, as well.  But the most famous aside from the session is Can You Take Me Back.  The 50th anniversary edition of the "White Album" finally allows us to hear that entire number.  Of course, a snippet of it actually made its way (uncredited) onto the original album to serve as a segue between Cry Baby Cry and Revolution 9.

George may not have participated in the recording of I Will, but he did get to play it in 1994 during filming for the Anthology series.  As Ringo watches, George and Paul perform a bit of the song with ukuleles out in George's garden at Friar Park.

The song appeared on the Love Songs compilation in 1977.  And, in addition to Step Inside Love/Los Paranoias, Anthology 3 presents take one of the song from the original session.  A true rarity is the single released in the Phillipines in 1968, where the song was the B-side to Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

I Want You (She's So Heavy)

I Want You (She's So Heavy) has the simplest lyrics of any song in the Beatles catalog, and has often been the subject of ridicule for this very reason.  The extended coda has also been criticized as unnecessary and monotonous.  Yet listen to the band playing together as a tight unit again, right on the heels of the ragged Get Back sessions.  In fact, the song emerged from those sessions in the last days of January 1969.  Lennon only had the bluesy verses at that time, but bootleg tapes reportedly reveal a few jams of the number highlighted by some great interplay between John and keyboard player Billy Preston.

On February 22nd, Preston reunited with the Beatles at Trident Studios as they set about making a proper recording.  With Glyn Johns as producer, the five man band laid down thirty-five takes before calling it a night.  A listening session the next day resulted in Lennon deciding to splice together parts of takes nine, twenty and thirty-two to create the master, which ran 8'04" at this point.

While this was the first track to be recorded for Abbey Road, there were no plans for such an album at the time.  The song might even have been intended to flesh out a potential Get Back album, according to some sources.  Yet it did not appear on the first attempt by Glyn Johns to compile an album from those sessions, though in its current state, it would have fit in with the no overdubs, live-in-the-studio concept.

All of that changed on April 18th at Abbey Road Studios with Chris Thomas now producing.  After finishing work on Harrison's B-side Old Brown Shoe, John and George remained to overdub guitars onto the coda of I Want You (She's So Heavy), creating a massive sound as they played the riff over and over many times.  On April 20th, Ringo added conga drums and John played a second Hammond organ part in addition to that of Billy Preston on the master.

By August 8th, the group was finally nearing completion on an album to be called Abbey Road, with George Martin back in the producer's chair.  John now chose to pull out the original Trident Studios tape, minus most of the April overdubs, and had George Harrison add the white noise effect from his Moog synthesizer onto the last minute or two of the recording.  August 11th saw John, Paul and George add the layers of "she's so heavy" vocals.  John was indecisive as to which version he preferred, so the vocals were put onto both.  Ringo also added some more cymbal crashes for good measure.

On August 20th, John made some crucial decisions.  After having Ringo use an old-fashioned wind machine (such as theaters use backstage) to augment the white noise effect, he had engineer Geoff Emerick splice the two versions together, with the April overdubs for the bulk of the song and the Trident master serving as the coda.  Then, while listening to a playback, he told Emerick to cut the tape at the 7'44" mark, the result being the shocking, unexpected end of the song.  On this date, that would also have been the end of the album, as sides one and two were reversed at the time.

While many fans will continue to dislike the song, there is no doubt that the group is in fine form throughout.  John's simultaneous singing and playing is quite good, Paul's bass work is nothing short of tremendous and Billy Preston's mastery on the keyboard, especially during the "she's so heavy" sequence, once again adds an element that none of the Beatles could have provided. 

I Want to Tell You

Over the course of the Beatles' recording career, George Harrison was generally represented by two lead vocal spots on a typical fourteen track album.  On Revolver, he landed three.  This was not unprecedented - he also had three on With the Beatles.  But two of those had been cover versions.  This time, all three were his own compositions.

On June 2nd, 1966, the group began work on the third of those numbers, a song about the difficulty of communication.  They recorded five takes with George on guitar, Paul on piano and Ringo on drums.  Upon listening to the takes, George decided that take three had been the best.  He then recorded his lead vocal as John and Paul supplied the harmony, with Paul's vocal line sounding deliberately dissonant.  This dissonance is carried over into one of the piano parts he played.  The second piano part was among the further overdubs, which also included John on tambourine and Ringo on maracas, as well as George double-tracking his lead vocal.  And all four Beatles provided handclaps during the song's last verse.

One final overdub was added on June 3rd.  This was Paul's bass line, the first time that this was done as an overdub on any Beatles' song, though this practice would become quite common from this time forward.  At some point, it was decided that the opening of the number would fade in with George's guitar riff.  This works particularly well on the UK version of the album following the fadeout of Doctor Robert.

The use of dissonance on the recording helps to convey the message of confusion present in the lyrics.  And, as the song fades out, Paul's high vocal harmony plays around in such a manner that it highlights the strong influence of George's interest in Indian music on the other members of the band.

I Want to Tell You appears on both the UK and US versions of the album Revolver.  It never resurfaced on any of the group's post-career compilations, nor did they ever play the song live.  George did resurrect the song, however, for his tour of Japan in 1991.  The album Live in Japan features one of these performances.