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.
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