Tell Me What You See

Will Paul ever get back to his electric organ?

So ran a bit of hype for the film Help!, with this line running in a trailer for the movie and printed inside the gatefold sleeve on the American version of the soundtrack album.  The silly picture above is of Paul sitting at said organ, which rises out of the floor in the boys' flat in the film.  To this day, Paul still primarily plays only chords on keyboards, as he recently admitted in the series McCartney 3,2,1.  Yet, at times, he has strung together some impressive little runs on piano, as on the openings of You Never Give Me Your Money and Martha My Dear.  And, even early on in the recording career of the Beatles, he began adding some nice little touches on keyboard on a number of different songs.

The electric piano was a new instrument for the Beatles when they began using one at Abbey Road Studios in February of 1965, during the sessions scheduled for recording a batch of songs for the soundtrack of their second feature film.  John had first played the electric piano on February 17th on the tracks The Night Before and You Like Me Too Much.  On the following day, Paul chose to play it for a very specific overdub on his composition Tell Me What You See.

The group first laid down a backing track which featured Paul on bass, Ringo on drums, John on guitar and George providing a bit of percussion with a Latin American guiro.  Only four takes were necessary before arriving at the best, at which point Paul switched to the electric piano to add the nice little syncopated phrase he wanted at the end of each refrain.  He and John also added their joint lead vocals, with Paul double-tracking his own.  Even more percussion completed the overdubs, with Ringo on tambourine and George playing claves.  

Though the song was among those submitted as contenders for the soundtrack of Help!, it was not chosen for that purpose by director Richard Lester.  As a result, it ultimately wound up on the non-soundtrack side of the British album.  American audiences actually got to hear the song a few months earlier on the Capitol compilation album Beatles VI, released in June of 1965.  Watching the film, it is hard to imagine Tell Me What You See replacing any of the songs that were featured in the musical sequences.

This pleasant song has only popped up on one post-career compilation, the 1977 album Love Songs.