When I Get Home

Yes, there is actually a song by the Beatles which contains the off-the-wall line, "I'm gonna love her till the cows come home."  And yet, as is usually the case, John Lennon sings it with such conviction that he makes it work.  In fact, rarely did he sing with as much ferocity as he does on When I Get Home.

This was one of the last songs recorded for the non-soundtrack side of the album A Hard Day's Night.  Like the title song, it is about a man returning to the comforts of domestic bliss.  Unlike that song, which is sung to the woman waiting for the singer to come home, this one is addressed to the woman who is standing in his way, thereby incurring his wrath.  From what we know about John's relationship with his wife Cynthia, it seems out of character for him to have written a song about wanting to return to her, but he did most likely write When I Get Home while on vacation with her in Tahiti in May of 1964.

The Beatles tackled the song during the evening session on June 2nd, 1964.  Eleven takes were required before they arrived at the best basic track.  The only overdubs were John double-tracking his lead vocal in the bridge and at the end of the song, plus Paul and George's harmony vocals (not the prettiest harmonies they ever recorded) and a piano part played by Paul.  The group attack on the song, both vocally and instrumentally, is impressive, producing a heavier sound than we were used to hearing from the Beatles, even in their early Mersey beat days.  John's thrashing rhythm guitar, Ringo's drum kicks and Paul's throbbing bass and piano all contribute to the cacophony.  

As mentioned above, When I Get Home appeared on the album A Hard Day's Night in the UK.  It was also featured on the EP Extracts From the Album A Hard Day's Night in that country.  In America, its one and only release was on the Capitol album Something New.

What You're Doing

Let me just start out by stating that I love this song.  It is one of a number of lesser-known songs by the Beatles that I feel could easily have been a hit for any other group.  And yet, producer George Martin and the Beatles themselves never thought too highly of it, relegating it to the penultimate spot in the running order on side two of the UK album Beatles for Sale.  Perhaps one of my reasons for admiring it is that Capitol Records placed it in a much more prominent spot, leading off side two of the American album Beatles VI.  

The group first attempted to record What You're Doing late in the second session of the day on September 29th, 1964.  Seven takes were committed to tape before calling it a night.  They returned to the song at the second session of the following day, recording takes eight through twelve.  Take eleven was chosen as the best, Paul double-tracked his lead vocal in the bridge, and it was probably considered complete.

Or was it?  As other songs were treated to mono mixing in the coming days and weeks, What You're Doing was ignored - that is, until the final day of sessions for the album, October 26th, at which time the group remade the song with a new arrangement, starting at take thirteen.  The last take - take nineteen - was chosen as the best.  One notable difference of this new version was the opening of the number.  Ringo was always averse to doing drum solos, but he sets up a strong beat here, much like the drum pattern of the Ronettes' Be My Baby, as Dave Rybaczewski points out in his excellent in-depth look at this song.

Another difference was a most unusual change in the backing vocals.  I have not heard the original arrangement, but John reportedly sang a harmony line in the verses of that version.  Now, instead, John and George shout out the first words of each phrase before switching over to a melodic "ooh" behind Paul's lead vocal.  In this new version, Paul double-tracked his lead vocal throughout, not just in the soaring bridges.  He is also credited with adding the piano part heard in the bridges and at the end of the song, though the style of playing sounds more like that of producer George Martin.

For me, one final highlight of the song is the coda, where Ringo returns to his opening drum pattern, then Paul comes in with an pulsing bass line, and the piano finally joins in along with George's great guitar riff which we have heard for much of the number.  All of these elements combine for one of the most unique tracks that the band had recorded up to this point in time.

Yet, apart from the song's placement on Beatles for Sale and Beatles VI which I mentioned above, the song has never surfaced again on any post-career compilations.  In my opinion, that is a shame for such a terrific recording.  If nothing else, it would have been nice to hear the earlier version of What You're Doing in the Anthology series, but even that was unfortunately not meant to be.

What Goes On

Only a few weeks after recording the bulk of their first album Please Please Me in a single day, the Beatles were back in the studio on March 5th, 1963.  The album had not even been released yet, but it was already time to have the next single ready to go to follow it up.  Lennon and McCartney had recently written what they were sure would serve as the A and B sides - From Me to You and Thank You Girl - but Lennon was also hot to put two of his older compositions on tape.

Producer George Martin naturally focused the bulk of the session on getting the two sides of the single perfected before turning to the other numbers.  All of the remaining time was spent on just one of them - One After 909 - so the group never got around to tackling What Goes On.  A pity.  It would be interesting to hear what it sounded like at this particular point in time.

Two and a half years elapsed before they actually recorded the number, and it underwent a revision in the interim.  Suddenly, it was re-imagined as a rockabilly vehicle for Ringo.  Paul and Ringo even made some additions to John's original composition, though Ringo was quoted as saying that he only "contributed about five words."  Whatever his contribution, it was deemed significant enough to earn him his first composer's credit.  

Though John claimed to have had the song lying around since the days of the Quarry Men, the group had never actually performed it.  A good deal of time was probably necessary on November 4th, 1965 to work on the arrangement before the tape rolled, but the band nailed the backing track in a single take, and it certainly sounds like they had a good deal of fun doing it.  Paul plays an active pulsing bass line while John adds a sharp electric rhythm guitar.  Ringo, of course, holds it all together on the drums, and George is absolutely in his element emulating Carl Perkins on lead guitar. 

Ringo then overdubbed his lead vocal while John and Paul provided jaunty backing vocals.  The one other overdub was a final guitar flourish from George which somehow was only added to the stereo mix of the song.

Like many other American fans, I was unaware of the differences between the releases in the UK and US at the time, so it came as a bit of a shock to me when I learned years later that What Goes On appeared on the British version of Rubber Soul.  To my ears, it still seems somewhat out of place in the running order, sandwiched as it is between the sublime tunes Michelle and Girl.  

The first US release of the song was on a single in early 1966 as the B-side of Nowhere Man.  The initial copies of this single failed to credit Ringo as a co-composer.  Only later did the correct listing of Lennon/McCartney/Starkey appear.  Capitol Records soon reissued it in June on the compilation album "Yesterday"...and Today. 

As enjoyable as the song is, What Goes On has never appeared on a post-career collection of the Beatles, nor did the group ever play it live.  

We Can Work It Out

For many of the early hit singles in the songwriting career of Lennon and McCartney, the two usually worked together, "eyeball to eyeball" as John once said, resulting in compositions that sounded as if they came from a single source.  As they progressed, each partner wrote more and more on his own, only inviting input from the other when inspiration failed and a fresh viewpoint was needed to complete the work at hand.  Those who were listening closely could begin to detect which Beatle wrote which section of any given song.  Such was the case with We Can Work It Out from late 1965, which is generally regarded as a superb meeting of the songwriters' minds.

This is one of a number of songs that McCartney wrote around this time in reference to his troubled relationship with fiancee and actress Jane Asher.  Though the title of the composition is hopeful, the singer of the verses is deeply entrenched in his position in the argument, and unwilling to even consider his lover's point of view.  Lennon added the bridge, which is more reflective, though most critics tend to read this section as simply being impatient.  However one may interpret them, the two portions of the song complement one another so well that they seem to come from the same pen.

The Beatles spent an entire day on this number on October 20th, 1965.  A good chunk of the afternoon session must have been devoted to the arrangement before the group nailed the backing track on only the second take.  With Paul on bass and Ringo on drums, John played an acoustic guitar and George concentrated on playing a shifting tambourine pattern.  In the evening, John sat at a harmonium which was in the studio and overdubbed two different parts, sounding very much like an accordion.  Paul double-tracked his lead vocal, with John joining in for the bridges. 

On October 28th, a mono mix was prepared - not for record, but for a television program called The Music of Lennon and McCartney.  When Paul and John heard this mix, they were unhappy with their vocals, prompting them to re-record them on October 29th.  For the TV special, which, sadly, did not air here in the US, John used the harmonium at the Granada TV studio from the program Coronation Street, while George sported an electric guitar instead of John's acoustic as heard on the recording.  Miming to this song and its flip side Day Tripper before an imaginary audience gave the Beatles' brain trust an idea.  

As a result, November 23rd, 1965 was devoted to producing ten black and white videos at Twickenham Film Studios, which could be sent out worldwide in lieu of live appearances.  Three of them were of We Can Work It Out, once again showing George with an electric guitar, and John sitting at an organ in this instance.  Two of these can be viewed on the video collection 1+.  In both, John mugs for the camera, tries to make Paul laugh, and eventually gives up pretending to play the keyboard part correctly. 

Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out was released as a double A-sided single.  Day Tripper fared somewhat better in the British market, but it was We Can Work It Out that went to number one in the US.  In June of 1966, Capitol placed both sides of the single on the compilation album "Yesterday"...and Today.  At the end of '66, both sides appeared on the UK album A Collection of Beatles' Oldies.  The group briefly added We Can Work It Out to their live set for their December 1965 tour of the UK.

The song can be found on several post-career collections including The Red Album, 20 Greatest Hits (both the US and UK versions), Past Masters Volume Two, and 1.