You Can't Do That

Only two months after the Beatles exploded onto the American scene by appearing on his Sunday night television program, Ed Sullivan journeyed to England to interview the boys personally while they were in the midst of shooting their first feature film.  The interview had to be rescheduled a day later than planned, however, due to the fact that the group needed to report to Abbey Road Studios to record the newly written title song at the very last minute.  Sullivan was finally granted a few minutes with them between shots on April 17th, 1964.  Possibly because it was so brief, United Artists gave him a clip from the film to air along with the interview on the May 24th edition of his show.  This clip turned out to be more exclusive than anyone imagined, because it showed the Beatles miming to their recent B-side You Can't Do That in the concert near the end of the film, and this sequence was subsequently cut before the movie's release. 

Before being issued as the B-side to Can't Buy Me Love, You Can't Do That had indeed been written for the film's soundtrack.  But the need to rush release a new single took precedence in late February.  On the 25th of that month, they added a few overdubs to the A-side, then concentrated on Lennon's rocker.  There were two important changes to their usual lineup on the backing track.  First, John had decided that he wanted to play lead guitar on the track. Though that relegated George to playing rhythm, he did so on his newly acquired 12-string Rickenbacker guitar, giving a fuller, richer sound to his opening guitar riff.

Take six can be heard on Anthology 1.  John sings alone, sounding somewhat flat when he hits the word "green" in the bridge each time.  By take nine - the master - Paul and George had added their fantastic backing vocals, even singing during John's great, stinging guitar solo.  John then double-tracked his lead vocal in each bridge, Paul overdubbed a cowbell, Ringo played bongos, and the track was complete.  

Producer George Martin made mono mixes for both sides of the single and sent them off to Capitol Records in the USA the next day.  Capitol was allowed to issue the single on March 16th, four days before it was released in the UK.  The American label also soon added the song to The Beatles' Second Album, which came out on April 10th.  Since the song was omitted from the movie, Parlophone placed it on the non-soundtrack side of A Hard Day's Night when that album appeared in the UK in July.

The Beatles promoted You Can't Do That by playing it on the television programs Ready Steady Go and Top of the Pops, as well as on several BBC Radio series.  The last of these, for the new show Top Gear, can be heard on On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2.  The song was also featured in their set list throughout 1964.  A version from August 23rd of that year was added to the revised lineup of the album Live at the Hollywood Bowl in 2016.

Aside from the releases listed above, the only other appearance of the song on a post career compilation was on the 1976 double album Rock and Roll Music.

As for the clip of the boys performing the song in the movie, it remained unseen for thirty years after it was broadcast on the Ed Sullivan Show.  Then, in 1994, to help celebrate the 30th anniversary of the film, a documentary called "You Can't Do That" The Making of A Hard Day's Night featured commentary from Phil Collins, who was among the young audience members at the shoot on March 31st, 1964, at the Scala Theatre.  The future Genesis frontman had a strong memory of the experience and had always wondered why the song had not been featured in the film.  It turns out that the concert sequence was considered to be too long when the film was being edited, so it was decided that one song had to be cut.  This documentary, and the rough cut of the song from the original footage, is now available on the Criterion collection's 50th anniversary DVD of A Hard Day's Night from 2014.     

Yesterday

John Lennon once told the story of a time when he was dining in a restaurant in Spain and a violinist came up to his table, played Yesterday, then asked John to sign his violin.  Lennon did not tell the musician that not only did he not play on the recording, but he also had absolutely no input on the composition of perhaps the most famous song attributed to the Beatles.  Such were the misconceptions surrounding the longstanding Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership.

McCartney's story is that he awoke one day with the melody in his head and immediately went to a piano to pick it out so he could remember it.  He could not believe that a tune that good could have come to him so easily, so he began playing it to anybody who would listen to learn if it was indeed his own.  Producer George Martin recalled that Paul played it to him as early as January of 1964 in Paris.  A member of the Yardbirds remembers Paul playing it in his dressing room during the run of Another Beatles Christmas Show in December '64.  And director Richard Lester threatened to have a piano removed from the set if Paul didn't stop playing it while filming a sequence of the film Help! 

McCartney had no proper lyrics for the song for quite a while, merely singing, "Scrambled eggs/Oh, my baby, how I love your legs."  Finally, in May of 1965, the right words came to him as he and Jane Asher were on a long drive in Portugal.  He wound up with a perfect set of simple, evocative lyrics which tell an unresolved, yet universally relatable tale.

The Beatles convened at Abbey Road Studios on June 14th, 1965, to begin sessions to fill out the non-soundtrack side of their Help! album.  McCartney brought in three very different songs on this date - the fast tempo folk-rock number I've Just Seen a Face, the hard rocker I'm Down, and Yesterday.  Oddly, he saved the tender ballad for last, after screaming out his lungs for much of the afternoon.  

Take one of Yesterday is available on Anthology 2.  We hear George ask what the chords are, Paul tells him after saying that the song will be in another key (?), then immediately launches into the first take alone on acoustic guitar.  It was probably after this take that the rest of the group decided there was nothing they could offer other than moral support.  Producer George Martin, however, suggested a string arrangement - something the Beatles had not used on any of their recordings to date.  McCartney was hesitant because he did not want the song to sound like Mantovani.  The brilliant solution was to not use an orchestra, but rather a string quartet, which would provide an elegant classical touch to the recording.

Paul went to Martin's house on June 16th to go over the arrangement, at which point he requested a few changes to the producer's score.  It is to Martin's eternal credit that he listened and attempted to incorporate most of Paul's ideas, starting a trend that he would continue in the following years as his arranging skills became integral to the ever-expanding palette of the Beatles' sound.  The quartet was recorded on the 17th, Paul overdubbed one vocal line at the end of the first bridge, and the track was complete.

Martin, manager Brian Epstein and the band only briefly entertained the idea of releasing the song as a Paul McCartney solo number before deciding that it would still be credited as the Beatles.  They did, however, bury the song as the thirteenth track on side two of the British Help! album.  Capitol Records in the USA had other ideas, choosing to hold the song back for release as a single in September of 1965. 

Yesterday was performed live for the first time on August 1st on the television program Blackpool Night Out.  On Anthology 2, we can hear George introduce the song by saying, "...and so, for Paul McCartney of Liverpool, opportunity knocks."  Paul was joined either by the house orchestra or a pre-recorded tape.  In any case, it sounds like more than just a quartet.  The album had not yet been released, thus the audience is unfamiliar with the song, and doesn't exactly know how to respond. 

A similar thing happened a few weeks later, on August 14th, when the Beatles taped an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in New York.  This performance can be seen on the video collection 1+.  Once again, George handles the introduction, and the audience has no prior knowledge of the song.  A photo in the 1+ hard cover book shows three violinists off camera, Paul singing alone with his acoustic guitar, and George and John off in the shadows sitting on the side of the riser for Ringo's drum kit.  When this performance aired a month later, just the day before the American single was released, it convinced the powers that be at Capitol to push Yesterday as the A-side over Ringo's cover of Act Naturally (yes, there actually had been a question about that!).  The song soon rose to number one on the Billboard chart.

EMI's Parlophone label probably realized in retrospect that it had missed the boat by not releasing Yesterday as a single in the UK.  To somewhat make amends, the song became the title track of an EP in March of 1966.  In June of that year, Capitol put together a compilation album entitled "Yesterday"...and Today, a full year after the song had been recorded.  And, at the end of the year, Parlophone featured the song on the group's first greatest hits album A Collection of Beatles Oldies.

Unlike most of the group's quieter numbers, the Beatles chose to feature this song in concert.  During the British tour of December 1965, Paul accompanied himself on electric organ.  And the full band finally played Yesterday on their usual instruments for the world tour of 1966.

The first post-career release was on the Red Album in 1973.  In 1976, EMI re-released all twenty-two of the band's original UK singles, plus an additional single pictured above - Yesterday b/w I Should Have Known Better.  Yesterday was the opening track of the 1977 compilation album Love Songs.  It appeared on the US version of the album 20 Greatest Hits.  And, of course, it is on the 2000 worldwide smash album 1.

The most impressive legacy of Yesterday is that it almost instantly became one of the most covered songs of all time.  Yet, most singers find it impossible to resist adding some level of emotion in their performances.  For me, Paul's simple, unaffected delivery backed by his acoustic guitar and the string quartet remains unmatched.

Yes It Is

If you are not a die-hard fan of the Beatles, you might be scratching your head, wondering why you have never heard of the film Eight Arms to Hold You listed on the Capitol Records single pictured above.  That is because the film was eventually titled Help!, and Yes It Is was not a part of that film's soundtrack.  Instead, this terrific ballad merely served as the B-side to the progressive rocker Ticket to Ride, which was featured prominently in the movie.

However, Yes It Is was among the eleven songs recorded by the group during the last week of February in 1965 in consideration for the soundtrack.  Lennon wrote this number in the same style as the earlier B-side This Boy, though he always considered this song to be inferior to that great 1963 effort.  The boys spent five hours working on the song on February 16th after finishing up two tracks begun the previous day.

The basic track simply consisted of John on acoustic guitar and guide vocal, Paul on bass and Ringo on drums, though Anthology 2 reveals that George was already fiddling about with his tone pedal guitar, as it can briefly be heard at the top of take two.  We also hear that John used a quicker phrasing of the song's title at the end of each verse.  It required fourteen takes to arrive at the master before George actually got to overdub his beautifully subdued tone pedal (later popularly known as the wah wah pedal) guitar part. 

John, Paul and George then gathered around a single microphone to record their intricate three-part harmonies.  Even with producer George Martin assisting with the vocal arrangement, it took many attempts to get them right, yet I still hear the odd sour note a few times in the released version.  Overdubs continued with John double-tracking his lead vocal in the bridges, George adding more tone pedal guitar in places, and Paul - not Ringo - adding some accents on cymbals.  Supposedly there is a Hammond organ part buried in the mix, as well, but I am unable to pick it out.

The song was submitted to film director Richard Lester, but he did not select it for the soundtrack.  Thus, it was chosen for the B-side of the single which was released in April of 1965, well in advance of the film.  Manager Brian Epstein made sure that the Beatles promoted both sides of their singles around this time, but Yes It Is was too tricky for them to perform live, so they merely mimed to the record in television appearances on Thank Your Lucky Stars, Top of the Pops, and the Eamonn Andrews Show.

Capitol Records was not content to simply release the song as a B-side in the USA, so it also appeared on the compilation album Beatles VI in June of 1965.  After the group's career, Yes It Is first surfaced on the 1977 collection Love Songs.  It was featured on the British version of the album Rarities, and we finally got to hear the stereo mix, which had been languishing in the vaults for all of those years, when it appeared on Past Masters, Volume One in 1988.    

Yer Blues

It's a rather unusual and pretty obscure choice, I know, but this has always been one of my favorite Beatles' tracks, ever since it was first released in November of 1968.  Back then, no doubt, it was the pure teenage angst of being able to scream along with the lyrics "I'm lonely/Wanna die" that appealed to me.  That feeling expressed in the lyrics is what Lennon said he was experiencing when he composed the song in Rishikesh, India, in the spring of '68, despite the endless hours of meditation and the overall feel-good vibe of the camp.  Cynthia was there with him, but Yoko Ono was sending him letters, adding pressure to his already-strained relationship with his wife.

Thanks to the deluxe 50th anniversary edition of The Beatles (aka the "White Album"), there are now multiple ways to listen to Yer Blues.  First up is the Esher demo from May of '68.  John double-tracks his acoustic guitar and vocal with a little tambourine in the background.  There are minor variations from the finished lyrics we know, and John goes falsetto instead of the full out screaming on the master.

The group did not tackle the song again until well into the sessions for the double album on August 13th, 1968.  After recording a remake of Sexy Sadie earlier in the evening, all of their equipment was squeezed into a small room known as annex 2A - so small they could barely move about - after engineer Ken Scott had jokingly pointed it out to John at the previous day's session.  The boys got into a groove playing in such a confined space, running through fourteen takes of the basic track and getting progressively louder as the night went on.

Take five is also available on the 50th anniversary edition of the album.  John's off-mike guide vocal can be heard, once more singing some alternate lyrics in places.  A good chunk of this take turned out to be the master, with a portion of take six edited in the middle before take five returns and John and George take turns playing guitar solos.  The beginning of take five is then edited on again to serve as the fadeout.

On August 14th, John's lead vocal and Paul's occasional backing vocals were overdubbed, as well as an additional snare drum played by Ringo during the guitar solos.  It has always been reported that Ringo returned with John on August 20th to record the count-in at the top of the song, but we now know that it is John's voice from the beginning of take five that is heard on the master, so why the two of them were at Abbey Road on this night is unknown.

Yer Blues appears as the second track on side three of the "White Album," immediately after the rocker Birthday.  While it has never surfaced on any other post-career compilations of the Beatles, John felt strongly enough about the song to play it on two very different occasions.

The first was at the taping of the infamous Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus in December of 1968, only weeks after the song had been released.  The one-time-only supergroup the Dirty Mac is pictured above, consisting of John and Eric Clapton on guitars, Keith Richards on bass and Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience on drums.  They turn in a great performance of the number, sticking very much to the Beatles' arrangement, except for some sharper accents during the verses.  Clapton makes no attempt to mimic the stinging guitar solo of his good friend George, opting instead to play more in his own, blues-inspired style.  The group deftly goes back to the top of the song as on the recording for one more verse before finishing.  Impressive, and highly recommended. 

John returned to the song one last time in September of 1969.  He hastily assembled an actual lineup of his conceptual group known as the Plastic Ono Band for an appearance at the Toronto Rock and Roll Festival.  Alan White (later of the group Yes) was on drums, old Hamburg buddy Klaus Voorman played bass and Clapton returned on guitar.  They mostly played oldies such as Blue Suede Shoes and Dizzy Miss Lizzy but, since Clapton was familiar with Yer Blues, it made sense to add it to the brief set list.  While the performance is rough around the edges overall, the band turns in a respectable version of the "White Album" number.  The entire set can be heard on the album Live Peace in Toronto 1969.

Unfortunately, though he was nervous to the point of vomiting before going out on stage, it was partly this concert that convinced John to announce to Paul, George, Ringo and manager Allen Klein that he was leaving the Beatles only a few days later.      

Yellow Submarine

When Paul McCartney got the initial idea for this song in early 1966, he immediately knew that it would serve as an excellent vehicle for Ringo.  Lennon agreed and helped him to finish it off.  Paul even swung by Donovan Leitch's apartment with the new tune, where the singer-songwriter contributed the line "Sky of blue, sea of green."

The Beatles met at Abbey Road Studios on May 26th, 1966 to begin work on the track.  Producer George Martin was not present, as he was feeling ill, although his soon-to-be wife Judy took his place in the control room.  According to engineer Geoff Emerick, her presence did not deter the boys from goofing about more than usual, but they still managed to get down to business eventually.  They recorded four takes with John on acoustic guitar, Paul on bass, Ringo on drums and George simply banging away on a tambourine.  They then overdubbed Ringo's lead vocal and the others' backing vocals onto take four.

Almost a full week passed before sessions resumed on June 1st.  Even with Martin back at the helm, this session was much looser than normal, thanks in large part to the playful nature of the song.  The afternoon was entirely devoted to a spoken word introduction from Ringo, inspired by an actual event concerning a charity walk from one end of England to the other.  John, Paul and George also chimed in, as Emerick revived the old radio sound effect of sliding coal in a cardboard box to simulate marching feet.

After a dinner break, the session resumed with the participation of Pattie Harrison, Marianne Faithfull, Mick Jagger and Brian Jones to help create a party atmosphere and add sound effects to the track.  A few Abbey Road staff members were also recruited to swirl chains around in a metal tub of water to simulate the sound of waves.  And even Martin and Emerick joined in when assistant Mal Evans strapped on a big bass drum and marched around the studio as everyone sang the final chorus over and over again.

Paul and John shouted off the cuff nautical phrases throughout, and John's enthusiasm spilled over to such an extent that he added what he later referred to as his "blunderbuss" bit, repeating Ringo's lines in the final verse.

In The Beatles: Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn states that session musicians were brought in at this session to play the brief brass band section in the song, but Emerick, in his book Here, There and Everywhere, says that this was achieved in much the same way as was done a year later for the calliope piece at the end of Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite, with an old brass band tape cut into pieces and put back together at random. 

Yellow Submarine was considered to be an album track, but manager Brian Epstein wanted it to be released as a single, noting that other bands in recent years had taken to quickly recording new songs by the Beatles and getting hit singles out of them.  And so it was that this song was released in August of 1966 on a double A-sided single along with Eleanor Rigby on the same day as the album Revolver, even though both songs also appeared on the album.  This did not hurt sales in the UK, with the single hitting number one.  In the US, however, Yellow Submarine peaked at number two on the Billboard chart.

For the first time during their career, the Beatles did not have an album ready for the holiday season at the end of 1966, so the Parlophone label in the UK issued A Collection of Beatles Oldies in December.  Both sides of the August single were duly included.  And, in short order, somebody came up with the idea of an animated feature film based on the song Yellow Submarine.  The film premiered in the summer of 1968, but the soundtrack album did not appear until January of 1969, with the song naturally leading off side one as the title track.

  

The first post career collection from 1973, the Red Album, closes with Yellow Submarine.  The song also appears on Reel Music, the UK version of 20 Greatest Hits, the 1999 Yellow Submarine Songtrack, and the 2000 collection 1.  For the video compilation 1+, a montage of images from the original film was assembled in 2015.  A great alternate take of the song appears on the EP Real Love, which was released as part of the Anthology series in 1996.  This includes the spoken introduction from Ringo, as well as many additional sound effects not used on the official track.

The song is as synonymous with Ringo as his other signature tune With a Little Help from My Friends.  Proof of this could be heard at The Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 when George introduced each member of the band.  At the mention of Ringo's name, the Madison Square Garden crowd cheered wildly as someone in the band felt inspired to briefly play the chorus of Yellow Submarine.

Words of Love

The Beatles were influenced by many of the early giants of rock and roll - Elvis, of course, plus Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and the Everly Brothers - but perhaps none of them was more influential than Buddy Holly and the Crickets.  John and Paul were extremely impressed by the fact that Buddy wrote his own material, which was not the norm at that time, and this encouraged them to try their hand at songwriting.  When the Quarry Men pooled their money to make their very first recording in 1958, they chose Holly's initial hit song That'll Be the Day, as can be heard on Anthology 1.  And, when his group was looking for a new name, John came up with one similar to the name of Holly's backing group because he liked that Crickets had a double meaning (even though the American group probably never gave a thought to the British game of cricket).  Still, he was inspired to combine another insect with beat music and give birth to the name the Beatles. 

When it came time for producer George Martin and the Beatles to select cover songs for their first few albums, Holly somehow never made the cut.  Finally, on October 18th, 1964, while working on their fourth album Beatles for Sale, they chose to record a song that had been a staple of their live act from 1958 to 1962 - Words of Love.  Being very familiar with the piece, they nailed it on the second take.  They then double-tracked the vocals and George's distinctive twanging guitar part, as Ringo added some more percussion by banging on what is reported to be a packing case, though this merely sounds like handclaps.

On the original recording from 1957, Holly double-tracked his vocals, harmonizing with himself, which was a first for any pop record.  John and Paul imitate his breathy vocal delivery, with John singing very low in his register.  Engineer Geoff Emerick worked on this session, and he claims that George also sang on the track, with the three Beatles gathered around a single microphone.

As stated above, Words of Love was recorded for the December 1964 British album Beatles for Sale, appearing as the second track on side two.  American fans had to wait until June of 1965 before the song was released on the album Beatles VI, as the final track on side one.  The song also appeared on the 1977 post-career compilation album Love Songs, where it had the distinction of being the only cover song.

They only played Words of Love on the radio on one occasion, recording it on July 16th, 1963, for the tenth edition of their program Pop Go the Beatles.  This can be heard on the collection On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2.  To promote the release of this collection in 2013, a video of Words of Love was made, featuring some animation along with a lot of footage of the group from the early days of their career.  This can be seen on the video collection 1+.

The Word

All You Need Is Love was the perfect anthem for the Summer of Love when the Beatles sang it on the first-ever global satellite broadcast Our World in 1967.  However, diehard fans of the group knew even then that the theme of universal love was not a new one for the Fab Four.  The boys had already covered the same ground about a year and a half earlier on the album Rubber Soul with the deep cut The Word.

As to why Lennon and McCartney were attracted to that idea in late 1965, one of the only explanations they came up with in later interviews was that they were very much into marijuana at the time.  Lennon was the primary writer of the track, and, after McCartney helped him finish it up, the two reportedly lit up a joint as Paul wrote out the lyric sheet and adorned it with watercolors.

The group recorded The Word on November 10th, 1965, at the penultimate session for Rubber Soul.  As was often the case, they must have rehearsed a good deal before rolling the tapes, because it only required three takes to achieve the master.  This master features Paul on piano, Ringo on drums, and John and George playing their guitars.  It is the many overdubs, however, that truly distinguish the track.

First up was John's lead vocal, which he then double-tracked.  Then came the three-part harmonies from John, Paul and George, which grow in complexity as the song progresses.  These were also double-tracked, with Paul adding yet a third layer to his vocal contribution.  Ringo was also busy overdubbing two separate parts on maracas.

Producer George Martin was kept busy, as well, adding a chord on harmonium that he builds upon impressively for both the instrumental break and the fadeout of the song.  Rhythmically, my favorite part is Paul's overdubbed bass line.  His playing during the refrains creates what is probably the only time that a track by the Beatles can be described as funky.

There are many different mixes available for The Word.  On the mono mix, John's lead vocal is single-tracked.  The first stereo mix was sent to Capitol Records in America, but George Martin made a new stereo mix for the British release.  When Rubber Soul was issued on CD for the first time in the 1980's, Martin saw fit to make a new stereo mix of the entire album.  Whether you are hearing the lead vocals, the backing vocals, or the maracas on one side or both sides all depends on which version of the stereo mix you are listening to.

The Word is only available on the album Rubber Soul, late on side one between Harrison's Think For Yourself and McCartney's Michelle.  It is a shame that it has never appeared on any compilations over the years, because it is truly a terrific song (in my mind, even better than All You Need Is Love), and deserves to be heard on a wider basis.