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.