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.