You've Got to Hide Your Love Away

Bob Dylan was already a huge influence by early 1965 on many other singers and songwriters, and the Beatles were definitely among them.  George Harrison wound up becoming close friends with Dylan over the years, spending time with him and the Band in late '68, coaxing him to appear at the Concert for Bangladesh in '71, and recording two albums with him as members of the Traveling Wilburys.  On the other hand, John Lennon's relationship with Dylan was somewhat uneasy, like two combatants with mutual respect who are nonetheless determined to both impress and outdo each other. 

In late '64, Lennon had written I'm a Loser for the album Beatles for Sale, singing a set of self-reflective lyrics and altering his style of harmonica playing to sound an awful lot like Dylan.  Now, in February of '65, during sessions for the soundtrack of the film Help!, Lennon brought in a composition with even more of a Dylanesque feel to it - You've Got to Hide Your Love Away. 

The Beatles recorded the song on February 18th, but Lennon must have met with producer George Martin earlier than that, resulting in the hiring of musician Johnnie Scott for the date of the session.  Lennon did not want to play harmonica on the track this time, desiring a different sound.  Scott played flute instead, providing more of a lilting feeling to the end of the song.

Before Scott could play his tenor and alto flute overdubs, however, the Beatles ran through nine takes of the basic track (though only two of them were complete), featuring John and George on acoustic guitars, Paul on bass, and Ringo playing gently on his snare drum with brushes.  Anthology 2 allows us to hear take five - the only other complete take - after the false start of take one and some amusing banter from John before take two.  Onto take nine, the master, Ringo added tambourine, Paul played maracas, and George played an additional acoustic guitar part.  John deliberately chose not to double track his lead vocal, knowing he had captured the proper mood in a single go. 

Director Richard Lester had presented two ballads - Lennon's If I Fell and McCartney's And I Love Her - imaginatively in A Hard Day's Night.  For Help!, he set You've Got to Hide Your Love Away in the group's fictional shared flat.  John sings the song straight while Paul winks at the priestess Ahme, which George eyes jealously in between attempts to impress her while strumming his guitar.  At the end of the number, the live-in gardener, who had been seen earlier trimming a patch of grass in a corner of the flat with some joke chattering teeth, produces a flute and mimes Johnnie Scott's part.

The song appears on both the US and UK versions of the album Help!  It became prominent enough to be chosen as one of the few album cuts on the Red Album in 1973.  It was also featured on the 1977 collection Love Songs and the 1982 compilation Reel Music.  

Eddie Vedder recorded a great cover version of the song for the soundtrack of the film I Am Sam.  Vedder chose to play harmonica on the track, confirming for me, at least, that Lennon should not have shied away from sounding too much like Dylan on the original. 

This brings to a close my alphabetical look at the song catalog of the Beatles, which has surprisingly taken much longer that I anticipated.  In the dozen years since I began this blog, I have purchased a few more collections which have been released, and which will now become the subjects of my next series of entries.  Please stay tuned, if you are so inclined.