George – lead
vocals, rhythm guitar, possibly tambourine
John – harmony vocals, Vox electric organ
Paul – harmony vocals, bass, fuzz bass
Ringo – drums, maracas
The recording and mixing sessions for ‘Think For Yourself’ bore witness for the first time to something that would soon become characteristic of nearly all of George’s compositions – the phenomenon of the ever-changing title. At this early stage, George merely could not decide which line from the song to use. When the group recorded the song, he called it ‘Won’t Be There With You’. By the time it was mixed the following day, the title had become ‘Think For Yourself’. This paved the way for later transformations – ‘Granny Smith’ became ‘Love You To’, ‘Laxton’s Superb’ became ‘I Don’t Know’ and then ‘I Want To Tell You’, ‘Untitled’ became ‘Within You Without You’, ‘Too Much’ became ‘It’s All Too Much’, ‘Not Known’ became ‘Only A Northern Song’ … and so on.
The lyrics give another side to the sentiment of ‘You Won’t See Me’: Frankly, you can do what you want, because I’m not going to be there anyway. What’s more, the tone of this unwelcome message is peculiarly acerbic. On top of the accusation of lies and causing misery, “your mind’s opaque” is not exactly flattering. In the wake of this bitterness and forced indifference, George eventually offers crumbs of advice – try to think a little more because things aren’t so bad. Although the song’s attacks sound personal, George later claimed he could not remember the object of his ire – “probably the Government”. It’s worth remembering that this is only George’s fifth published song. Although he finds himself in company that sets the composing bar unnaturally high, he is starting to rise to the challenge.
The harmonic progressions George uses are typically novel, particularly in the shape of the chorus. The verse revolves around an unconventional Am–D–Bb–C–G7 (ii–V–bIII–IV–I7). This leads to C7–G7 (IV7–I7) of the chorus, followed by a biting slide to Eb/Bb–D7 (bVI/bIII–V7).
A characteristic sound of the track is the distorted rhythm support, which is Paul playing a bass that has been treated with a fuzz box. The distorted bass overdub virtually mirrors the bass line that Paul recorded first time around. The fuzz box was something that the technicians at Abbey Road knocked up for use with guitars, although Paul could equally be using an early Vox Tone Bender unit, which EMI acquired at around this time. The fuzz box deliberately overloaded its input to give distortion that was controllable. The wonderfully dirty sound works particularly well in the lower register. Above this constant rhythmic weaving, the vocals launch their direct, personal assault, the stereo mix having lead and harmony voices separately double-tracked in opposite channels. This configuration was unusual for Beatles songs at this time, but George Martin elected to repeat it for his 1987 CD mix. The combination of continuous maracas, doubled up for the chorus, and three quaver hits per bar on the tambourine, reduced to hitting the off-beat in the chorus, also adds a simple and yet subtle texture to the song.
‘Won’t Be There With You’ was recorded in a single take (with fuzz bass, tambourine, maracas and electric piano overdubs), but after a period of rehearsal. In fact, it was recorded at the same time as the Beatles were due to record their annual Christmas flexidisc for members of the official Fan Club. Partly for this reason, George Martin taped the rehearsal period, just in case anything memorable and witty came up which could be used for the Christmas disc. Apparently nothing did, although, bizarrely, a few seconds of George, Paul and John practising their vocal harmonies on the line “you’ve got time to rectify all the things” wound up in the Yellow Submarine film – a snatch of music is needed to revive the Lord Mayor who had been pummelled senseless by a heap of apples, and this seems to do the trick. As a result of the snippet, George’s song was included on the 1999 Yellow Submarine Songtrack.
The harmonising contains a moment that is subtle yet quite magical in its way. It evinces the fact that Paul takes the highest of the three-part harmony lines, because, on “you’ve got time to rectify all the things” he delivers a characteristic overreaching of the harmony line on the word “time”, as he did so memorably on the final chorus of ‘It Won’t Be Long’.
It’s easily missed, but oh so satisfying once recognised.
In August 2000, Liverpool Sound Collage was released, an ambient album produced by Paul McCartney consisting of five tracks, credited to one or other of Paul, the Welsh group Super Furry Animals and the record producer Youth (aka Martin Glover). Paul and Youth had previously worked together on the Fireman projects. All the Liverpool Sound Collage tracks feature a series of samples of studio chat by the Beatles, most of which came from the tape made at the ‘Think For Yourself’ session.