John – lead
vocals, rhythm guitar
Paul – backing vocals, bass, piano
George – backing vocals, lead guitar
Ringo – drums, bongos
Recorded three days later, John’s reply to Paul’s confident ‘Another Girl’ is the deriding, triumphant ‘You’re Going To Lose That Girl’. The two songs provide interesting counterpoints and are excellently sequenced on the album (although in the film, this is the first song to appear after the title track, with ‘Another Girl’ appearing towards the end of the film).
The song contrasts sharply with the earlier ‘She Loves You’ – again there is third party advice about a love affair, but what a difference in sentiment. Both give advice in the best interests of the parties, but the magnanimous spirit of the earlier song is missing; the attitude is dark and threatening here. Not that he’s going out and out to make his move and steal the girl. John is honourably giving him one last chance. The difference is highlighted by the affirmations – the “yeah, yeah, yeah” of ‘She Loves You’ has become a pointed “yes, yes”, and “she loves you” itself become more dangerous, more defiant – “you’re gonna lose that girl”.
John’s aggressive first line makes a stark onslaught, as he drives his passionate point home. Let there be no doubt, he means business, as his backing cronies emphasise. The vocal arrangement reverses that of ‘Help!’, with the backing vocalists overlapping the lead vocal more conventionally afterwards, rather than preceding it, particularly in the chorus. Rather than coaxing lines out of John, the backing acts as his heavies, bolstering his affirmations, egging him on. Only in the bridge do the backing vocals, reminiscent of the slew of girl group covers from the group’s earlier albums, for once offer their own opinion – “watch what you do”. Not inventive, but enough to make their point. They finally combine with the lead for “what else can I do”. There is implicit violence that cannot be ignored, although on the face of it, the song seems to be an admonishment for him spending all his time with the boys, and not taking her out on the town. John is not afraid to use expressions like “treat her kind” (not just “treat her right”). The last bridge-to-verse transition omits the guitar break, which brings home his impatience to rescue the girl.
The harmonic progression concerned with the bridge is interesting. The bridge shifts the key from E to G (the same bIII move that Paul executed in ‘Another Girl’), and this change happens on the last bar (the final “lose”), when, by holding the falsetto A and changing a C# to a D natural in the harmony vocals, the previous F#m–B7 (ii–V7) switch becomes F#m–D (ii–bVII), and we motor into the G–C (I–V) sequence of the bridge.
This chord of D provides a strong link between the keys, being a third away from F#m and a fifth away from the tonic of the new key of G. On leaving the bridge a similar relationship (bVII – this time an F) with the old key heralds the return of the key of the verse (E) by a slide down of a simple tone. These shifts are interesting in that they are akin to the progressions in Paul’s ‘Another Girl’, showing the degree of influence the two had on each other, and the cross-fertilisation of ideas at this stage in their partnership. Unfortunately for Paul, ‘You’re Going To Lose That Girl’ is the superior composition, using the techniques in a more interesting way.
The song was the last of the film’s songs to be recorded before the group flew off to the Bahamas on 22 February, and mixes were made for mono and stereo on 20 and 23 February. However, apparently second thoughts were to be had about the recording and overdubs were added on 30 March, once filming was complete. The production acetate, used for filming the sequence, has no discernible piano or bongos, and a different, rather weaker guitar solo backed by blocked chords on the electric piano. George Martin’s notes on the session confirm this, listing bass, drums and John’s Gretsch guitar on track 1, solo guitar and electric piano on track 2 and John, George and Paul’s vocals on track 3. Track 2 was clearly wiped with the addition of the Steinway piano, bongos and new solo guitar. Strangely, Mark Lewisohn’s books on the recording sessions state that the (unspecified) overdubs recorded on 30 March were not used.
These overdubs improve the song immensely, even though the recording is nicely flawed. The vocals, for all their immediacy, are a little rough, and Ringo’s bongo performance is a little ragged (“I’m not a percussionist …”). George’s reworked guitar solo still comes across as a little restrained, the bent notes sounding like hard work. (This could have been a simple matter of battling with heavy gauge strings. George remembered that “there weren’t any light gauges strings around. We always had heavy gauge and by take 20 it was pretty hard on the fingers.” His Fender Stratocaster would have exhibited this problem, although he would soon learn that the likes of Duane Eddy would string their guitars by shifting each string across one place, so that each would use what should be the next string up and so be one string lighter.)
But taken together, in the context of the song, these imperfections work well.
Although ‘You’re Going To Lose That Girl’ was the last released song to be recorded before filming started, one more song was attempted the following day, which didn’t make the cut – neither for the film nor any Beatles release. Following on from the unreleased ‘If You’ve Got Trouble’ taped three days earlier, this song, Paul’s ‘That Means A Lot’, is a more interesting prospect, although very much 1963 in style. The group spent five hours working on the track on 20 February, but to no avail. The result of this day’s work was eventually released on Anthology 2.
Not downhearted, the group returned to the song for their first session after returning from filming in the Bahamas and Austria. But a drastic reworking of the song brought them no nearer a satisfactory result, and they gave up – and in fact completed the session by recording overdubs to ‘You’re Going To Lose That Girl’. It’s a shame they couldn’t find a good arrangement for ‘That Means A Lot’, as it is interesting, with a fine lyric and some great moments of harmonic tension, so typical of Paul’s compositional skills. However, Paul later sounded less than enthusiastic – “There were a few songs that we were just not as keen on, or we didn’t think they were quite finished. This was one of them!” In the end, the song was given to PJ Proby, who scraped into the top 30 with it in December 1965. As John told the NME at the time, “we made a hash of it, so we thought we’d better give it to someone who could do it well”.
As for ‘You’re Going To Lose That Girl’, Capitol, probably unintentionally, released it in America as ‘You’re Gonna Lose That Girl’. The song is also listed as a “gonna” on the Capitol Albums Volume 2 set, issued in 2006, so presumably the error has some kind of official status in the Capitol empire.
Overshadowed by ‘Yesterday’, ‘Ticket To Ride’ and the title song, ‘You’re Going To Lose That Girl’ is probably the album’s most underrated track.