Track #7: “She Said She Said” Revolver (1966)

Welcome to Track Chatter, where we choose a different song to discuss in depth. This entry is part of an ongoing series in which we reconsider songs by The Beatles. Can anything new be said about this band or its music? Have a look below and let us know what you think.

Aaron: Lucky number 7. Revolver, released in the UK in August of 1966, is The Beatles’ seventh album. It is also the final album to be released in different versions for the UK and US markets – in this case, the difference being that “And Your Bird Can Sing,” “Doctor Robert,” and “I’m Only Sleeping,” which appeared on Revolver in the UK, had already been released in the US as tracks on Yesterday and Today earlier that summer. No additional tracks were added to the US version of Revolver, so it was simply three tracks shorter than the UK version.

Before moving on to a discussion of the album and this entry’s track, I think it’s worth pointing out that The Beatles’ first album, Please Please Me, had been released in March of 1963. Thus, in just over three years, the band released seven albums – seven albums that include, whatever one’s opinion of the band or its music, some of the most memorable and well-known popular music ever recorded: a fairly amazing feat by any standard. It’s difficult to imagine any pop artist today working at such a fever pitch.

Revolver, much like its predecessor, has become one of the albums that it’s safe for almost anybody to like – fan and non-fan alike. The songwriting and musical arrangements show a noticeable amount of maturity over their earlier, “bubble gum” phase. At the same time, their studio experimentation has not yet progressed to the point of what some see as the indulgence of later efforts. In short, both Rubber Soul and Revolver see a band that has found a way to balance all its many talents in the service of forward-thinking, immaculately produced, driving pop classics. Revolver includes such tracks as “Eleanor Rigby,” one of their strongest lyrical expressions, the infectious, joyous pop of “And Your Bird Can Sing,” the silliness of “Yellow Submarine” (which, silliness aside, is one of the catchiest pop songs ever written – just try to get it out of your head now . . . “we all live in a . . .”), and the psychedelic experimentation of “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

The track we’ll be discussing for this entry is “She Said She Said,” a Lennon/McCartney number that is, in effect, so much a Lennon number that it is one of the very few Beatles’ tracks on which McCartney makes no appearance at all – in addition to his lead guitar duties, George Harrison plays bass. It’s a song that deftly represents much of what makes Revolver such a strong album – excellent musicianship (anybody who can still say Ringo’s not a good drummer after listening to “She Said She Said” just isn’t listening), expressionistic lyrical experimentation, gorgeous production sheen, and hints of psychedelia. It’s a track on which, as Ian MacDonald argues, Lennon is at the summit of his creativity.



I thought it might be interesting to kick off the discussion by returning to some questions we raised early in the series about relevance and listenability. What do you think, Lew, could “She Said She Said” find a place in the contemporary pop landscape? Is there any pop or rock today that owes it a debt?

Lew: I think “She Said She Said” would be regarded as a brilliant pop song if it were released today. In our discussion of “You Won’t See Me,” we talked about the “Beatles sound” that gets used to describe certain songs, and I think that, in some respects, “She Said She Said” is an even better example. Although there are definitely some exceptions, a good number of songs that are copping a Beatlesque sound often include some allusion to psychedelia. Now, needless to say, psychedelic music doesn't start and end with The Beatles (although the perception that it does is probably a source of irritation for non-fans) – a quick overview of the Nuggets collection gives ample evidence of that. Nevertheless, “She Said She Said” is a great example of a song that is able to successfully flirt with elements of psychedelia (as you noted) without being subsumed by it. I actually prefer “expressionist” or “surrealist” as descriptors, but that's beside the point. The subject matter is obscure, even arguably abstract – although it’s relating a specific conversation, it also seems to be hinting at some kind of existential crisis brought on by the experience. I would say that even hinting at something abstract/theoretical was fairly uncommon in rock music at the time that Revolver was released. So, to answer your question about whether or not there is pop or rock in the current landscape that owes a song like “She Said She Said” a debt, I would answer yes with no hesitation. Bands like XTC (and their alter ego The Dukes of Stratosphear) owed a substantial debt to the Beatles, and there are a number of one-off songs in which bands invoke the general sound that's happening on “She Said She Said” to some extent (Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” Oasis’s “Champagne Supernova,” The Raconteurs’ “Intimate Secretary” and so on) but in a larger sense, I think that you can make an argument that “She Said She Said” is an early, and highly influential example of abstraction in rock music, and as such, influential in ways that are less immediate than the obvious power pop homages. How do you feel about that idea?

Aaron: I’m ready to go along with your terminology (“expressionist,” “abstract”) without totally abandoning the “pyschedelia” term, if only because it’s useful and it does ground the group in the era (hopefully without burying them there). I’ll come back to that in just a minute. First, I thought it might be worth dwelling on the song’s sound for just a moment longer. Part of what makes the track such a fine example of its era’s experimentation, I think, is its drone. “She Said She Said” isn’t the first song – Beatles or otherwise – to include such a drone (which seems to have been influenced by their obvious appreciation of Indian music). I think, for The Beatles, it first crops up in “Ticket To Ride” from Help!. In both songs, the drone comes in large part from the bass. However, as we’ve pointed out, Paul doesn’t play bass on “She Said She Said” – it’s George. And I think that’s important because, as we discussed with “You Won’t See Me,” by this stage in the band’s career, Paul’s bass playing was undergoing some noticeable changes in terms of the highly melodic, sometimes walking bass lines he was employing. He was good enough in the studio (great, actually) that had he played on “She Said She Said,” he likely would have modified his style enough to serve the song. But I wonder how much his presence might have affected the result, perhaps altering that drone to a certain extent.

Even with the drone, I agree with you that “psychedelia” as a term needs refining – it’s too broad and covers too many different media to have any precise meaning on its own. And as I said, I particularly like your terms “expressionist” and “abstract” – particularly in the way they describe the lyrical content on this song. I think most people probably know about the song’s genesis – the acid trip in LA, Peter Fonda bumming everybody out with his talk of having once died as a child, and so on – but its precisely Lennon’s ability to make that experience abstract by avoiding any type of exposition. It might seem – on its face – that a song composed almost entirely of “dialogue” would be very concrete. But by making the lyrics free of setting, scene, even, really, character, Lennon upends a lot of the songwriting trends that had been emerging in pop over the previous years. So the song does become expressive of its mood or feeling, rather than a story about an event or a girl. I think it’s the combination of that expressionistic approach to lyrics combined with the music – the drone, but also the swirling lead guitar parts (which sound like sitars), Ringo’s incredible, sort of rolling drums which both reinforce the lead guitars and also provide a kind of counterpoint to them, and the time signature change for the bridge – which add up to a great psychedelic pop song.

Lew: I think your discussion of the drone quality in “She Said She Said” is right on the money. I’m curious about what might have happened if Paul had played bass on this song, too. Although Paul is one of my favorite bass players, I don’t think he would have necessarily embraced that droning quality in the same way that George did – especially from a rhythmic perspective. Having said that, I think that pretty much everything about the song’s performance and recording contributes to that feeling. The lead guitar parts are perfect, from the actual playing (which is pretty drone-y in spots) to the sound of the guitar. It’s a great use of the overdriven sound that was available to them at the time. I also want to mention Ringo’s playing – it’s a great example of a Ringo moment that sounds quite different from the straighter, more restrained playing that I think people expect from him. Again, I think that’s more of a case of perception than reality – we’ve talked about a few of Ringo’s parts, and it’s clear that they’re rarely boring. Here, as in “Every Little Thing,” Ringo is taking a very compositional approach to his drum part, while largely ignoring the option to play a “rock” beat - the fills that he builds into his part set up the transitions really well, and also seem to get at the rhythmic core of the sections - finding a sort of “clave,” I guess - in ways that a more regular beat would never do. The time signature change at the bridge is pretty minor - from a straight 4/4 to a triplet feel, but it changes the feel enough to make the verse feel fresh again when it comes back around.

I also really like what you said about the abstraction and lack of exposition in the lyrics. I’d never really thought of it that way, but it almost gives me a fresh appreciation for the song. I think the Peter Fonda story sometimes overshadows the song itself, which is really a disservice to the song and the listener. In some respects, it might be better if they’d never told anyone where it came from.

Aaron: Ha! I think even if The Beatles had never mentioned the story, it would have got out. As much as I admire Peter Fonda, he’s never been shy about self-aggrandizement and myth building. I think he knows how annoying he was that day, but he still gets so much joy out of having inspired a Beatles’ song that he’ll never tire of talking about it to anybody who will listen.

In any case, about Paul’s bass playing – it’s hard to say what he would have done with this track. I don’t know exactly why he wasn’t around; all I can find is reference to a studio tiff and his storming out. What the tiff had to do with, I’ve no clue. However, a few things are worth keeping in mind, one of which is that by this point the band was in the midst of a period of Paul really taking over in terms a lot of creative direction decisions. Because John was in the early days of a two-year acid bender that would leave him somewhat tapped for long-term energy, it was really Paul (and George Martin) who was responsible for a lot of the overarching creative decision making from Revolver through Magical Mystery Tour. So I have a feeling that had he wanted to push for a more bouncy bass part, he would have got his way. Having said that, however, it’s also worth noting that Paul’s playing on the verses of “Ticket To Ride,” which is much more drone-y than what George brings to “She Said She Said,” is a major element in that song as a key early departure for the band. So who knows what he might have brought to “She Said . . .” had he been the one to perform on it.

When it comes to Ringo’s drumming, what more can I say (besides, nice call on the modified clave – had never thought to put it that way). The more I listen to these and other tracks for this project, the more I find it confusing – unfathomable, even – that he’s got a reputation for being a mediocre or even bad (or, worst of all, boring!) drummer. His ability to play straight 4/4 (which is almost never completely straight, the way he accents the hi-hat, or swings the beat) and then switch almost seamlessly to what you call a “more compositional approach” is not only impressive, on some tracks – including “She Said She Said” – it’s damned exhilarating! And not only is he a very good drummer, I’m not even sure if it would be a stretch to argue that Ringo’s drumming is as distinctive and vital an element to the band’s sound and development as any other single aspect apart, perhaps, from the vocals.

Lew: “Ticket to Ride” is definitely a weird one. If I didn’t know better, I would suspect that Paul didn’t play bass on it at all. It doesn’t really have any of his usual flair for bridging between chords, mirroring the vocal melody, etc. That said, I think that one of the things that allows for a “dronier” bass part in “Ticket to Ride” is that there’s only one chord happening for the almost the entire verse. “She Said She Said” doesn’t offer that same kind of space, so the drone feel is definitely more of an overall effect.

As to what degree of importance Ringo’s playing has to the sound of The Beatles, I’d agree that it’s huge and vastly understated by most people. At the risk of stating the obvious, I think it’s the case in most bands that while people tend to focus on the vocalist or guitar player, the drummer is really the engine that drives the core of the band’s sound. If that’s not the case, you probably have a bad drummer. That perspective isn’t often applied to The Beatles – I’m not sure if that has to do with Ringo’s public persona or maybe the lack of clarity to hear what he’s really doing on some of the recordings - although it’s as true for them as any other band. If you played “She Said She Said” through with a straight 4/4 beat (which you could even maintain through the 12/8 section if you wanted), the song would have a completely different sound.

Aaron: Just a little factoid before we go: not only does Paul play bass on “Ticket To Ride,” he also plays lead guitar, just as George plays both on “She Said She Said” (I think it’s one of the first songs on which Paul played lead).

With that, I think we’ll leave off and see what are readers have to say. What do you think . . . could you imagine hearing “She Said She Said” on the radio today? Where would it slot in the with the Gagas and the Kanyes and the Death Cabs and the Coldplays? And, as usual, we would love to hear any thoughts you might have on this track or any of the other topics we’ve brought up.

Coming Next: Paul gets an idea in his head on THE BEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME!!!

Track #6: “You Won't See Me” Rubber Soul (1965)

Welcome to Track Chatter, where we choose a different song to discuss in depth. This entry is part of an ongoing series in which we reconsider songs by The Beatles. Can anything new be said about this band or its music? Have a look below and let us know what you think.

Lew: The Beatles’ sixth album, Rubber Soul, is a standout, even among a body of work as strong as that of the Beatles. Released in December of 1965, the album is one of the most striking examples of the progression that The Beatles made between Please Please Me, and their later, more experimental work. If Beatles For Sale represented the beginning of The Beatles’ move away from straightforward pop, Rubber Soul can be seen as a full realization of that move. While The Beatles have yet to move into the full-scale psychedelia of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s, they have certainly abandoned overt reference to many of the more traditional pop influences to which they were indebted early on, both compositionally and sonically. Among other notable innovations, Rubber Soul is generally thought to contain the first instance of a rock band incorporating sitar into an arrangement (on “Norwegian Wood”).

While the notion of selecting “lesser known” tracks becomes increasingly problematic on albums as well-loved as Rubber Soul, we’ve decided to adhere to it as closely as possible. We’ll be talking about the track “You Won’t See Me,” which is credited to Lennon/McCartney, but generally acknowledged to be a Paul song. At the time that Rubber Soul was released, “You Won’t See Me” was the longest track that The Beatles had recorded, clocking in at the epic length of 3:22!



Aaron, I’m curious about how you hear this song, in terms of its place in The Beatles body of work. Do you think this song would have sounded out of place on an earlier album?

Aaron: I guess Rubber Soul brings us to a place of interesting confluence in The Beatles’ career – they’re getting tired of touring (I think they’ve got one big tour left in them), their compositional strategies are developing (as you mention), and studio conditions are improving. Furthermore, their access to space at Abbey Road studios has become a rock band’s dream – it was around this time that the band were given free, unlimited access to the studio. Rubber Soul was still something of a rushed project, as they only had about three months to write and record it in time for a Christmas push, but it was their first album recorded as an album, over one block of sessions, and not as a song here or there between tours and other appearances.

“You Won’t See Me” has never been one of my favorite Beatles’ tunes, but there’s no question it’s easily recognizable as “different” from their earlier output. The production alone marks it as a departure – the mix is so nice and clean, with each separate part both discernable and yet well-integrated in the overall mix (you can hear the bass drum!). The double-tracked vocals, the high-hat fills – the sound of all this marks it as what I’ve often thought of as a sort of second-wave of rock recording. The older Beatles stuff sort of comes at the tale end of the first wave – two-track and primitive four-track recording, basic arrangements, a narrow range of instrumentation, etc. I don’t at all mean to say the sound of early rock was bad, only different. By the mid-sixties, however, all that was changing. I think we’ve done a pretty good job throughout this series of tracing The Beatles’ role at the forefront of that innovation, and “You Won’t See Me” is a fine example – I guess that’s what I mean by a confluence: it wasn’t only the band that was going through a metamorphosis by this point, but both the concept of what a pop song could be and the methods by which it was produced. Looking back on this response, I realize I’ve taken the long way around of avoiding talking about the song itself – so I’ll throw it back to you for that, Lew. What about “You Won’t See Me” appeals to you?

Lew: I guess there are a few ways that I could answer that question, but the thing that I think is probably most significant about the song is that it, along with some other songs on Rubber Soul, seems to be an early example of what I think people mean when they say that something sounds “Beatlesque.” The chord progression in "You Won't See Me" is much simpler than what they had been commonly using in their earlier material, and the song in general seems to contain fewer allusions to the rock music that preceded it (much less jazz). To go back to some of the things that we were talking about in our early discussions, "You Won't See Me" seems like less of an amalgamation of earlier styles that they're recontextualizing. In some ways, that makes it debatably more deliberate sounding.

At the same time, they're able to do more with vocal arrangements by this point than they had previously, and the backup part at the end of the bridge ("no I wouldn't, no I wouldn't") is a great example of the more "psychedelic" direction that they'd be headed in. The backing vocal part isn't clearly defined at first listen, and its effect is to create a wash of sound – momentary chaos, one might say – that then resolves back into a statement of the verse melody. It's very effective in that respect.

Aaron: You’re certainly right about the vocal arrangement, which builds to such a finely layered mix of voices that I’d hardly paid much attention to it before. Also on listening again, I’ve realized how the bass really leads the song, and it’s a very melodic bass line (headphones really help bring things out in the mono mix). The bass line is a force here, so clean and seeming to wander all around the melody, while the piano and rhythm guitar almost seem to be comping it in a big-band jazz sort of way.

Which brings me to your description of this song as “Beatlesque,” which I think is probably accurate. It would be great if you could describe, a bit, what that actually means in terms of chord selection and so on. But returning to an issue that’s been coming up more recently, one thing I find interesting is how this song represents some of the changing dynamics of the group and what that means for their sound. Let’s say the term “Beatlesque” can be said to have three phases – the early career “She Loves You, Yeah Yeah Yeah” vibe, the mid-career blending of more advanced harmonies, folk forays, and early psychedelia of Rubber Soul and Revolver, and the late career, post-Pepper breaking apart of one discernible sound into more distinct, overlapping sounds of the individual songwriters (please let me know if this classification doesn’t work for you). A lot of things are going on in that transition – Paul is becoming a master of melody and harmony, so that he can write a beautiful sounding song almost effortlessly. He’s also becoming more demanding of himself and the band in the studio. John is starting to care less about those things, but is pushing experimentation (along with Paul and the others) and also pushing both the personal and political aspects of his lyrics. Superficially, it could be argued that Paul is becoming more concerned with how the music sounds whereas John is becoming more concerned with what it says (again, aware of the superficial nature of this contention). And George is becoming a more expansive songwriter in his own right. At the same time, the band is just becoming tighter and tighter, better at their individual instruments and also better at playing with and off each other.

“You Won’t See Me” crystallizes that mid-era sound, which comes from each of the boys playing their specific part to perfection, however diminished - John only sings on the song and doesn’t play any instruments, George plays a simple rhythm with no solo, and aside from the harmony vocals, it’s really only Paul and Ringo who bust out here. Yet it all works together to make one of those effortless McCartney numbers that I mentioned. Which, I guess, leads back to what you said about the song being less a recontextualization and more an example of The Beatles coming into their own as creators and producers of their own sound. Listened to in that context, the song becomes a lot more interesting to me.

Lew: Right off the bat, I want to say that I agree about the bass line. “You Won't See Me” provides a great example of Paul's bass playing, and a lesson in exactly how underrated he is as a bass player. In this instance, he does a great job of hitting chord tones in a very melodic way, and also does some nice chromatic movement to navigate the chords in the pre-chorus (“it’s been so long, girl, since you've been gone,” etc). Possibly even more importantly, he maintains a rhythmic motif that permeates the entire song – it’s so present during the verses and chorus that anytime he deviates from the rhythmic feel, it has the effect of really changing the vibe of the song for that space of time. A particularly effective aspect is his almost always landing on the “and” of 2 in the measure. In any case, the bass line is busy enough that the piano and guitar parts being almost completely confined to playing on 2 & 4 works completely.

The question about specifically what musical moves constitute the “Beatlesque” sound is an interesting one. In a lot of respects, the texture of the vocal arrangement is a big part of it. Having said that, I think that it’s a certain tension that comes from using a fairly obvious group of chords, but making a lot of those chords dominant 7ths (in places where a dominant chord usually wouldn’t be used), and also occasionally including a chord that’s very effective, but deviates from the key signature that has been established up to that point. A great example in “You Won't See Me” happens in the pre-chorus (if you can call it that) under the lines “we have lost the time that was so hard to find.” Under the word “time,” they play a D major chord, but switch to a D minor by “was.” That, to my mind, really captures the Beatlesque sound, and it’s something that you see popping up at all stages of their career, even as the more cosmetic elements of their music were experiencing dramatic changes.

Aaron: That’s a great technical breakdown of “Beatlesque” as a descriptor, both of their music and the music they influenced. When you put it in musical terms like that (which I’d never be able to do), it makes it much clearer to me how the existence of a Beatlesque sound can permeate their entire career. If they were interested in such chord experiments and key deviations from their early days, it would make sense that, as they improved as a band and then as a studio unit, and then began to break apart, their exploration of such sonic possibilities would expand and improve as well. It will definitely be worth revisiting as we enter the middle portion of their career when they were, arguably, at their most Beatlesque. But before we wind down, do you think it might be worth looking back to a couple other specific examples from earlier in their career in which they were investigating and pushing such sonic divergences? Just for a little context?

Lew: It's definitely worthwhile to look at an older Beatles track to get a look at the genesis of the Beatlesque sound. I thought of “I Feel Fine” first, and it’s an intriguing one, not least because of the feedback at the beginning (which I think you may have mentioned recently). It’s also a great example of the way The Beatles were able to push typical melodies in new directions by playing a straight I IV V chord progression as dominant 7ths across the board. In the line “I’m in love with her and I feel fine,” the word “her” is a minor third from the tonic (G major in this case) – typically, you’d expect the vocal to hit the major 3rd there (B), but instead the vocal sings a Bb, which is included in the C7 (C, E, G, Bb) that’s happening underneath the vocal at the time. Ordinarily, that C chord would not have contained a Bb. It’s hard to say where that comes from – whether they just played 7th chords underneath everything because those were the chords that they knew, or whether they heard the melodies that way and arranged the chords to match. Anyway, it's a great example of the slightly skewed simplicity of the Beatles' sound.

Aaron: “Slightly skewed” is a fine way to put it. One thing I’m really getting out of this series is a greater appreciation of how that skewed sensibility was not only integral to the band’s success, but also seems to have been an organic part of their development. The question of how much of it was “natural” and how much “planned,” still lingers, I guess, and it’s something we’ll take up (along with a further exploration just what “Beatlesque” means) in our next entry. Until then, I’d love to hear what our readers think about “You Won’t See Me” or any of the other points we’ve raised.

Coming Next: We extend our discussion of the Beatlesque sound as Peter Fonda freaks out John Lennon and the band moves fully into their mature phase on Revolver.