Girl

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Girl is a song off The Beatles' 1965 album Rubber Soul. It was written mostly by John Lennon, with help from Paul McCartney.

Contents

Writing

Girl, the last song to be recorded for Rubber Soul, though mainly about a woman mistreating the protagonist and Lennon's idea of the perfect woman, also had to do slightly with Lennon's views on Christianity. John Lennon recalled, "This was about a dream girl. When Paul and I wrote lyrics in the old days we used to laugh about it like the Tin Pan Alley people would. And it was only later on that we tried to match the lyrics to the tune. I like this one. It was one of my best." Part of the song was actually written by Paul McCartney while vacationing in Greece in September 1963. Paul remembers, "In the song Girl that John wrote, there's a Zorba-like thing at the end that I wrote which came from that holiday. I was very impressed with another culture's approach because it was slightly different from what we did. We just did it on acoustic guitars instead of bouzoukis." The song, lyrically, is about a girl whom the protagonist is helplessly drawn toward. John commented, "Girl is real. There is no such thing as the girl; she was a dream, but the words are all right. It wasn't just a song, and it was about that girl - that turned out to be Yoko, in the end - the one that a lot of us were looking for." During the chorus, John took a heavy breath in, which some interpreted as a marijuana reference. Indeed, the sessions for Rubber Soul were the point where The Beatles were smoking the most marijuana in their career. Paul recalls how that was recorded, "My main memory is that John wanted to hear the breathing, wanted it to be very intimate, so George Martin put a special compressor on the voice, then John dubbed it." The band, who loved double meanings, inserted them into this song, at one particular point in the backing vocals sung by Lennon and McCartney. McCartney said in his authorized biography, Many Years From Now, "It was always amusing to see if we could get a naughty word on the record: 'fish and finger pie', 'prick teaser', 'tit tit tit tit'. The Beach Boys had a song out where they'd done 'la la la la' and we loved the innocence of that and wanted to copy it, but not use the same phrase. So we were looking around for another phrase, so it was 'dit dit dit dit', which we decided to change in our waggishness to 'tit tit tit tit', which is virtually indistinguishable from 'dit dit dit dit'. And it gave us a laugh. It was to get some light relief in the middle of this real big career that we were forging. If we could put in something that was a little bit subversive then we would. George Martin might say, 'Was that "dit dit" or "tit tit" you were singing?' 'Oh, "dit dit", George, but it does sound a bit like that, doesn't it?' Then we'd get in the car and break down laughing." Also in this song, albeit more subtle, is a reference to Lennon's feeling towards Christianity. John told Rolling Stone in 1970, "I was just talking about Christianity in that - a thing like you have to be tortured to attain heaven. I'm only saying that I was talking about 'pain will lead to pleasure' in Girl and that was sort of the Catholic Christian concept - be tortured and then it'll be all right, which seems to be a bit true but not in their concept of it. But I didn't believe in that, that you have to be tortured to attain anything, it just so happens that you were."

Recording

Girl was recorded in two takes on November 11, 1965, the final night for recording on Rubber Soul. After the two takes were recorded, a series of overdubs were, including a fuzz guitar part played by George Harrison, which would be left out of the recording at the mixing stage.

Recording Sessions


Personnel

The Beatles

Production

Available Versions

Available On

Cover Versions

Source

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