Yer Blues

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Yer Blues is the second song on the second disc from The Beatles' 1968 self-titled album. It was written by John Lennon, though credited to Lennon/McCartney.

Contents

[edit] Writing

The song was written in India while The Beatles were at a meditation camp with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. As John said, "The funny thing about the [Maharishi's] camp was that although it was very beautiful and I was meditating about eight hours a day, I was writing the most miserable songs on earth. In Yer Blues, when I wrote, 'I'm so lonely I want to die,' I'm not kidding. That's how I felt." It was possibly written about Yoko Ono, because although John was not officially in a relationship with her at this point, she was still writing to him every day and he probably missed her. An acoustic demo of the song was recorded in Kinfauns, George's home in Esher, Surrey. At this point, the lyrics were nearly complete.

[edit] Recording

It was recorded in a small annex room next to EMI's Studio Two. The idea to record in this small room came from a sarcastic comment from engineer Ken Scott during the recording of Not Guilty. As Scott said, "George had this idea that he wanted to do it in the control room with the speakers blasting, so that he got more of an on-stage feel... I remember that John Lennon came in at one point and I turned to him and said, 'Bloody hell, the way you lot are carrying on you'll be wanting to record everything in the room next door!' The room next door was tiny, where the four-track tape machines were once kept, and it had no proper studio walls or acoustic set-up of any kind. Lennon replied, 'That's a great idea, let's try it on the next number!' The next number was Yer Blues and we literally had to set it all up - them and the instruments - in this minute room. That's how they recorded Yer Blues, and it worked out great!" It was first recorded on August 13, 1968, when fourteen takes of the basic track were recorded, including drum, guitar, bass, and lead vocals. In order to free up more tracks on the multi-track tape, reduction mixes were made, called Takes 15 and 16. For the first time, the actual four-track tape was edited instead of a copy or mix. Usually, a copy or mix was made and then edited to protect the original tape in the case of bad editing. The beginning of Take 17 can be heard on the studio version, right around the 3:16 mark of the song. It included John's guide vocal heard quietly in the background. Because there was no sound-proofing or isolation in the annex, many of the tracks bled onto other tracks, including an unused guitar solo and John's guide vocals heard during the instrumental break. Although, The Beatles found ways to try and get around this. As Paul said in his authorized biography, Many Years From Now, "The main worry engineers normally had was separation of instruments so that if later on we wanted to hear more drums or a little less, we had control over it so we could pull it back or lift it. But to do that you had to get separation from all the other instruments, otherwise you just brought up the guitars when you brought up the drums. But what we did was turn the amplifiers to the wall and put a microphone in there, so we actually got amazing separation on them." On August 14, new lead vocals were recorded. Work on the track was completed on August 20, when Ringo recorded the count-in to the song. Ringo later said about the song, "Yer Blues, on the White Album, you can't top it. It was the four of us. That is what I'm saying: it was really because the four of us were in a box, a room about eight by eight, with no separation. It was this group that was together; it was like grunge rock of the sixties, really - grunge blues." The song ended up being only one of the four Beatles songs John performed live. He als performed Come Together, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, and I Saw Her Standing There live. He performed it twice; once at The Rolling Stones' Rock And Roll Circus and once in Toronto, in a bag with Yoko.

[edit] Recording Sessions


[edit] Personnel

[edit] The Beatles

[edit] Production

[edit] Available Versions

[edit] Available On

[edit] Cover Versions

  • Jeff Healy
  • Phish
  • Elliot Smith

[edit] Source

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