You've Got to Hide Your Love Away

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You've Got to Hide Your Love Away is a song off The Beatles' 1965 album Help!. It was written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon/McCartney.

Contents

Writing

The song was the first all-acoustic recording for the band, as well as the first to bring in other musicians since Andy White's drumming on Love Me Do in 1962. It shows the growing influence of Bob Dylan on John's songwriting. Around this time, The Beatles were starting to write acoustic songs, when Dylan himself was starting to pick up electric instruments. Like Help!, the song was written to show John's feelings. John later said, "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away is my Dylan period. It's one of those that you sing a bit sadly to yourself, 'Here I stand, head in hand...' I'd started thinking about my own emotions. I don't know when exactly it started, like I'm A Loser or Hide Your Love Away, those kind of things. Instead of projecting myself into a situation, I would try to express what I felt about myself, which I'd done in my books. I think it was Dylan who helped me realise that - not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work." The opening lines seem to be very similar to Dylan's song "I Don't Want To Believe You (She Acts Like We Have Never Met)," which appears on his 1964 album Another Side Of Dylan. The Beatles lyrics go:

"Here I stand, head in hands
Turn my face to the wall
If she's gone I can't go on
Feeling two foot small"

When Dylan's original lyric goes......

"I can't understand, she let go of my hand
And left me here facing the wall
I'd sure like to know why she did go
But I can't get close to her at all"

It has been speculated that the song is about The Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein's, homosexuality. At the time, homosexuality was illegal in England, meaning that Brian had to keep it secret. Only his close friends and many of his recording artists knew about it. It is speculated that John and Brian had a brief sexual encounter in April 1963, when the two of them had a vacation in Barcelona. Years later, rumors began to spread about this encounter. Hunter Davies, who wrote the official 1968 biography on The Beatles mentioned something about the encounter in Spain actually happening. In Davies' 2006 autobiography, he say this, "John wasn't a homosexual but he was daft enough to try anything once," Gay rights activist Tony Bramwell assumed it was about Epstein later on, after it was publicly known that he was a homosexual. He called it the "first gay love song." It has also been suggested, and is probably more likely, that the song is about John's numerous affairs he had while he was still married to Cynthia Lennon.

Recording

The song was first recorded on February 18, 1965, when they taped nine takes, only two of which were complete. During the recording, John had the lyrics written as "two foot tall," but he made a mistake and accidentally sang "two foot small." He decided to keep the lyrics like this, making the lyrics that were used. Johnnie Scott, the first outside musician used on a Beatles recording since 1962, played tenor flute on this recording as The Beatles recorded the song. He later overdubbed alto flute after Beatles recording was finished.

Recording Sessions


Personnel

The Beatles

Guest Musicians

Production

Available Versions

Available On

Cover Versions

  • The Beach Boys
  • Joe Cocker
  • Kristy Lee Cook
  • Chris Cornell
  • Elvis Costello
  • The Grass Roots
  • Oasis
  • Pearl Jam
  • Sandstone Veterans
  • The Silkie
  • Sonderbar
  • Travis
  • U2
  • Eddie Vedder

Source

Retrieved from "http://www.beatleswiki.org/wiki/You%27ve_Got_to_Hide_Your_Love_Away"
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