Written by: Harrison
Recorded: 25 January 1969; 8 January 1970
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Glyn Johns
Released: 8 May 1970 (UK), 18 May 1970 (US)
George Harrison: vocals, acoustic guitar
John Lennon: lap steel guitar
Paul McCartney: piano
Ringo Starr: drums
Available on:
Let It Be
Anthology 3
Let It Be... Naked
Written by George Harrison for his wife Pattie, For You Blue was a straightforward blues song recorded during the Let It Be sessions.
It's a simple 12-bar song following all the normal 12-bar principles, except that it's happy-go-lucky!
For You Blue was recorded in six takes on 25 January 1969, with the working title George's Blues (Because You're Sweet And Lonely). The last of these was selected for inclusion on the unreleased Get Back album and on Let It Be.
John Lennon played a lap steel guitar on the song; unusually, he used a shotgun shell as a slide. During his solo, Harrison encouraged Lennon with the words "Go, Johnny, go" and "Elmore James' got nothing on this baby!"
There is no bass guitar on For You Blue, as McCartney was playing piano. He treated the strings to change the sound of the instrument.
It's a fuzzy, metallic sound, which he did by putting a piece of paper in the piano strings, causing them to vibrate against the paper when struck. You can hear on the session tape Paul's fiddling around, trying to get the right sound.
Mix Online
For You Blue was remixed by Glyn Johns on 8 January 1970. Prior to this, George Harrison re-recorded his lead vocals.
A new mix of take six was made in 2003 for Let It Be... Naked. An alternative take from the 25 January 1969 session was included on Anthology 3.
On 30 March 1970 Phil Spector made a 16-second loop using the song's instrumental break, onto which he overlaid snippets of speech from the Let It Be film soundtrack. It was never used.
Several mixes were made in this fashion, utilising such cinéma vérité moments from the rooftop performance element of the film as the old woman's "I just can't see that it makes sense!", the young girl's "Yeah, I think it's great... livens up the office hours, anyway", the bowler-hatted vicar's "Nice to have something for free in this country at the moment, isn't it?", the taxi driver's "Is it their new record? Oh, great, I'm all in favour of it!" and the pompous businessman's "This type of music is all right in its place, it's quite enjoyable. But I think it's a bit of an imposition to absolutely disrupt all the business in this area..."
In the end Spector used just one piece of dialogue from the Twickenham film sessions. Heard immediately prior to For You Blue on Let It Be, it was Lennon's "Queen says no to pot-smoking FBI members."
For You Blue was the b-side to the US single The Long And Winding Road, released on 11 May 1970.
Not a favorite, and definitely not a stand out track from The Beatles career - but still... a very enjoyable little tune.
The words "pot smoking" were removed on the remastered "For You Blue." John now reads the newspaper headline as "Queen says no to FBI memberd."
Not on my copy he doesn't - the word 'pot' is clearly in there. I don't think the Abbey Road remastering engineers would have taken such a liberty with the recording.
Harrison's are some of my favorites. This one is no exception, i wish he was more involved in song writing.
I know what you mean. I love Harrison's writing, even if he didn't do a lot in The Beatles. This song is one of my favorites.
I don't know why so many people say George didn't do a lot of songs with the Beatles.
If my addition is correct George recorded 22 songs with the Beatles (original UK pressings plus the Past Masters 2).
Name me another third songwriter in any other successful group in the USA or the UK that had that many songs recorded.
Christine McVie.
I don't know if it is interesting for this article, but Lennon said this famous quote about ,,FBI members" on 8 January 1969. George re-recorded his lead vocal EXACTLY A YEAR LATER (8 January 1970).
Coincidence?
The Threetles(George, Paul and Ringo) worked on Let It Be and For You Blue on Jan 3-4 1970 NOT January 8 1970.
Julian was right though. George added a vocal part on 8 January 1970.
I stand corrected.
Just another fact to this song's fans. The lap steel guitar played by John Lennon is actually in Brazil, with the musician Marcus Rampazzo. See http://babel.eca-usp.com/book/export/html/160 [Portuguese-language website]
Is there not an overdubbed bass part on this song?
There's a climbing bass line that comes on during the "turn around" (the musical space between the end of a verse and the beginning of the next verse)
For me, it isn't. Those notes, that you are talking about are off the slide guitar. It's too punchy for a bass. And look, Paul played a piano.
Does anybody know what John's guitar is tuned to? It's an open chord tuning of some kind, I just don't know what. Any info would be appreciated.
Its tuned to produce E7 (0 2 2 1 3 0) as an open chord
E, D, G#, E, B, E high to low works well..
Thanks so much, Luke. I'll have to give that a try.
No problem. I looked it up some time ago, because I also needed to try it myself
Horrible track. The guitar is good, but someone still needs to tell me what the hell George is actually singing about, because it doesn't seem to have a point or a decent vocal.
and you call yourself a beatle fan
George had some really fine songs during his later years with the Beatles. He brought numerous tunes into the Get Back/Let It Be sessions and quite a few of them were rehearsed by the full band. Shamefully though, only this song was approved for initial inclusion on the LP. They later added George's fine I Me Mine (recorded without John) to give Harrison the "obligatory" 2 tracks per LP. George was right in noting his songs were not judged on their merits and that he was only being provided a "token showcase" for his music with the Beatles. All Things Must Pass, Here Me Lord, among others, would have been worthy Beatle album tracks. Fortunately, George did them himselves later on, but they were offered to the Fabs and should have been included on the last 2 albums. Oh well, obla di obla da, life goes on.
Listen closely George says 'has got nothing on this failure' not baby.
Crazy good track (like so many others).
George's voice is sweet and slippery on this one. Reminds a bit of his vocals on "If Not For You." And John's guitar matches it perfectly. The song is a minor masterpiece of curiously integrating a playful and innocent sound with a semi-raunchy feel.
Somebody help me: in the Naked version the first part of the vocals, before the solos, are recorded from January 1969, but the "speech" and the rest of the vocals looks like the one recorded a year later.
So simple,pure and gracious. One of the best from Let It Be!
Reminds me of old blues stuff like Woody Guthrie and Sonny Terry. With some psichedelia added.
Where and what are the added acid references?
"Psichedelia" I don't mean references to acid use in lyrics or something like that, but the way it sounds, the constant slides and specially the solo.
This one's sweet. The song itself is, of course, derivative and simple, but the sound they produce is pure Beatle magic. Nothing - I repeat, nothing - else sounds like it. A lot of this has to do with John's crazy slide playing and Paul's wacky sounding piano!