Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 18 February 1965
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Norman Smith
Released: 6 August 1965 (UK), 13 August 1965 (US)
John Lennon: vocals, 12-string acoustic guitar
Paul McCartney: bass guitar
George Harrison: acoustic guitar
Ringo Starr: drums, tambourine, maracas
Johnnie Scott: tenor flute, alto flute
Available on:
Help!
Anthology 2
One of the highlights of The Beatles' Help! album, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away was also the first of their songs since 1962 to feature a session musician.
The song also demonstrates the increasing influence of Bob Dylan upon John Lennon's songwriting in 1965. Interestingly, The Beatles were beginning to record with acoustic instruments at the same time that Dylan was picking up an electric guitar.
Like the title track of the Help! album, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away was a chance for Lennon to lay bare his emotions in song.
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.
Anthology
The opening lines of The Beatles' song bear a resemblance to I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Have Never Met), which appeared on Dylan's 1964 album Another Side Of Bob Dylan.
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
The Beatles
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
Bob Dylan
During the recording Lennon mistakenly sang 'two foot small' instead of 'two foot tall'. "Let's leave that in, actually," he told his childhood friend Pete Shotton. "All those pseuds will really love it."
It has been suggested that the song was written for The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein, who was a homosexual. Lennon and Epstein went on holiday to Barcelona, Spain together in April 1963; upon their return rumours began to spread in Liverpool that the pair had shared a sexual experience.
Although this was always denied by the pair, The Beatles' biographer Hunter Davies later claimed that Lennon did admit to him, off the record, that an encounter took place in Spain. "John wasn't a homosexual but he was daft enough to try anything once," Davies wrote in The Beatles, Football And Me, his 2006 autobiography.
Whether the song relates to the incident, or even to Epstein, is debatable. It has also been claimed that You've Got To Hide Your Love Away was about an affair with a woman that Lennon was having at the time.
In the studio
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away was recorded in the afternoon of 18 February 1965. The Beatles taped nine takes, only two of which were complete.
Anthology 2 featured take five, the other full version recorded. It also incorporated a count-in from the aborted take one, and John Lennon saying that McCartney had broken a glass in the studio.
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away was the first Beatles song since Love Me Do to feature an outside musician. Johnnie Scott, a flautist and musical arranger, first recorded a tenor flute as The Beatles taped their parts. He then overdubbed an alto flute part to complete the song.
They told me roughly what they wanted, ¾ time, and the best way of fulfilling their needs was to play both tenor flute and alto flute, the second as an overdub. As I recall, all four of them were there and Ringo was full of marital joys; he'd just come back from his honeymoon.
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn
Related articles:
- Recording, mixing: Ticket To Ride, Another Girl, I Need You, Yes It Is, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away, The Night Before, You Like Me Too Much, If You've Got Trouble, Tell Me What You See
- Help!
- Bob Dylan turns The Beatles on to cannabis
- Recording, mixing: Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey, Good Night
- The Silkie record You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
Lennon played a 12 string on this, it would be nice if you wrote how many string all guitars in all songs had (except six string guitars, they are unnecessarily to note specifically)
i cry listening to it... lovely.
It's not an all-acoustic recording because Paul is definitively playing bass on it (rather than guitar)... watch the scene from the "Help!" movie and listen to the record!
The 4-track-recording features:
- the rhythm track with Lennon's strummed acoustic twelve-string Framus, Paul's bass and Ringo's brushed snare (left channel on CD)
- Ringo's overdubbed tambourine, Harrison's acoustic guitar and maracas on a second track (right channel)
- Lennon's vocal and one flute on a third track
- second flute on the fourth track
(Tracks 3 and 4 are mixed in the center)
Es uno de los mejores momentos de Lennon en plan Dylan. El primer verso es realmente impactante
Here I stand head in hand
Turn my face to the wall
If she's gone I can't go on
Feelin' two-foot small...
To me its the best vocal-part John ever did. He sounds so warm, so peaceful, so sad.
That's debatable. He sings off-key in many instances -- BUT he apparently did so on purpose to achieve the Dylan-effect and ultimate sincerity. It is definitely John projecting fully into the song.
The remaster sounds absolutely stunning...you can hear shards of metal from the guitar strings falling on the floor...
The first time that a session musician was recruited by The Beatles to play a "classical" instrument. It wasn't "Yesterday".
I think Harrison's part is incredibly underrated in this song. The part he plays on six string really brings the whole song together, it took me years to notice what he was playing. He's not playing straight chords as Lennon is, he's playing a melody. It's beautiful, and the song would be incomplete without it. Doesn't trouble me to say that the day I properly noticed what he was playing I just burst out crying. His guitar is way low in the mix. I always just heard the Lennon chords. Listen for the Harrison guitar. It's worth it