‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ was written by John Lennon and closed side one of the Abbey Road LP. A cry of love in several parts, it was recorded over a six month period between February and August 1969.
The Beatles had first played the song several times in January 1969, during the Get Back/Let It Be sessions. Originally with the working title ‘I Want You’, the group returned to it less than a month later, as the first song to be recorded for Abbey Road. It was also one of the final songs on the album to be completed.
Coming in at just under eight minutes, ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ also contains some of John Lennon’s simplest lyrics since the days of ‘Love Me Do’. A direct outpouring of his all-consuming love for Yoko Ono, the song contains just 14 different words.
A reviewer wrote of ‘She’s So Heavy’: ‘He seems to have lost his talent for lyrics, it’s so simple and boring.’ ‘She’s So Heavy’ was about Yoko. When it gets down to it, like she said, when you’re drowning you don’t say ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,’ you just scream. And in ‘She’s So Heavy’ I just sang ‘I want you, I want you so bad, she’s so heavy, I want you,’ like that.
Rolling Stone, 1970
The obsessiveness of the lyrics is reflected in the repetitiveness of the music. The song contains the same phrases played over a number of rhythmic, tempo and time signature variations. Perhaps the sheer otherness of ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ explains why it was so well-liked by all members of The Beatles.
Most remarkable, however, is the grinding three-minute finale, featuring Lennon’s and George Harrison’s massed overdubbed guitars multitracked many times over the same relentless chord pattern, which was slashed at full volume to give the impression that it could have gone on forever. Lennon also used the white noise generator from a Moog synth to get the howling wind effect.
The finale from the song was mixed with the organ from ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!’ and some vocals from ‘Helter Skelter’ on 2006’s Love album.
In the studio
The Beatles first played ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ on 28, 29, 30, and 31 January 1969, in the basement studio at their Apple HQ at 3 Savile Row, London. These were the final four days of the Get Back/Let It Be sessions.
Billy Preston was accompanying the band at this time. During one performance on 29 January, Preston sang in one of the verses – in an echo of Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech – “Black or white, we all deserve equal rights. I had a good dream, a very good dream…”
The Abbey Road recording was begun at Trident Studios in London’s Wardour Street on 22 February 1969. The Beatles taped 35 takes of the basic rhythm track, many of them incomplete. One of these early takes, combined with the end of a later eight-track reduction mix, can be heard on some formats of the 50th anniversary reissue of Abbey Road.
The Beatles recorded ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ on eight-track tape. John Lennon’s guitar was on track one; Ringo Starr’s drums were recorded on two and three; George Harrison’s guitar on four; Paul McCartney’s bass guitar on five; and Lennon’s vocals on seven.
The next day, again in Trident, a composite edit was assembled, consisting of the beginning of take nine, take 20 for the middle eight, and take 32 for the rest of the song.
On 24 February 1969 a session at Trident saw overdubs of two piano parts, tambourine, additional guitars, and backwards cymbal. These were all unused on the final recording. Another tape, with the same date on the box, was discovered in 2019. It contained a faster version of ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’, recorded at EMI Studios and lasting 6:23. That tape box was marked “New mixer tape”; the performance had tones, clicks, and mains hums across the tracks, and The Beatles’ performance appears to have been made to enable studio engineers to test new equipment.
On 18 April a reduction mix was created from the Trident edits. Named take one, it combined Lennon’s vocals and guitar on track eight. The multitracked guitars for the finale were then recorded by Lennon and Harrison.
John and George went into the far left-hand corner of [studio] number two to overdub those guitars. They wanted a massive sound so they kept tracking and tracking, over and over.
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn
On 20 April a Hammond organ part was added by Billy Preston, as were congas. These were played by Starr, and brought into the studio by The Beatles’ assistant Mal Evans especially for the song.
‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ wasn’t then worked on until 8 August, the day the cover photos for Abbey Road were also taken.
Lennon added a Moog synthesiser part, plus the white noise heard during the finale, and Starr added more drums. Unusually, these overdubs were added to the original Trident master, not the reduction mix that had been created on 18 April.
On 11 August, the day ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ was renamed from its working title of ‘I Want You’, and Lennon, McCartney and Harrison recorded their repeated “She’s so heavy” harmony vocals, recorded twice to give the effect of six voices.
And with that the recording was complete, although the final version – including the distinctive cut-off ending – wasn’t made until 20 August, when the mixes from 18 April and 8 August were edited together.
God this song is brilliant… The powerful guitars, the simplistic but powerful lyrics… It has so much sexual tension.
I agree as during my college “daze” a friend and I were drifting into more than a friendship. I would play this song so often that my roommate finally asked me what was going on. I said the song was hypnotic, which was a lot of bunk as I was the one hypnotized. I was obsessed with the said friend. We were in the kitchen on New years and someone else played it. I snapped and went for it. She pulled back and I thought “I’m about to be kicked where it counts!” Instead she said “Well it’s about time!”. Years later she married one of my best friends and they’ve been married for 41 years this May! Oh well….
Yes
What the group accomplishes in this song is nothing short of creative genius.
The song is essentially a musical drug. It gets beneath your skin and does what it will to you. The musicality is effortless. The real beauty is in the musical language used to express the overwhelming, devouring nature of love as an emotion and catalyst for lust and loss. The song’s ending provides a definitive pièce de résistance to what is the alternative culmination of their body of work (the other being the ending medley of Abbey Road).
I was introduced to the Beatles at a rather early age, thanks to my best friend’s older sister who was approx 12yo when her brother and I were around 7-8. And I heard this album (along with the White Album) long before I was familiar with the rest of the Beatles catalog. (It wasn’t too long before the rumors and then the official breakup of the band was announced. And here I was just discovering them! At the tender age of 8!) And a few songs always stuck in my mind because it wasn’t until the late 70’s that I was able to hear these tracks again(!). One them was this track (the other was the B-side medley that included Carry That Weight). I think what impressed me about it was its almost symphonic breadth, being over 7 minutes long it was probably the first rock ‘jam’ I’d ever heard, especially leading to the long, outro buildup. It was just huge in its sound compared to everything else an 8yr old was hearing in 1969. Don’t forget, what was on the radio in those days was bubble gum pop like Yummy, Yummy, Yummy (I Got Love In My Tummy), Bobby Sherman, The Monkees (who were not bad, for what they were, fyi). But I remember spending lots of afternoons after school, in the sisters bedroom, listening to these tracks before she got home and chased us out. It made my friend and I feel grown up and ‘sophisticated’ to want to listen to these tracks and really liking them!
I am no expert with musical instruments but I enjoy reading all the comments from you that are because I am engrossed in dissecting every Beatle song harmony and instrument being played and by which Beatle. The I want you she’s so heavy is a favorite, I hear it in Santana’s Black Magic Woman. Lennon is just a musical genius, he has given praise to Paul’s bass and Ringos rhythm moving the song along and George’s expert playing…his guitar was gently weeping because he knew they could come together and leave their differences aside and just rock!
Peter Green’s Black Magic Woman*
John was listening to Fleetwood Mac a lot during this period. You hear that in Sun King, where he is trying to do his own Albatross.
The orignal “Black Magic Woman”, by Fleetwood Mac, came out about a year or so BEFORE “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)!
It’s frightening, frantic and horny, what a heady mix!!!! One of the best, most revolutionary songs I have ever heard in my life
Great way to close side one of “Abbey Road”. One of John Lennon’s most intense vocal performances, as he did the same year on “Don’t Let Me Down”. Both are huge love pleads to Yoko. John Lennon was never scared to show his insecurity in his writing and his love and dependence on Yoko meant it was taken to a new level. The painful events of his childhood and teenage years meant this desperation was always simmering just below the surface. Tracks on solo albums such as “John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band” and “Walls and Bridges” exhibit this trait abundantly. But there are lots of other examples. “I Want You”(“She’s So Heavy”) is a great track. I love John and George’s lead guitar work in unison and the way they and Paul voices work together to such effect. Billy Preston Hammond organ work is brilliant.
Where do you hear George and John playing in unison ? They played off each other, but I don’t hear anything with two Guitars playing exactly the same notes. The intro is either George or John playing an arpeggio under or over ( depending on how the listener wants to hear it ) the melodic single notes line . When the verse arrives it’s just Lennon playing the melody to his vocal.
In the last three minutes, the guitars are literally mass overdubbed (as stated in this above article and by listening to how deep the guitar chord sounds)
Are you sure John is singing the main phrases ? For me, it is Paul voice
John. — Mark Lewison – The Beatles Recording Sessions – Manuscripts.
I’ve read somewhere that John and Yoko were experimenting at this time with minimalist poetry, with the goal of writing a poem consisting of a single word. Lennon carried this over into his music. This is why this song has only 14 words and simple, repeated musical phrasing. Ultimately, Yoko did write the poem of a single word: “Water”. Before you laugh and dismiss it as just more of her eccentricity and spaciness, think about it. Water is the essence of life, a substance without which no one could exist; it provides movement, change, sustenance, death, destruction, erosion, elation, birth and rebirth. Think of how many songs are about rain, rivers, tears, and tides.
Paul’s bass at the end is absolutely fantastic!!
I have to agree with you. I love his bass playing on this song, especially the ending. I always wondered if Paul helped write the ending because the bass is kinda playing the lead riff and it’s very catchy. Or did John have that bass-driven riff written already? I never read this in any of the Beatle books and would like to know. If Paul wrote it, it would be a perfect example of how a band member can make the song even though he did not write it. I’m assuming Paul wrote it, but would love to hear the John demo to be sure.
Where do you hear George and John playing in unison ? They played off each other, but I don’t hear anything with two Guitars playing exactly the same notes. The intro is either George or John playing an arpeggio under or over ( depending on how the listener wants to hear it ) the melodic single notes line . When the verse arrives it’s just Lennon playing the melody to his vocal.
According to George, John sang what he played on the guitar and he clearly played the arpeggiated guitar riff, so George obviously played the higher end of the fretboard on his guitar. On the multi-tracked guitar coda, John is obviously playing the arpeggiated riff and George is playing the heavier distorted guitar riffs.
Mattiboo has done a guitar cover for this song on his YouTube channel – here it is.
Same. I have always loved Paul’s brief but effective bass solos on this song and it really highlights his almost skill to invent bass parts that suit any song.
I wonder what came first,
the bass line or the guitar part that has the same notes
That depends on which section of the song you’re refrring to . A,B,C,D etc. If you’re thinking of the outro it sounds very influenced melodically like Paul. Remember they recorded this in sections …
Paul only played bass on this song as well as singing backup vocals. John and George were both on guitars.
How can you tell who’s playing which guitar in any Beatles song?
The Beatles engineer’s reported that info
George Martin’s handwritten production notes are very useful and even photographs from sessions as well as audio from session tapes can reveal clues.
That’s a great question when you get to a song like this. On most ,but certainly not all, you can tell who’s who, as it were. Lennon had an uncanny knock to come up with rather sophisticated riffs in respect to arpeggios. On Honey Pie ( a song I’m in no way thrilled by ) apparently John played the intro guitar line. I NEVER would have expected that to be Lennon. Then on Get Back, Lennon plays the lead, and it sounds like something he would do,same goes for Revolution,and his third and sixth guitar solos on The End . The Beatles were musical chameleons…
Magnificent powerful deep song. Blues? Rock? Jazz? Yes…all together but much more (were The Beatles, dude) in a “simple” composition. Minimalist and with the effect of a volcano.
Can anyone tell me who sings which part, especially when the harmonies start. Can´t tell their voices apart yet
Paul is usually the high part. He had the best range of the 4 of them.
What makes that unison end riff even more ominous are those guitar chords with the same persistent top note all the way through. And those bass runs! Brilliant.
Is that John playing the bluesy guitar solo after the first “She’s So Heavy” break? It sounds like his simple, emotive style.
I was wondering the same thing. Is it Lennon?
Yes, it’s John.
Correct. George confirmed that it was indeed John playing the guitar solo in a 1969 interview.
I swear at one point it sounds like George singing….this song sounds different every time I listen, it seems.
In the documentary “Lennon or McCartney” on YouTube, in which heaps of musicians, actors and other luminaries give their one-word answer to that question, Robert De Niro answers “Lennon.” I imagine songs like this are why – just the raw emotion in it and the way it captures the ravages of obsessive, unsatisfied sexual desire. That said, kudos to Paul’s crucial bass.
And many picked McCartney. Why did you pick DeNiros vote? Seems random.
A wonderful Lennon bookend to side one of Abbey Road, and a single of Come Together with I Want You would have been perfect ?. Then, after almost eight minutes, you get to put on side two with the sparkle of Here Comes The Sun kicking it off. This ‘track arrangement’ – a piece of theatre – is an aspect which is (sadly) missing in the digital world – it *did* alter the appreciation of albums (all of them, but especially Abbey Road I think).
I still remember the first time I heard this song as a teenager, I had bought the Abbey Road album on cassette, and when the song cut off at the end, I honestly thought I had got a defective tape, I couldn’t believe a song would just be cut off midway through. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered that it indeed was intentionally done that way.
It’s an absolutely epic rocker from the Beatles, and it’s one of my favourite songs they ever did.
That dynamite blues riff in intro (George) is never mentioned, whoa- but what a start!
Paul has always been my favorite bassist. Not that he was necessarily played the hardest licks, but that his playing was so melodic and beautiful and strayed far from simply being rhythmic. I have never enjoyed any bass player more then Paul. Truly 1 part of the “4- headed monster”!
I have to agree with those who regard this the most boring track on Abbey Road. Not politically correct, but a fact. We got the message after 30 seconds, the rest is endless, painful repetition…
It would have been a great 5 minute song instead of 8.
It would have been a great 9 minute song instead of 8!
Except, I do like John’s guitar work, Paul’s bass, and Ringo’s “jazzy” drumming throughout (well, up to the “tornado” part).
The arrangement is certainly much greater than the song, which isn’t much of one.
I don’t think you truelly get it. This is about love/sexual desire as an overwhelming, addictive force. He is stuck in love like a destructive drug addiction that overwhelms him. The “I want you so bad” becomes a mantra. The repetitive nature of the song comes naturally from the state of dependance that he wants to describe.
Should have been 30 minutes long!
Dude. Sure, we all have different tastes…but this song is just “oozing” with rock and roll, and is so hypnotic, and (I could go on and on, but the cloud just doesn’t have enough space)
Would love any insight into who made the decision to “cut” the ending and why. I grew up with this album, and at five years old, this track was nightmare inducing. “Want you” at that age meant the boogey-man. And the sudden “death” at the end made an indelible impact. In my memory, the end of the song is actually *skritch-skritch-pop, skritch-skritch-pop, skritch-skritch-pop*.
I read somewhere that John and (?) were listening to it, trying to decide on an ending. A bit impulsively, John picked up a pair of scissor and just cut the tape. Problem solved.
John may have requested the abrupt edit, but it was probably Alan Parsons, since he was the 2nd engineer or tape operator at the August 20, 1969 session.
This was played by Martin Barre at this years prog rock festival in Wales
Fantastic
This song is one of my favorites. John’s lyrics are so simple, but the repeating, obsessive verse only adds to the song. Plus, the bass on this song is unbelieveable…
Amazing site! This is THE holy grail of Beatlemania. 🙂
But still: the solo guitar part in the middle, with some very jazzy fioritures – is it John or George really? Anyone knows for sure? Someone asked about it before, but there wasn’t any clear answer.
John Lennon.
It was John, as George confirmed in an interview during 1969.
One of the worst Beatles songs of the whole catalog, showing the limitations of the musicians who play the same thing in the same way, no dynamics, zzzzzzzzz just goes on and on with no surprises with insufferable “white noise” added to the end because they couldn’t up the anti with musical intensity. When you hear the opening and you’ve heard the song before, you know it is the same flavor and feel throughout the whole monotonous 8 minutes, none of the charm, musicality, inventiveness or colorful lyrics of some of the best other Beatles songs. Next to “Revolution 9” and “Because,” another snore-fest, this is the most worthless song of John Lennon’s entire output from 1962-70.
JL should have just quit the Beatles after The White Album and done more incredible work with that unbelievably talented singer and visionary, Yoko Ono, and”Two Virgins” and other dreck.
But no, he quit (but didn’t quit) and got usurped by the more talented and less oblivious teammate, Paul McCartney, who quit and REALLY quit, then got to work instead of holding ridiculous press conferences from bed and kidding himself that he was “Saving lives.”
JL was unbelievble from 1962-67, then lost it for a bit after he met Yoko, then got it back with “Imagine” and some of those fantastic early 70s tracks. “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” should have gone the way of the equally lousy song “Not Guilty” and “Teddy Boy.”
You are confused! “I want you” is one of Lennon’s strongest tracks, and “Revolution nr9” is the center piece in the Beatles’s catalog, the dark aspect of their creative force that was always there beneath the surface.
gosh, captain clueless here.
Sorry, you have no idea what you’re talking about. How on earth can you listen to this song, THIS song, and use the phrase “no dynamics”? It’s nothing if not an exercise in arrangement and dynamics. In fact, now that I’m reading your entire post, I can’t help but think this is either snark or just absent-minded trolling of a Beatles fan site. (There’s always someone who has to rain on the parade.)
Seems like Capt Clueless here has an anti-Lennon agenda. Please…leave the room when this song is playing. It is doubtful you’ll be missed.
Maybe you should stick to Paul’s “Granny Music” and stay away from the deep end!
Certainly the “I Want You” refrain is Lennon, through and through.
But when John sang the “She’s So Heavy” chorus, did George naturally come up with the guitar arpeggios and did Paul naturally come up with the bass line?
As they continue to work the song, they create the 3-minute coda based on Paul’s bass line and George’s arpeggios but adding layers of guitars around the bass line.
Is that how the song’s ending was constructed?
If you haven’t heard the new 2019 Deluxe Anniversary Remastered edition of this song, you really owe it to yourself to give it a listen. I just got the CD today and hearing this remastered version is simply mind-blowing.
When Preston’s organ kicks in, it is brought to the forefront and is so clean, it just grabs your attention and made me immediately smile. Hearing Lennon’s voice in this version is almost like hearing it all over again for the first time! So raw, it’s just fantastic. The instrumental ending is maybe the biggest improvement – the drums are so much easier to hear, and actually made me say, “wow!” when hearing Ringo’s drum fills with such clarity. You can finally hear exactly what he’s doing on drums and it’s nothing short of masterful. Lastly, they toned down the white noise that was so overbearing in the original mix. I always thought that was so harsh on the ears, but that’s been corrected now. Great work by Giles Martin!
The new mixes are rubbish, taking limited amounts of tracks and trying to spin them into some overblown super surround mix. For this song in particular, I’d honestly rather hear a 2-track drum recording in mono than floating somewhere around my head. And would it kill Giles and Sam to pan the bass center for once?
I’ve said it before – I wish Giles would quit f-ing with the Beatles recordings! Like Geoff Emerick once said (paraphrasing) – you wouldn’t go trying to improve the Sistine Chapel, would you?
I will never buy any of these re-mixes. Blasphemy!
It’s also annoying with Giles or perhaps Kevin Howlett getting certain song line-ups or instrumental credits wrong in the SDE booklets as well as omitting certain credits unnecessarily.
Who’s playing the piano part, doubling the distorted guitar riff towards the end? My guess is it was either John or Paul, probably Paul knowing his tendency to add piano parts to Beatles songs.
Good question. It might well have been John, because he did write the song, and he did have a fondness for crazy and wacky sounds – just listen to “Revolution 9” and “Two Virgins”.
anyone know what guitars they’re using on this song?
Electric.
I saw the Flaming Lips perform a nearly hour-long version of this song in Oklahoma City on New Years Eve in 2011. Yoko was there too. Damaging and epiphanic.
I have always liked “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and it’s a very big production number clocking in at 7:44 with a climactic coda. It’s frankly quite intriguing to hear John mimicking his vocal melody on his guitar and even George mentioned this in a 1969 interview.
Anyway, I love John and George’s multi-tracked electric guitar work, John’s Moog synthesizer white-noise, Ringo’s drumming and conga drum work and Paul’s bass playing – in my opinion, this is another one of Macca’s bass highlights that shows his inventiveness on the instrument and ability to come up with very, very good bass parts.
Billy Preston’s Hammond organ work is also outstanding and John, Paul and George’s vocal harmony work is also very well performed. Ringo also operated a wind machine on the coda and some claves also appear on the track, probably played by Ringo, given that he was very capable of playing percussion as well as drums.
It has been erroneously stated that one of the tracks recorded at Trident was sung by Paul, but in reality, that happened on January 31st, and it’s a headscratcher as to why he sang lead vocals on one of the takes of a song that John wrote – usually, John sang lead on his songs and Paul did likewise.
Some claves also appear on the track
In the end, this is my favorite Beatles song, and as its total recording process designates, it not only is a howl to describe John’s emotions for Yoko, but perhaps even more a culminating scream to finalise both this amazing band and their last and best record. Moreover, and until further notice, it has the heaviest, darkest and most intense guitar riff ever made, and they all perform like madmen, enjoying it as if it were the last thing they ever did. Then Billy Preston comes and makes the most divine icing on this insane cake. It just gets better every time I listen to it.
I’ve just listened to it again after quite an interval and I think the same as you, Per Spellman. It’s so intense and heavy!
I couldn’t help thinking, with a wry smile, that it is a good thing they hadn’t written it and performed it in, say, 1964, when Beatlemania was such a huge thing. I was part of that and I know how frenzied us teenaged girls were for the Beatles. That song would have been too much!!! We were feeling horny enough as it was!!! All the policemen and security guards could not have held us back!