Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 21 June 1966
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Geoff Emerick
Released: 5 August 1966 (UK), 8 August 1966 (US)
Available on:
Revolver
Personnel
Contents
George Harrison: backing vocals, lead guitar, bass guitar
Ringo Starr: drums, shaker
The final track recorded for Revolver, ‘She Said She Said’ was inspired by an LSD-influenced conversation between John Lennon and actor Peter Fonda.
During The Beatles’ US tour in the summer of 1965, they rented a house in Los Angeles’ Mulholland Drive. On 24 August they played host to Roger McGuinn and David Crosby of The Byrds, and the two parties, apart from Paul McCartney, spent the day tripping on LSD.
The actor Peter Fonda arrived at the house, also on acid. He attempted to comfort Harrison, who thought he was dying.
I told him there was nothing to be afraid of and that all he needed to do was relax. I said that I knew what it was like to be dead because when I was 10 years old I’d accidentally shot myself in the stomach and my heart stopped beating three times while I was on the operating table because I’d lost so much blood.John was passing at the time and heard me saying ‘I know what it’s like to be dead’. He looked at me and said, ‘You’re making me feel like I’ve never been born. Who put all that shit in your head?’
Lennon recounted the incident in 1980 in one of his final interviews, speaking to a journalist from Playboy magazine.
It’s an interesting track. The guitars are great on it. That was written after an acid trip in LA during a break in The Beatles’ tour where we were having fun with The Byrds and lots of girls. Some from Playboy, I believe. Peter Fonda came in when we were on acid and he kept coming up to me and sitting next to me and whispering, ‘I know what it’s like to be dead.’He was describing an acid trip he’d been on. We didn’t want to hear about that! We were on an acid trip and the sun was shining and the girls were dancing and the whole thing was beautiful and Sixties, and this guy – who I really didn’t know; he hadn’t made Easy Rider or anything – kept coming over, wearing shades, saying, ‘I know what it’s like to be dead,’ and we kept leaving him because he was so boring! And I used it for the song, but I changed it to ‘she’ instead of ‘he’. It was scary. You know, a guy… when you’re flying high and [whispers] ‘I know what it’s like to be dead, man.’ I remembered the incident. Don’t tell me about it! I don’t want to know what it’s like to be dead!
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
Switching between 4/4 and 3/4 time signatures, ‘She Said She Said’ was written by Lennon with some help from Harrison.
I was at his house one day – this is the mid-Sixties – and he was struggling with some tunes. He had loads of bits, maybe three songs, that were unfinished, and I made suggestions and helped him to work them together so that they became one finished song, ‘She Said She Said’. The middle part of that record is a different song.
In the studio
‘She Said She Said’ was recorded when The Beatles realised they were one song short for the Revolver album. In a hectic nine hour session on 21 June 1966, during which the majority of the album’s mono and stereo mixes were also done, they rehearsed the song more than 25 times and then recorded three takes of the rhythm track.
To the last of these were added John Lennon’s lead vocals, and backing vocals from Lennon and George Harrison. Extra guitar and Lennon’s Hammond organ track were then overdubbed, and ‘She Said She Said’ was complete.
Unusually, Paul McCartney most likely did not play on the track.
John brought it in pretty much finished, I think. I’m not sure but I think it was one of the only Beatle records I never played on. I think we’d had a barney or something and I said, ‘Oh, fuck you!’ and they said, ‘Well, we’ll do it.’ I think George played bass.
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
50 years later, this song still sounds amazingly modern. Great lyrics, concise arrangement, sleek and powerful production and mix. Sonically, it really doesn’t sound dated at all, despite the technical limitations of the time (and the “interesting” stereo choices they always made then). One of my favorites, in a way it’s the pinnacle of their original combined straight-ahead guitar rock combo sound and pop songwriting hooks.
yes ! the pinnacle indeed-that’s always the way i felt about this LP. where could they go from here ? it was indeed time for sgt. pepper’s band to play. and beyond that back to rock was “helter skelter” “yer blues” “birthday” “warm gun” etc. they did not disappoint. good lord they were good. and they were so young & did everything so quickly.
How can it be “theirs” when McCartney wasn’t on the track?…..Great song but definitely 60’s sounding because of the lack of complication in the guitar and drums. However, the overall presentation is awesome, simple rock. They were the masters at making simplicity be incredible.
Great Lennon composition. His rythym guitar playing is crisp, clear and fantastic.
I don’t understand that you think the drum is uncomplicated. It shows a lot of skill and intuition. The time signature also shifts from 4/4 to 3/4 time.
The Beatles have songs where not all 4 of them are on several times. How can you hear that sound and say that it’s not Beatles. It is quintessential Beatles.
Interesting that Paul wasn’t involved in the song or the acid trip that inspired it. Coincidence?
Paul got angry and left that session. That is why.
The guitar works really make the song. You can hear John’s jangling guitar rhythm through out the song. George Harrison’s opening guitar into and lead work all over the song plus what he did in the middle break is strong, unique, and effective. George made that song. It would have been a totally different sound without George. George never got the credit he deserved on so many Beatle songs.
George’s guitar speaks volumes
John’s guitar part enhanced George’s . It is John’s song after all.
I’d still love to know WHY Paul didn’t appear on this track. For him to walk out on a session sounds uncharacteristic. certainly for this period. Indeed this predates Ringo’s White Album walkout by 2 years!
I’m surprised none of the other Beatles have mentioned what happened. Was Paul really anti LSD or this song at the time, as it seems REALLY odd for John to ask George for help?
I think Paul didn’t agree with the arrangement. George told John to put partial songs together and make one. That’s what G.Martin also did.
One noteworthy fact is that this was Leonard Bernstein’s favorite Beatles song. Also, Revolver was his fave album by the Beatles. He made this comment in the foreword of the Beatles book with the Andy Warhol cover.
Then Bernstein has two “favourite tracks” in Revolver. I’ve seen a tv-interview made in 1966-67, where he states something like this: “The pop=music has evolved a lot, lately. I just listened the Beatles latest lp Revolver, where my favourite song is Good day sunshine. It has very interesting vocal arrangement in the end of the song”.
FWIW Chris Carter of Breakfast with The Beatles says a couple of takes were made with Paul playing bass before he left. He thinks the song features Paul’s bass playing.
Paul claims he’s not on it…
There is zero chance this is George on bass
I actually have heard as many of you probably have as well (and as is probably documented elsewhere) that McCartney walked out on Eleanor Rigby as well, mid-lyric-write, so this album quite possibly did have a few fights. I have heard much more about the fight on this track on the YouTube Podcast ‘Why Revolver is Better Than Sgt Pepper’ (unknown to me who the Beatle-oligists are on it), and yes Harrison played bass on a separate track to the rest of the band according to that and also the fact you can’t hear Paul’s vocal at all always intrigued me and that Podcast shed light on that. He was absent for it so this song could be said to be ‘John/George/Ringo’ instead of The Beatles as Paul and his bass and harmonic stylings were so important?
Curious facts and circumstances. Over 50 years later here we are still going over the fine details, sometimes beat for beat, measure for measure!
The bass on She Said She Said has an interesting history.
If, somewhat of a big “if” you can very carefully listen to the bass on an original, non remastered version of the song you can here bass notes at certain specific sections of the song which seem to have been edited out of the remastered version.
Those notes consist of a few double stops and very sophisticated bass runs, extremely characteristic of McCartney’s bass playing.
The total combined time of all these notes in the 3 or 4 at most, places they appear is somewhere on the order of less than 10 seconds!!!!!
I had written about this before on another forum with the exact spots time marker for listeners to follow along. Those notes are gone. However, a veru very very careful listen might confirm some of this.
Still more…
It has been reported the recording session studio notes, listed McCartney as playing bass at some point.
Speculation led to the unconfirmed conclusion that some of McCartney’s bass lines, for whatever technological reason, physically survived on the original versions and were not edited out and yes you can hear them but only on certain pre remastered versions of the song.
This is not unique to this Beatle song where remnants of prior recordings found their way into a final published cut.
The fact that this example was edited out of the remastered version makes the whole issue an extremely fascinating to curious and courageous listeners. Listen on!
Actually part of the first remnant, a bass run, at :54.5 to about :55.5 still partially exists in the remastered version!
Paul McCartney 110% plays bass on She Said She Said. Beatles did 3 full run throughs w/ Paul. Then he spilt the studio (as he recalls in Miles book). There was NO bass overdub. Plus at the point (June 21st 1966) no one BUT Paul had ever played the bass on a Beatles song. So this would have been historic for George to play the bass at this point. Plus he didn’t it is PAUL. Again no bass overdub ever happened. Just check the studio log for the day.
Chris Carter/Breakfast w/ the Beatles – Sirius /Xm – Beatles Channel
Despite having nothing to do with it’s creation or performance Paul rates this song 60-40 in Johns favor. Hehe
Nothing of any relevance to add, I see……hehe
The arrangement / recording is better than the song. George H said it was bits and pieces and it sounds like it. A last minute rush job.
Bits and pieces? I guess you could say the same thing about Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”. It’s just how some songs come together, even some great ones.
I had read on another website that The Beatles realized two days before the beginning of their final European tour that they were one song short for Revolver. They debated whether to release Revolver with just 13 songs. Effectively they had just one day to record a song because they would need one travel day to get to Munich. Paul was apparently present at the beginning of the session but then left after the “barney”. I suspect that Paul didn’t just want to knock out a throw-away song in one session. By the time of Revolver, the group just didn’t do that anymore. My speculation is that that’s why Paul left. But the others thought that they could pull it off, which they did. Personally I consider it one of the best songs on Revolver, albeit not as polished and produced as the other songs. I still think that “Rain” and “She Said She Said” have the greatest guitar sound anyone ever attained and Ringo’s finest drumming.
The reason for the absence of Paul was because John and George Harrison had recently taken the plunge and tried an LSD ‘trip’, but Paul McCartney had so far declined to do so. Ringo Starr took an ’acid trip’ shortly after to be in the same head-space with George and John.
Previously, the four of them had experimented with drugs together. That Paul didn’t want to take LSD, created a rift between them. And as this song of John’s was specifically about the LSD trip he had had in Beverly Hills, when it came time in the studio to record it John rejected ALL of Paul’s un-psychedelic musical suggestions.. Apparently, it wasn’t just a few suggestions: John shot down every single one of Paul’s attempts at contributing, for no other reason than because it was the ‘LSD-virgin’ Paul who was suggesting them.
Paul understandably became irritated and frustrated and eventually left the studio in a huff.
Thus it was that rather uniquely it was George Harrison, John’s LSD-buddy, who ended up playing lead guitar, bass guitar and singing the harmony vocals on the song.
Its a great song and Paul had zero to do with it. Much like a lot of other Lennon creations. Don’t forget that someone actually has to come up with the “idea” for a song and create it out of thin air. And Paul could never – not in a million years – come up with several of John’s songs and by virtue of that, the very best songs the Beatles ever did. Paul was an “embellisher” at best and was certainly good at it, like adding tape loops and other tertiary things like that, plus a very good bass player and harmonizer, but he could never come up with Strawberry Fields, ADITL, TNK, LSD, etc. etc. Far cry from actually creating songs of Lennon’s character and caliber musically, especially when you even break them down chord-wize, rhythmically, lyrically, etc.. (and yes I know there are exceptions – Fixing a Hole was a great song for example) Anyway the old question still prevails – if Paul was such a big deal in the Beatles then why did his solo music show absolutely no quality’s of the kinds of songs that John had put out? “Someone’s knockin’ at the door, someone’s ringin’ the bell … ” I rest my case, Paulyphants.