Recording "Think For Yourself", "The Beatles Third Christmas Record"

This was the fifteenth day of work on The Beatles’ new album “Rubber Soul.”

On this day, during a session running from 9 pm to 3 am, The Beatles recorded “Think For Yourself” (under the working title of “I Won’t Be There With You“), George Harrison’s second contribution to the album, following “If I Needed Someone“.

The session began with rehearsals of the song. Although rehearsals were usually not taped, George Martin chose to record the run-throughs for “Think For Yourself“. One likely reason was the hope of capturing amusing exchanges for possible use on The Beatles’ 1965 Christmas record, although none of this material was ultimately included. However, a six-second excerpt of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison practising vocal harmonies for the song was later featured in the animated film “Yellow Submarine“, released in 1968.

Some dialogue recorded during this session — probably during the rehearsals — was also later sampled for “Plastic Beetle“, a track on Paul McCartney’s experimental album “Liverpool Sound Collage“, released in 2000. The excerpts used include:

• 0’46” – Paul: “Must be all right”
• 3’33” – George: “Chinga chinga ching, boom, boom, boom”
• 6’00” – George: “It’s OK. We know. I think we know”; Lennon: “This might be it. We’ll just go…”; Harrison: “Chinga chinga ching, boom, boom, boom. The bit that John finally got just after that”
• 6’15” – John: “George’s tune, though”
• 6’17” – Paul: “Who-sus”
• 6’18” – John, Paul and George joking and ad-libbing; John and Paul pretending to be preachers
• 6’55” – John: “Okay, Paul, you ready, boy, this is it. All right, cut this tomfoolery out”
• 7’02” – laughter

Once satisfied with the rehearsals, The Beatles recorded a single formal take to capture the backing track.

The backing track, recorded onto track one of the four-track tape, featured George and John on electric guitars, Paul on bass and Ringo on drums.

Overdubs were then added to this Take 1. On track two, John recorded a piano part, Ringo added tambourine, an unidentified Beatle played maracas, and Paul overdubbed a fuzz bass. George’s lead vocal, with backing vocals by Paul and John, was recorded onto track three and then double-tracked onto track four, completing the recording. “Think For Yourself” would be mixed in mono and stereo the following day.

Towards the end of the session, The Beatles also recorded three takes of their Christmas message, including an off-key rendition of “Yesterday” and a series of loosely humorous exchanges. These recordings were edited together and mixed the following day.

Paul used a fuzz box on the bass on ‘Think For Yourself’. When Phil Spector was making ‘Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah’, the engineer who’d set up the track overloaded the microphone on the guitar player and it became very distorted. Phil Spector said, ‘Leave it like that, it’s great.’ Some years later everyone started to try to copy that sound and so they invented the fuzz box. We had one and tried the bass through it and it sounded really good.

George Harrison – From “The Beatles Anthology” book, 2000

Session activities

1. Beatle Speech

   Recording • Take 1

2. Think For Yourself

   Written by George Harrison

   Recording • Take 1

3. The Beatles Third Christmas Record

   Written by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, George Harrison, Tony Barrow

   Recording • Take 1

4. The Beatles Third Christmas Record

   Written by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, George Harrison, Tony Barrow

   Recording • Take 2

5. The Beatles Third Christmas Record

   Written by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, George Harrison, Tony Barrow

   Recording • Take 3

Staff

Musicians on "Think For Yourself"

Production staff

Going further

The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions • Mark Lewisohn

The definitive guide for every Beatles recording sessions from 1962 to 1970. We owe a lot to Mark Lewisohn for the creation of those session pages, but you really have to buy this book to get all the details - the number of takes for each song, who contributed what, a description of the context and how each session went, various photographies... And an introductory interview with Paul McCartney!

Buy on Amazon

The Beatles Recording Reference Manual - Volume 2 - Help! through Revolver (1965-1966)

The second book of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC)-nominated series, "The Beatles Recording Reference Manual: Volume 2: Help! through Revolver (1965-1966)" follows the evolution of the band from the end of Beatlemania with "Help!" through the introspection of "Rubber Soul" up to the sonic revolution of "Revolver". From the first take to the final remix, discover the making of the greatest recordings of all time.Through extensive, fully-documented research, these books fill an important gap left by all other Beatles books published to date and provide a unique view into the recordings of the world's most successful pop music act.

Buy on Amazon