You Won't See Me

From Wikipedia:

“You Won’t See Me” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1965 album Rubber Soul. It was written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney. The lyrics address McCartney’s troubled relationship with Jane Asher and her desire to pursue her career as a stage and film actress. The Beatles recorded the song during what Mark Lewisohn describes as a “marathon” final recording session for Rubber Soul, to ensure the album’s pre-Christmas release.

Background and inspiration

“You Won’t See Me” is about a crisis in McCartney’s relationship with girlfriend Jane Asher, who was refusing to comply with McCartney’s wishes that she stay at home and put his interests first. She had accepted an offer to appear in a stage production at the Bristol Old Vic theatre in 1965, while the Beatles were recording Rubber Soul. McCartney attempted to telephone her in Bristol, but she rejected him by not returning his calls. McCartney later said that it was “shattering to be without her”.

McCartney had lived in the Asher family home at Wimpole Street in central London since 1963. He recalled writing the song in the family music room in the basement of the house. His composition originated from “a two-note progression that I had very high on the first two strings of the guitar: the E and B strings”. He developed this by playing descending semitones on the B string while letting the top string ring out. He described the song as “very Motown-flavoured” with a “James Jamerson feel”. He drew musical inspiration for the composition from the Four Tops’ UK hit single “It’s the Same Old Song” (1965).

During this period, McCartney also wrote “We Can Work It Out” and “I’m Looking Through You” as commentaries on his relationship with Asher. The more biting tone of his lyrics marked a change from his typical love songs, in Howard Sounes’ interpretation, McCartney later said of the band’s approach to songwriting on Rubber Soul: “We’d had our cute period, and now it was time to expand.”

Recording

The Beatles recorded “You Won’t See Me” during the last day of recording for Rubber Soul – an all-night session that started at 6 pm on 11 November 1965. The deadline for completing the album was up, and the band needed to record three songs that night, in addition to finishing work on “I’m Looking Through You”. As a result, they cut the song in only two takes. At 3:22, it was the longest track the Beatles had recorded up until that point. The fadeout is slightly longer on the mono mix.

McCartney played piano on the basic track and then overdubbed his bass part. The tempo gradually slows down throughout the song, a point that music journalist Robert Fontenot attributes to McCartney leading the performance on piano, rather than Ringo Starr’s timekeeping abilities on the drums. In author Jonathan Gould’s description of the song, the tempo appears to “drag” due to McCartney’s “hyperactive Motown-style bass line”. Mal Evans, one of the Beatles’ roadies, is credited on the album sleeve as having played Hammond organ. His contribution consists solely of an A note held throughout the final verse and the coda. Gould also comments on the effect achieved by John Lennon and George Harrison’s wordless backing vocals over the verses, saying that their voices represent “a pair of deaf ears” by “embodying the girl’s indifference” to McCartney’s complaints. Starr augmented his drum part with a separate hi-hat overdub, adding rhythmic accents throughout the song.

Release and reception

Rubber Soul was released on 3 December 1965 on EMI’s Parlophone record label. “You Won’t See Me” was sequenced as the third track, between Lennon’s “Norwegian Wood” and “Nowhere Man“. While the album was an immediate commercial success, some reviewers in the UK were unprepared for the artistic progression the Beatles had made in their musical arrangements and as lyricists.

In his review for Record Mirror, Richard Green wrote: “It is possible to say that Lennon and McCartney are the great songwriting team of the day and that Beatles performances are spot-on, but this LP cannot support that statement.” He included “You Won’t See Me” among the tracks that were “dull and ordinary” with “none of the old Beatles excitement and compulsiveness about them”. Melody Maker said that the band’s sound had become “a little subdued” and that songs such as “You Won’t See Me” and “Nowhere Man” “almost get monotonous – an un-Beatle-like feature if ever there was one”. By contrast, Nikki Wine (aka Eden) of KRLA Beat found the album “unbelievably sensational” and described “You Won’t See Me” as “One of the greatest arrangements and blending of melodies by the Beatles … and it has to be one of the best cuts on the disc.”

Among more recent appraisals, Tim Riley says that the song’s “antagonism can’t help being tempered by [McCartney’s] melodic suavity, so he winds up sounding like an innocent victim rather than a co-conspirator in a love affair”; similarly, the arrangement and the position of McCartney’s vocal in the mix ensure that “the texture becomes more engaging than the emotion.” Riley nevertheless admires the complementary aspect of McCartney’s bass and piano contributions, adding of Rubber Soul as a whole: “without ever being intrusive, his bass emerges as an irreplaceable part of the overall texture. Because he virtually breathes melody, his bass lines begin to soar with inventive counterpoint to the band …” Ian MacDonald says the song, like “Nowhere Man”, “needed something to lift it” and rues the group’s use of the “irritating ‘ooh-la-la-la’ backing-vocal formula”. He concludes that, while it is “redeemed” by McCartney’s fluid bass playing, “‘You Won’t See Me’ soon founders under the weight of its own self-pity and expires long before struggling to the end of an unusually protracted fade.” In his song review for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger finds the buoyant melody at odds with the dejected lyrics, but he praises the vocal arrangement, particularly “the brilliant interaction of counterpoint melodies” through the addition of Lennon and Harrison’s harmonies. […]

This was written around two little notes, a very slim phrase, a two-note progression that I had very high on the first two strings of the guitar: the E and the B strings. I had it high up on the high E position, and I just let the note on the B string descend a semitone at a time, and kept the top note the same, and against that I was playing a descending chromatic scale. Then I wrote the tune for You Won’t See Me against it…

To me it was very Motown-flavoured. It’s got a James Jamerson feel. He was the Motown bass player, he was fabulous, the guy who did all those great melodic bass lines. It was him, me and Brian Wilson who were doing melodic bass lines at that time, all from completely different angles, LA, Detroit and London, all picking up on what each other did.

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

Lyrics

Variations

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Live performances

“You Won't See Me” has been played in 84 concerts.

Latest concerts where “You Won't See Me” has been played