FEATURE:
The Beatles’ Rubber Soul at Sixty
My Five Favourite Songs from the Album
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IN the second anniversary feature…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles photographed in Milan in 1965/PHOTO CREDIT: Archivio Farabola
I will share about The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, I am going to highlight my favourite five tracks from it. The first feature was a more general overdue with some features about reviews. Today, I am honing in on the tracks and I will select my favourite five. Of course, Rubber Soul is an almost perfect album. Aside from the ghastly and misogynistic Run for Your Life (though I am highlighting a couple of tracks below that are not exactly kind to women!) – as I say, the band had Day Tripper at their disposal and chose not to include it and kept this stinker -, everything I feel has a place. Turning sixty on 3rd December, I am curious how the anniversary will be marked. We have not really had outtakes or demos from that album. Rubber Soul takes and some rarities that would be a nice treat. However, there will be new anniversary features and spotlighting of this masterpiece. Recording in a month and at a time when The Beatles had a bit of downtime and were not touring, it is amazing they managed to put Rubber Soul and Help! out within a few months of each other. Their work rate was astonishing! What could be considered a rushed album, instead, was their most mature, accomplished and complete to that point. With a broader sound palette and new elements in their sound – including the sitar and acoustic dynamics were more present -, Rubber Soul was a step forward for the four-piece. The songwriting so incredible through Rubber Soul! It is my favourite Beatles album and one that I think is their best to that point. So rich and deep. In terms of the moods and sounds. It is hard to home in on the best five tracks, though there are those that stick out to me. I will rank there here…
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FIVE: You Won’t See Me
Personnel and Players:
“Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 11 November 1965
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Norman Smith
Personnel
Paul McCartney: vocals, bass, piano
John Lennon: backing vocals
George Harrison: backing vocals, rhythm guitar, tambourine
Ringo Starr: drums
Mal Evans: Hammond organ”.
Inside the Track:
“Written by Paul McCartney about his then-faltering relationship with Jane Asher, ‘You Won’t See Me’ was recorded during The Beatles’ last session for the Rubber Soul album.
It was written at her parents’ house in London’s Wimpole Street, while Asher had temporarily moved away from McCartney to perform in an adaptation of Great Expectations at the Old Vic theatre in Bristol. The song recounts McCartney’s frustration and vulnerability at being unable to contact her.
At 3’23”, ‘You Won’t See Me’ was The Beatles’ longest recording to date. The song was written by McCartney alone, and was inspired by the Tamla Motown sound.
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
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
In the studio
The Beatles took part in a 13-hour session to finish Rubber Soul, beginning at 6pm on 11 November 1965 and ending at 7am the following morning.
The group recorded two takes of the rhythm track and a number of overdubs for ‘You Won’t See Me’. These included a Hammond organ part played by The Beatles’ assistant Mal Evans, whose contribution was limited to a single note held throughout the final verse – Beatles Bible
Further Reading:
“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. […]” – The Paul McCarrtney Project
FOUR: Girl
Personnel and Players:
“Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 11 November 1965
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Norman Smith
Personnel
John Lennon: vocals, acoustic guitar
Paul McCartney: backing vocals, bass
George Harrison: backing vocals, lead acoustic guitar, acoustic 12-string guitar
Ringo Starr: drums”
Inside the Track:
“The last song recorded for Rubber Soul, ‘Girl’ was mostly written by John Lennon. It explored the notion of the ideal woman, and touched upon Lennon’s feelings towards Christianity.
This was about a dream girl. When Paul and I wrote lyrics in the old days we used to laugh about it like the Tin Pan Alley people would. And it was only later on that we tried to match the lyrics to the tune. I like this one. It was one of my best.
John Lennon
Of the Rubber Soul songs, musically it is most closely related to McCartney’s ‘Michelle’, with its acoustic instrumentation, minor chord changes and skillful vocal harmonies. Part of the music for ‘Girl’ was actually written by McCartney while on a Greek holiday in September 1963.
In the song ‘Girl’ that John wrote, there’s a Zorba-like thing at the end that I wrote which came from that holiday. I was very impressed with another culture’s approach because it was slightly different from what we did. We just did it on acoustic guitars instead of bouzoukis.
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
Lyrically, meanwhile, it presented a femme fatale figure, ‘the kind of girl you want so much it makes you sorry’, whom the song’s protagonist finds himself helplessly drawn towards.
‘Girl’ is real. There is no such thing as the girl; she was a dream, but the words are all right. It wasn’t just a song, and it was about that girl – that turned out to be Yoko, in the end – the one that a lot of us were looking for.
John Lennon
Anthology” – Beatles Bible
Further Reading:
“Bigger than Christ
The song was recorded in November 1965, several months before the infamous interview in which John Lennon compared The Beatles’ popularity to that of Jesus Christ. Lennon was exploring the theme of religion in the lyrics of the song. He later told Rolling Stone magazine, “I was just talking about Christianity in that—a thing like you have to be tortured to attain heaven. I’m only saying that I was talking about pain will lead to pleasure in ‘Girl,’ and that was sort of the Catholic Christian concept—be tortured and then it’ll be all right, which seems to be a bit true, but not in their concept of it. But I didn’t believe in that, that you have to be tortured to attain anything, it just so happens that you were.”
She’s the kind of girl who puts you down
When friends are there
You feel a fool
When you say she’s looking good
She acts as if it’s understood
She’s cool, ooh, ooh, ooh
Girl, girl, girl
Lennon’s Breathing
The Beatles were always trying to push the envelope by seeing what they could get away with. During Rubber Soul, they had begun smoking marijuana, and it was clear they were interested in peppering in various phrases or words to see what they could get away with. Lennon’s breathing on “Girl” could be interpreted either way. Was it a pot reference or just a person contemplating a situation? Paul McCartney told author Barry Miles, “My main memory is that John wanted to hear the breathing, wanted it to be very intimate, so George Martin put a special compressor on the voice, then John dubbed it. … It was always amusing to see if we could get a naughty word on the record: ‘fish and finger pie,’ ‘pr–k teaser,’ ‘tit tit tit tit.’
“The Beach Boys had a song out where they’d done la la la la, and we loved the innocence of that and wanted to copy it but not use the same phrase. So we were looking around for another phrase, so it was dit dit dit dit, which we decided to change in our waggishness to tit tit tit tit, which is virtually indistinguishable from dit dit dit dit. And it gave us a laugh. It was to get some light relief in the middle of this real big career that we were forging. If we could put in something that was a little bit subversive, then we would. George Martin might say, ‘Was that dit dit or tit tit you were singing?’ ‘Oh, dit dit, George, but it does sound a bit like that, doesn’t it?’ Then we’d get in the car and break down laughing.”
Was she told when she was young
That pain would lead to pleasure?
Did she understand it when they said
That a man must break his back
To earn his day of leisure?
Will she still believe it when he’s dead?
Singer/songwriter Jackson Browne told Rolling Stone magazine, “There was a tremendous intimacy in everything John Lennon did, combined with a formidable intellect. That is what makes him a great singer. In ‘Girl,’ he starts in this steely, high voice, Is there anybody going to listen to my story. It’s so impassioned, like somebody stepping from the shadows in a room. But when he comes to the chorus, you suddenly realize he’s talking directly to her. When I heard this as a young teenager, it hit the nail on the head. It embodied the feelings I was living with every day—completely burning with sexual desire, with almost a regret at being so overpowered” – American Songwriter
THREE: In My Life
Personnel and Players:
“Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 18, 22 October 1965
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Norman Smith
Personnel
John Lennon: vocals, rhythm guitar
Paul McCartney: harmony vocals, bass
George Harrison: harmony vocals, lead guitar
Ringo Starr: drums
George Martin: piano, tambourine”
Inside the Track:
“One of the highlights of the Rubber Soul album, ‘In My Life’ was written mostly by John Lennon, and started out as a nostalgic set of memories of Liverpool.
There was a period when I thought I didn’t write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock ‘n’ roll. But of course, when I think of some of my own songs – ‘In My Life’, or some of the early stuff, ‘This Boy’ – I was writing melody with the best of them.
John Lennon, 1980
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
Lennon regarded ‘In My Life’ particularly highly, citing it – along with ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, ‘I Am The Walrus’, and ‘Help!’ – as among his best.
For ‘In My Life’, I had a complete set of lyrics after struggling with a journalistic vision of a trip from home to downtown on a bus naming every sight. It became ‘In My Life’, which is a remembrance of friends and lovers of the past. Paul helped with the middle eight musically. But all lyrics written, signed, sealed, and delivered. And it was, I think, my first real major piece of work. Up till then it had all been sort of glib and throwaway. And that was the first time I consciously put my literary part of myself into the lyric. Inspired by Kenneth Allsop, the British journalist, and Bob Dylan.
John Lennon
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
Early drafts
He first had the idea for the song in 1964, when journalist Kenneth Allsop asked Lennon why his songs were less revealing and challenging than his books. Musing on this, Lennon decided to take a nostalgic look at specific places and memories from his Liverpool past.
I think ‘In My Life’ was the first song that I wrote that was really, consciously about my life, and it was sparked by a remark a journalist and writer in England made after In His Own Write came out. I think ‘In My Life’ was after In His Own Write… But he said to me, ‘Why don’t you put some of the way you write in the book, as it were, in the songs? Or why don’t you put something about your childhood into the songs?’ Which came out later as ‘Penny Lane’ from Paul – although it was actually me who lived in Penny Lane – and ‘Strawberry Fields’.
John Lennon
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
In the same interview, Lennon described how the song’s early draft was significantly different from the final version.
‘In My Life’ started out as a bus journey from my house on 250 [sic] Menlove Avenue to town, mentioning every place I could remember. And it was ridiculous. This is before even ‘Penny Lane’ was written and I had Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, Tram Sheds – Tram Sheds are the depot just outside of Penny Lane – and it was the most boring sort of ‘What I Did On My Holidays Bus Trip’ song and it wasn’t working at all. I cannot do this! I cannot do this!
But then I laid back and these lyrics started coming to me about the places I remember. Now Paul helped write the middle-eight melody. The whole lyrics were already written before Paul had even heard it. In ‘In My Life’, his contribution melodically was the harmony and the middle eight itself.
John Lennon
All We Are Saying, David Sheff” – Beatles Bible
Further Reading:
“When John Lennon wrote Help! in early 1965 (“and now my life has changed in oh so many ways, my independence seems to vanish in the haze”) he was feeling trapped by Beatlemania and the fame he had sought.
As he would always say, it was true what he said in the lyrics, it was cry for help.
And with that one song, more than any other to that point, he began to realise the artist is a valid subject for the art.
It was a position he would increasingly adopt, as he did on In My Life which appeared on the Rubber Soul album of later that same year.
Here Lennon, still only 24 but being reflective about what had been lost in his life, managed to couch memories of friends and lovers, and people and places which went before, into a love song.
It went almost unnoticed that he included “lovers” in there, a very adult description in pop culture at the time when there was still a lot of boy/girl innocence about.
Lennon had written quiet and reflective songs previously. But unlike You've Got Hide Your Love Away (on the Help! album) and Norwegian Wood (also on Rubber Soul), this song bore no trace of Dylan's folk influence.
On paper the words read more like prose than song lyrics where the rhymes are internal or subtle, nowhere near as obvious as “here I stand, head in hand” or “she showed me her room, isn't it good, Norwegian wood”.
Lennon was stretching himself in the song's construction with a conversational tone and long lines where such rhymes as there are, are delayed.
If Rubber Soul was the album which helped them put Beatlemania behind them it was because of songs like this which, not only was mature but had a sophisticated sound. Rather downbeat and wistful, and of course with that unusual and certainly unexpected instrumental break.
It is widely known now that it was George Martin who played the piano and then sped up the tape, but at the time many thought it was the sound of a harpsichord.
Martin tried out a passage on organ first but then moved to electric piano and recorded it at half speed.
The result was an outstanding song which was both personal and inclusive, and had no connection with the band's more familiar upbeat pop style” – Elsewhere
TWO: The Word
Personnel and Players:
“Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 10 November 1965
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Norman Smith
Personnel
John Lennon: vocals, rhythm guitar
Paul McCartney: vocals, bass, piano
George Harrison: vocals, lead guitar
Ringo Starr: drums, maracas
George Martin: harmonium”
Inside the Track:
“Released in 1965 on Rubber Soul, ‘The Word’ found The Beatles singing for the first time about love as a notional concept. It was a turning point in their writing, marking a transition between early songs such as ‘She Loves You’, and the psychedelic era’s belief that ‘All You Need Is Love’.
It sort of dawned on me that love was the answer, when I was younger, on the Rubber Soul album. My first expression of it was a song called ‘The Word’. The word is ‘love’, in the good and the bad books that I have read, whatever, wherever, the word is ‘love’. It seems like the underlying theme to the universe.
The lyrics of ‘The Word’ displayed an almost religious fervour, with John Lennon and Paul McCartney acting as evangelists for their new revelation about love.
In the beginning I misunderstood
But now I’ve got it, the word is good…
Now that I know what I feel must be right
I’m here to show everybody the light
‘The Word’ demonstrated The Beatles’ increasing awareness of their power as spokesmen and figureheads. This was developed especially by Lennon, in 1966’s ‘Rain’ (‘Can you hear me?’; ‘I can show you’) and his later political songs.
The song was a collaboration between Lennon and McCartney, and began as an attempt to write a song based around a single note.
We smoked a bit of pot, then we wrote out a multicoloured lyric sheet, the first time we’d ever done that. We normally didn’t smoke when we were working. It got in the way of songwriting because it would just cloud your mind up – ‘Oh, s**t, what are we doing?’ It’s better to be straight. But we did this multicoloured thing.
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles” – Beatles Bible
Further Reading:
“Help! showed more signs of their progression, with Dylan-esque tracks like John Lennon’s “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” and Paul McCartney’s classical hybrid “Yesterday.” But 1965 marked the beginning of the Beatles’ transformation with the release of Rubber Soul, a quiet, introspective work that laid the groundwork for Revolver and all subsequent albums. The album contains numerous game-changing songs like “Norwegian Wood” and “Nowhere Man,” but “The Word” stands out for its prophetic lyrics and its subject: love in general, not just romantic love.
In later interviews, Lennon and McCartney claimed they wrote the lyrics while stoned. For the first time, they smoked pot while composing the song by drawing the lyrics in multicolored words on a sheet of paper. According to Barry Miles’ McCartney biography Many Years from Now, McCartney explained that “We normally didn’t smoke when we were working. It got in the way of songwriting because it would just cloud your mind up: ‘Oh, shit, what are we doing?’ It’s better to be straight.” In 1980, Lennon said that while McCartney helped with the lyrics, “it’s mainly mine. You read the words, it’s all about gettin’ smart. It’s the marijuana period. It’s love. It’s a love and peace thing. The word is ‘love,’ right?”
Indeed, “The Word” gives listeners a preview of what was to come just over a year later. Instead of singing that money can’t buy love or discussing how “I give her all my love; that’s all I do,” the Beatles address love in a much broader sense. “Say the word and you’ll be free; say the word and be like me,” Lennon, Harrison, and McCartney harmonize. They suggest that they have achieved a kind of transcendence by simply uttering the word. “Have you heard? The word is ‘love.’ It’s so fine, it’s sunshine,” they croon, arguing that love is a “new” topic that everyone is talking about. But this is another type of love — one that is abstract, tied to nature, and bigger than all of us.
The next verse finds Lennon proselytizing, acting as a preacher: “Now that I know what I feel must be right; I’m here to show everybody the light.” In this role, he wants to share his discovery with listeners and bask in his newfound joy. He has clearly researched the topic, implied by the lines “everywhere I go I hear it said, in the good and the bad books that I have read.” The word is “just the way,” Lennon sings, and with McCartney and Harrison emphasizes his message’s importance: “Say the word, ‘love,’” they chant before the harmonium takes over.
As the song fades out, one can digest the Beatles’ concluding argument: this word will play a major part in the near future. By submitting to Love with a capital “L,” we too can find this transcendence that others have thus far not achieved. Like Harrison demands in “Think for Yourself,” the group lets us decide whether to follow their lead.
As usual, the Beatles’ recording sessions proved astoundingly fast and efficient, as the track was arranged and recorded in a single evening on November 10, 1965. The basics — guitar bass, and drums — were laid down first, then other instruments like maracas and the harmonium (played by producer George Martin), and finally the tight harmony vocals. Lennon’s voice is double tracked on the song, creating four-part harmony. Mixing commenced a day later, but the stereo mix had to be redone on November 15.
Rubber Soul went on to become one of the Beatles’ most critically acclaimed albums, and represents a huge step in their creative development. In the Anthology documentary, Harrison noted that he always considered Rubber Soul and Revolver “volume one and volume two,” resembling bookends. At the very least, Rubber Soul illustrated their interest in politics and their increasing awareness as spokesmen for their age group.
“The Word” remained a deep album track until 2006, when the Cirque du Soleil show Love included a mashup with “Drive My Car” and “What You’re Doing.” Perhaps inspired by this unique showcase, McCartney resurrected the tune during his 2011 On the Run tour. During his Bologna show on November 26, 2011, he performed “The Word” in a medley with “All You Need Is Love,” a fitting song pairing thematically and chronologically. “The Word” foreshadowed the Summer of Love anthem and signaled an impending change in direction for rock and pop culture” – Something Else!
ONE: Drive My Car
Personnel and Players:
“Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 11 November 1965
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Norman Smith
Personnel
Paul McCartney: vocals, bass, piano
John Lennon: backing vocals
George Harrison: backing vocals, rhythm guitar, tambourine
Ringo Starr: drums
Mal Evans: Hammond organ”.
Inside the Track:
“Written by Paul McCartney about his then-faltering relationship with Jane Asher, ‘You Won’t See Me’ was recorded during The Beatles’ last session for the Rubber Soul album.
It was written at her parents’ house in London’s Wimpole Street, while Asher had temporarily moved away from McCartney to perform in an adaptation of Great Expectations at the Old Vic theatre in Bristol. The song recounts McCartney’s frustration and vulnerability at being unable to contact her.
At 3’23”, ‘You Won’t See Me’ was The Beatles’ longest recording to date. The song was written by McCartney alone, and was inspired by the Tamla Motown sound.
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” – The Beatles Bible
Further Reading:
“Drive My Car" was written by Lennon and McCartney at Lennon's home in Weybridge, England. "This is one of the songs where John and I came nearest to having a dry session," McCartney recalled in Many Years From Now. "The lyrics I brought in were something to do with golden rings, which is always fatal. 'Rings' is fatal anyway, 'rings' always rhymes with 'things' and I knew it was a bad idea."
The co-writers dismissed the idea because they had already used the "rings" theme is "Can't Buy Me Love" and "I Feel Fine." "We struggled for hours; I think we struggled too long." McCartney said in Anthology. "Then we had a break and suddenly it came: 'Wait a minute: "Drive my car!"' Then we got into the fun of that scenario: 'Oh, you can drive my car.' What is it? What's he doing? Is he offering a job as a chauffeur, or what? And then it became much more ambiguous, which we liked, instead of golden rings, which was a bit poofy. 'Golden rings' became 'beep beep, yeah.' We both came up with that. Suddenly we were in L.A.: cars, chauffeurs, open-top Cadillacs, and it was a whole other thing."
Cars and chauffeurs have been used as a sly sexual reference as far back as 1939 when Billie Holiday sang "Some tell me baby you're built for speed" in "Billie's Blues." Memphis Minnie's 1941 "Me and My Chauffeur" was even more explicit: "Won't you be my chauffeur / I wants him to drive me / I wants him to drive me downtown / Yes he drives so easy / I can't turn him down."
"To me it was L.A. chicks, 'You can be my chauffeur,' and it also meant, 'You can be my lover,'" McCartney explained in Many Years From Now. "'Drive my car' was an old blues euphemism for sex, so in the end all is revealed. Black humor crept in and saved the day. It wrote itself then. I find that very often, once you get the good idea, things write themselves. So that was my idea and John and I wrote the words, so I'd go 70-30 on that to me."
"Paul's song," Lennon told Playboy in 1980. "He got this 'drive my car' thing and the 'beep beep beep' in the studio. I think we just threw it in."
McCartney has pointed out that, like Rubber Soul's "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," there is a surprise twist at the close of "Drive My Car." The woman in the tune admits she doesn't actually have a car "but I've found a driver and that's a start."
"We've written some funny songs — songs with jokes in," McCartney told NME soon after the two tracks were recorded. "We think that comedy numbers are the next thing after protest songs."
Beatles biographers have differed on whether Harrison or McCartney played bass on "Drive My Car." The issue was complicated by Harrison, who said in Anthology, "I played the bassline on 'Drive My Car.'"
But in 1977 Harrison explained in Crawdaddy that McCartney, on bass, mimicked his guitar lines. "What Paul would do, if he had written a song, he'd learn all the parts ... and then come in the studio and say, 'Do this.' He’d never give you the opportunity to come out with something. But, on 'Drive My Car,' I just played the line, which is really like a lick off 'Respect,' you know, the Otis Redding version — and I played that line on the guitar and Paul laid that with me on bass. We laid the track down like that. We played the lead part later on top of it."
The Redding classic, which featured Donald "Duck" Dunn on bass, was released in August 1965, less than two months before the Beatles' session.
"In the early days, they were very influenced by American rhythm and blues," producer George Martin said in Anthology. "I think that the so-called 'Beatles sound' had something to do with Liverpool being a port. Maybe they heard the records before we did. They certainly knew much more about Motown and black music than anybody else did, and that was a tremendous influence on them."
The uptempo "Drive My Car" was chosen to lead off the U.K. release of Rubber Soul. But in the U.S., folk rockers like Bob Dylan and the Byrds were popular when Rubber Soul was released on Dec. 6, 1965. Capitol Records deemed "Drive My Car" too much of a hard rocker for the times. To maintain a softer sound, "Drive My Car" was left off the LP along with "If I Needed Someone," "Nowhere Man" and "What Goes On." The four songs were later included on Yesterday and Today, which was released in the States in June 1966” – Ultimate Classic Rock