George brought his newly written song “I Me Mine” into Twickenham Film Studios on January 8th, 1969, and demonstrated his song to Ringo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, and others standing around. He sang the words from a handwritten lyric sheet while playing it on Lennon's Epiphone Casino guitar at the beginning of the day's rehearsal before John or Paul had arrived. A segment of this introduction is featured in the “Let It Be” film, a seated Ringo aggressively clapping his hands in a 3/4 rhythm when George explained that the song was “a heavy waltz.”
At this point, the song consisted of verses and flamenco-style bridge, although the lyrics to the verses stayed as we've come to know them on the finished recording. He interrupts himself during this demo to explain his inspiration for the song from the previous night's TV show, then moves into a detailed discussion between George and Ringo about the science fiction show “Out Of The Unknown” that also aired that evening. Paul then arrives, which leads to George introducing the song to him as well.
Always wanting to bounce songwriting ideas off of his fellow Beatles, he asks Paul, “Is that grammatical? 'Flowing more freely than wine...Flowing much freer?' If there were such a word as 'freer,' is it 'fr-e-e-e-r?'” Michael Lindsay-Hogg suggests “f-r-e-r,” to which Paul adds, “It's like 'queer.'” "I Me Mine" was then dropped for approximately the next two hours as The Beatles rehearse many other songs after John arrived.
George then worked up his nerve to suggest that his band-mates learn and rehearse his new composition. “Would you like to learn a new one? Very simple,” he asks John, who wasn't present when he presented it to Paul and Ringo. After getting somewhat acclimated with it, John clowns around on guitar during a couple of run-throughs, asserting his disapproval of the waltz beat and mockingly suggesting that he play a barrel organ on the song. Since Paul owned an accordion, the bassist thought to put it to good use by making the serious suggestion, “Want the accordion?” George appears to consider this but, since the instrument wasn't at Twickenham Studios on that day, he replies, “If it's not here, then just f*ck it.” George also voiced an idea to have a stand-up acoustic bass on the song, although this never came to fruition either.
John impatiently asks, “Are you going to teach us this?” George then complies with teaching Paul and John the chords. However, John loses interest and decides to dance the waltz with Yoko while the remaining Beatles rehearse the song extensively. Instead of taking offense, their dance routine amused George and suggested that this be John's contribution to the song for their upcoming performance since what Lennon could contribute instrumentally wouldn't really be needed anyway.
George asked John, “Do you want to do that on the show? That'd be great, 'cause it's so simple to do, the tune. But to do that waltz, or something, if you want to bag it up a bit.” Paul finds this humorous and, imitating a fictional Master Of Ceremonies for the event, accounces, “John and Yoko would like to waltz in their white bag!” adding, in his own voice, “and there's a white bag dancing around.” In Paul's MC voice, he states, “They were doing things inside it!” Paul adds, “We should do it as an escapologist thing, and we put the bag over them,” the fictional MC voice announcing, “You can see their not tied at all! There's nothing up their sleeves!” Interestingly, John and Yoko began their “Bagism” events two-and-a-half months later, their first occurring on March 31st, 1969, during their visit to Vienna to promote their film “Rape.”
From this point on, The Beatles become quite animated in their excitement about developing “I Me Mine” for their proposed upcoming show, displaying a camaraderie unlike what most assume dominated the entire "Let It Be" project. George even suggested “castanets on that bit” where the flamenco-style guitar part was. All in all, The Beatles gave attention to the song at five different times on this day, putting in a total of 41 rehearsals, albeit many of them incomplete run-throughs. John and Yoko's dance routine gained seriously considered to be a part of the arrangement, waltzing rehearsals continuing to the point of Paul and George giving the pair dance instructions. “You'll spoil the spontaneity of the dance when you actually have to do it,” Paul comments about the frequency of their dance rehearsals.
As they continue refining "I Me Mine" on this day, George stills wonders about the accuracy of his lyrics, asking: “Are you sure that's grammatic? Flowing more freely?” Michael Lindsay-Hogg assures him that it is. The flamenco-style guitar passage in the song reminds Paul of the old Tony Martin / Andy Williams hit “Domino,” which then becomes featured in the rehearsals on that day.
Also, during Paul's suggestion of inserting the heavy 12-bar blues progression to “I Me Mine,” he votes for the harmonies to sing as follows: “'My, my' is good to sing. It's like 'mm-mah, mm-mah.' 'I-I' is not...as easy to do...It's like 'nn-night' is easy to sing. 'Rr-right.' The 'mm-mah' is easy. It's like 'my-my-my' is easy to shout.” George, however, insists on “I-I-I-me-me-mine,” telling Paul that he can sing whatever he wants, but, as the song's composer, Harrison wants what he wants. Paul consented, the final rehearsal of the day featuring Paul's harmonies sung as George wanted, while John and Yoko waltzed away on the studio floor. A complete rendition of “I Me Mine,” this being an edit of two performances from the end of this day, appears in the released “Let It Be” movie. This is the final segment in the film featuring footage from the Twickenham Studios rehearsals. The remainder of the movie takes place at their Apple building on Savile Row, London.
While The Beatles did discuss “I Me Mine” at later January rehearsals, they never touched it again in 1969. As the “musical” changed shape and evolved into the rooftop performance on January 30th, 1969, the proposed staged delivery of “I Me Mine,” with John and Yoko dancing, deemed inappropriate for the Apple rooftop show, understandably. However, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg loved the footage captured of John and Yoko dancing to the song at Twickenham Studios. “That's great,” he stated at the time. “It's beautiful. The whole thing should be very Brechtian...that very song has a character.” Therefore, he insisted that this footage would be a humorous highlight of the movie.
This being the case, it was decided that, since “I Me Mine” was going to be included in the film, it needed to be included on the soundtrack album as well. But since the song skipped over officially recorded on professional sound equipment, The Beatles needed to resurrect the song and record it correctly at EMI Studios. However, the preparation and premier of the movie suffered delays until the following year, well after their highly-successful released “Abbey Road” album. And with John Lennon's announcement to his band-mates that he wanted "a divorce" from The Beatles, the future of the group sat uncertain at that point.
Nonetheless, on January 3rd, 1970, George, Paul and Ringo entered EMI Studio Two at 2:30 pm, their sole purpose for the day aimed at the recording of “I Me Mine” from scratch. John was in Denmark enjoying a four-week vacation at the time, so the three Beatles took to recording the song themselves. This was fine since John's only contribution to the song meant dancing the waltz, something unlikely to be picked up by microphones in the studio.
It is noteworthy to mention here that a full four-and-a-half months prior, on August 20th, 1969, all four Beatles joined together in EMI Studios, the date that the master tape banding and running-order for the “Abbey Road” album took place. It can probably stand to reason also, if John had been in town on January 3rd, 1970, his expressed intention to quit the band, along with his personal distaste for George's “I Me Mine,” would have kept him away anyway.
The three Beatles recorded sixteen takes of the rhythm track of the song, the instrumentation had George on acoustic guitar and guide vocal, Paul on bass and Ringo on drums. It was decided by this point that the flamenco-style guitar part George originally envisioned for the song drop out entirely, and use Paul's 12-bar blues progression to seperate the two verses.
The session tapes reveal them enjoying the session; this reunion faired a welcome distraction for Paul and Ringo, who both had assigned themselves recording solo albums in recent months. George had also kept busy by joining Eric Clapton as guest guitarists in Delaney and Bonnie's British tour, giving the soon-to-be ex-Beatle a musical outlet to clear his mind. During this January session, the three Beatles appeared to fall back into their usual patterns, an instrumental jam even breaking out between takes six and seven, and a delightful preformed George-lead rendition of Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue Got Married" between takes 11 and 12.
Evidence of their camaraderie on this day rests in an announcement George made before 'take 15.' In response to a recent British press release that Dave Dee was splitting from the popular group “Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich,” and in acknowledgment of John's absence on that day, George states: “You all will have read that Dave Dee is no longer with us. But Micky and Tich and I would just like to carry on the good work that's always gone down in number two.” This announcement sounds off on the 1996 “Anthology 3” release.
'Take 16,' however, won overall best, onto which the following overdubs were recorded on this day, thus filling up the remaining open tracks on the eight-track tape: George on lead vocals, backing vocals from George and Paul (George double-tracking his lead vocals at certain points), Paul on organ, George on lead acoustic guitar, and George on distorted electric guitars (two overdubs). The entire results of this day's session appear on the “Anthology 3” compilation album, clocking in at a hefty 1:34 at this point. The session concluded at 12:15 am the following morning, so the three Beatles could rest up for another recording session later that afternoon to add overdubs to the song “Let It Be.”
With producer Glyn Johns accepted the task of assembling a soundtrack album for the soon-to-be-released “Let It Be” movie, he entered Studio One of Olympic Sound Studios in London to work on putting the album together for The Beatles' approval. He had previously submitted an assembled collection of this material for release in mid-1969 but rejected by the band. Now, with the knowledge that Twickenham footage of The Beatles rehearsing both “I Me Mine” and “Across The Universe” would appear in the film, and with “I Me Mine” recently officially recorded by the group, his primary focus on this day was to create stereo mixes of these two additional songs.
Only one stereo mix of “I Me Mine” was needed made by Glyn Johns for him to be satisfied. In keeping with the informal nature of the project, Glyn Johns included some studio sounds and chatter in this mix, Paul fooling around on bass and some brief dialog (George: “Alright. Are you ready, Ringo?” Ringo: “Ready, George”) came from one of the takes before the song begins. Since this mix still ran just over one-and-a-half-minutes long, it fit in well onto side two of the proposed album, which included eight songs. As history reveals, this new compiling of the “Get Back” album was considered as the title of the film at this point, but also got rejected by the band. Nonetheless, two Olympic Sound Studios master tapes for this proposed album still exist in the Abbey Road Studios library, both marked “KEEP, DO NOT SCRAP.”
Because of John and George's recent acquaintance with Phil Spector, this legendary producer received a call to sort through all of the session tapes of the project and put together the film's soundtrack album, now being titled “Let It Be.” The first attention he gave to “I Me Mine” was on March 23rd, 1970, in Room 4 of EMI Studios. “George Harrison was here most of the time, watching,” engineer Peter Bown recalles, adding, “George and I got on like a house on fire. We got the remixes done to the satisfaction of those concerned.” Preliminary stereo mixes of many of the “Let It Be” songs were done on this day by Spector, Peter Bown, and engineer Roger Ferris, although these staff members improved the three mixes and editing of “I Me Mine” at a later date.
This later date was April 1st, 1970, Phil Spector booking fifty studio musicians and vocalists to overdub orchestral arrangements, prepared and conducted by Richard Hewson, onto three “Let It Be” songs, including “I Me Mine.” The session began at 7 pm, the musicians setting up in the large EMI Studio One and the engineering staff convening in the control room of Studio Two. Ringo was also set up in Studio One to provide additional drums to the three songs.
After extensive work on “Across The Universe” and “The Long And Winding Road” were complete, Phil Spector and engineers Peter Bown and Richard Lush made two attempts at creating a tape reduction extended edit of the 1:34 long 'take 16' of “I Me Mine” to extend The Beatles' recording to a more palatable length. These two edit attempts became 'take 17' and 'take 18,' this second attempt viewed as the best and ready for the orchestral overdub. Toward the conclusion of the song, at the 1:21 mark just after the lyric “flowing more freely than wine,” Spector spooled back the master tape to the :31 mark to the segment of the first verse just before the lyric “all through the day.” He then let the rest of the song play out normally, resulting in hearing the 12-bar blues progression twice and transforming the song from containing two verses to three. This extended the song to 2:25, a perfect match for the orchestral score prepared for this day.
After Phil dismissed the choir and acoustic guitarists used on “Across The Universe” and “The Long And Winding Road,” Ringo and the orchestral musicians readied themselves for their overdub onto “I Me Mine.” Brian Gibson, who was the technical engineer, recalls how difficult it was working with Phil Spector on this day. “He wanted to hear it, while it was being recorded, exactly the way it would sound when finished: with all the tape echo, plate echo, chamber echo, all the effects. This was horrendously difficult in Studio One which is, technically, quite primitive. Spector was at the point of throwing a big wobbly – 'I wanna hear this,' 'I wanna hear that,' 'I must have this,' 'I must have that!' - when Ringo took him quietly aside and said, 'Look, they can't do that, they're doing the best they can. Just cool it.' Ringo didn't need to do that, but I think he could see that Spector was getting towards the end of his tether and was giving everybody a hard time. He wanted everyone to know who he was; he liked to assert himself.”
In the end, the brass and Ringo's new drum overdub was recorded onto track four of the eight-track tape, wiping one of George's vocals in the process, and allocated the string section to track six. This session wasn't complete until well after midnight, leaving the final mixing for the following day, April 2nd, 1970. On this day, once again held in Room 4 of EMI Studios, Phil Spector and engineers Peter Bown and Roger Ferris made three attempts at creating a stereo mix from 'take 18' of “I Me Mine,” designated as remixes 10 through 12. The orchestral overdubs were kept lower in these mixes, wisely allowing The Beatles' instruments and vocals to be the primary focus. Sections of remix 11 and 12 were then edited together to form the completed version of the song for release.
Sometime in 1996, George Martin and Geoff Emerick returned to 'take 16' of “I Me Mine,” as recorded on January 3rd, 1970, to create a new stereo mix for inclusion on “Anthology 3.” They presented the song with all of its overdubs from that day only, allowing listeners to enjoy the song as The Beatles recorded it minus all orchestration. George Martin also kept it at its original 1:34 length but thought to include George Harrison's “Dave Dee” introduction from 'take 15' for posterity.
Then in 2003, the engineering team of Paul Hicks, Guy Massey, and Allan Rouse entered Abbey Road Studios to create yet another mix of “I Me Mine” from the original 'take 16' for inclusion on the album “Let It Be...Naked.” An idea commissioned by Paul to present the album without the orchestration and choirs of the original 1970 album. The “naked” recording of this Harrison song is included on this release as it was on "Anthology 3." However, Phil Spector's idea of extending the song to a longer length repeats here, but with some notable differences. The edit in the second verse comes after George sings “all through your life,” Phil Spector's original edit preceded this line so as to include the lyric “all through the day” from the first verse. Also, the overdubbed organ and lead guitars are mixed differently in each of the two 12-bar blues progressions to create the illusion of different performances.
Song Structure and Style
In our analysis of the most popular extended “Let It Be” version of “I Me Mine,” we see that it comes to us in the format of 'verse/ bridge/ verse/ bridge/ verse' (or ababa) with a simple three measure introduction based on the chords of the verse. The verses are entirely in 6/8 time while the bridges are in a shuffle 4/4 beat.
The main focus of the three-measure intro is the overdubbed dual electric guitar leads, both playing totally different passages that work well together. Paul's organ is also heard prominently in this section; its rotating Leslie speaker especially sounds bigger in the third measure. In the far background, one can faintly hear the rhythm track that comprises George's acoustic guitar strums and Paul's bass.
The first verse comes next, which runs sixteen measures long. Ringo's drums enter here for the first time on the downbeat of the first measure, the final note of a guitar lead, and Leslie-effected organ chord from into ringing out in the background. With light strings playing in the background, Ringo plays a somewhat heavy 6/8 drum pattern riding on the hi-hat throughout the first eight measures. George's single-tracked lead vocals also arrive on the downbeat of the first measure while the organ dissipates by the second measure.
An effective acoustic guitar line is heard in the third and seventh measures of the first verse, while a simple electric guitar line appears in the third measure. Paul's bass continues throughout the verse in a somewhat subdued by appropriate fashion. At the same time, the strings swell dramatically in the ninth through twelfth measures and trail off in measures thirteen through sixteen. Paul plays staccato organ chords in the ninth through twelfth measures as well. Ringo focuses mostly on his toms during measures nine through twelve, but returns to the heavy 6/8 pattern in measures thirteen and fourteen, and then transform into a shuffle pattern using the ride cymbal in measure fifteen that moves into a transitional shuffle snare drum fill in measure sixteen.
The bridge that follows runs ten measures long (cutting short the 12-bar blues pattern it suggests) and transforms the minor key of the verses into a major key. With George and Paul harmonizing “I – I – I- me – me – mine” in measures one through eight, Ringo shows himself in top form by playing a hard-driving blues/rock pattern, alternating snare/hi-hat fills in measures two and six, with rolling tom fills in measures four and eight. George puts in an incredible performance on lead guitar as well, rocking out on measures two, four, six, and eight, the last one extending into measures nine and ten also, this rounding out the bridge very nicely.
Paul plays a walking pattern on bass during the bridge while pushing the limits on the organ throughout. He accentuates the empty spaces between the vocal harmonies with keyboard runs and then takes center stage in measures nine and ten, finalizing the last measure with a roll up and down the organ in a way that would make you think Billy Preston was playing a guest spot (or is he?!?). With George's final lead guitar line ringing out, Ringo brings back the 6/8 time-signature in measure ten with an appropriate triplet drum fill. Phil Spector appropriately gives the orchestra a break during the bridge to accentuate this amazing Beatles performance.
The second verse brings back the minor key of the song. It continues with the same instrumentation as the first verse, the only exception being a different orchestral arrangement that now incorporates brass. After the edit at the beginning of the thirteenth measure, the tune returns to the thirteenth measure of verse one, the only difference pairs a slight change in the orchestral performance that includes a final wavering note by the brass in measures fifteen and sixteen.
After an identical repeat of the bridge, the third verse appears again with a different orchestral performance than when we heard it the previous time. Phil Spector then allows the full second verse to play out, culminating in the brass coming to the fore during George's final double-tracked lyric “all through your life, I me mine...” which then hangs in the air as all instrumentation gradually fades away. Paul's final organ chord pulses twice during the final moments of the song, which adds a slightly hypnotic touch reminiscent of what's heard at the end of "Flying."
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