Beatles Week – If I Needed Someone @christiansmusicmusings.wordpress.com

Christian and I share a lot of the same musical tastes. It’s odd because neither one of us grew up with The Beatles or that great 60s generation. We both grew up in the 80s but share a lot of the same likes. He has a very informative site that is a must if you are a music fan. Go see him at https://christiansmusicmusings.wordpress.com/

My Favorite Beatles Tune

The Beatles are my all-time favorite band, so rejecting an invitation to write about my most beloved song or something else about the four lads from Liverpool simply wasn’t a possibility. I chose the first option. Thanks for the generous offer, Max!

So, what’s my favorite Beatles tune? That’s easy – all of them, except perhaps for number 9, number 9, number 9…Well, that doesn’t reduce the choices by much. Seriously, with so many great Beatles songs, it’s hard to pick just one!

My first Beatles album was a compilation, Beatles 20 Golden Hits, released by Odeon in 1979. Below is an image of the track list.

While each of the above songs is great and would deserve a dedicated post, the album doesn’t include the tune I decided to highlight. If you follow my blog or know my music taste otherwise, by now, you may be thinking I’m going to pick another song The Beatles recorded after they stopped touring.

Perhaps gems like A Day In the Life, Strawberry Fields Forever or I Am the Walrus come to mind. In fact, I previously said if I could pick only one, it would be A Day In The Life. The truth is with so many great tunes to choose from, it also depends on my mood and the day of the week.

That said, one song I’ve really come to love only within the past five years was recorded by The Beatles while they still were a touring band: If I Needed Someone, one of George Harrison’s earlier tunes that made it on a Beatles album: Rubber Soul, except for North America where it was included on Yesterday and Today, the record that became infamous because of its initial cover showing The Beatles in butcher outfits with mutilated baby dolls.

According to his 1980 autobiography I, Me, Mine, as cited by Wikipedia, Harrison apparently didn’t feel If I Needed Someone was anything special. He compared it to “a million other songs” that are based on a guitarist’s finger movements around the D major chord.

True, it’s a fairly simple song. And yet I totally love it!

Music doesn’t have to be complicated to be great. In this case, a major reason why I dig this tune as much as I do is Harrison’s use of a Rickenbacker 360/12, a 12-string electric guitar that sounds like magic to my ears. Of course, when you hear Rickenbacker, one of the first artists who come to mind is Rickenbacker maestro Roger McGuinn who adopted the Rickenbacker 360/12 to create the Byrds’ signature jingle-jangle guitar sound.

There is an interesting background story. The inspiration to McGuinn to use the Rickenbacker 360/12 came after he had seen Harrison play that guitar in the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night. Harrison’s If I Needed Someone, in turn, was influenced by the guitar sound McGuinn had perfectionated, especially on the Byrds’ rendition of Pete Seeger’s The Bells of Rhymney. The rhythm was based on the drum part in She Don’t Care About Time, a tune by Gene Clark, the Byrds’ main early songwriter.

“George Harrison wrote that song after hearing the Byrds’ recording of “Bells of Rhymney”, McGuinn told Christianity Today magazine, as documented by Songfacts. “He gave a copy of his new recording to Derek Taylor, the Beatles’ former press officer, who flew to Los Angeles and brought it to my house. He said George wanted me to know that he had written the song based on the rising and falling notes of my electric Rickenbacker 12-string guitar introduction. It was a great honor to have in some small way influenced our heroes the Beatles.”

Apart from the signature guitar sound of the Byrds, If I Needed Someone also is viewed as reflecting Harrison’s then-developing interest in Indian classical music by the use of drone over the main musical phrase and its partly so-called Mixolydian harmony. I’m basing this on Wikipedia and frankly don’t fully understand it.

Harrison wrote the song for English model Pattie Boyd whom he married in January 1966. There has been some discussion over the ambivalent tone of the lyrics. Does a guy who sings, “If I needed someone to love you’re the one that I’d be thinking of” really sound like he’s madly in love with the girl and wants to marry her? Or how about “Carve your number on my wall and maybe you will get a call from me” – “maybe” neither sounds very committed nor romantic, at least not in my book!

If I Needed Someone has been covered by various other artists. First out of the gate were The Hollies who released the tune as a single on December 3, 1965, the same day Rubber Soul appeared in the UK. Their rendition, which Harrison evidently didn’t like, peaked at no. 20 on the UK Official Singles Chart. Various other versions were recorded in 1966 by American bands Stained Glass, The Kingsmen and The Cryan’ Shames, as well as South African jazz trumpet player Hugh Masekela. Among additional covers that appeared later is a brilliant rendition by Mr. Rickenbacker maestro himself from 2004.

The Beatles – If I Needed Someone

The Byrds – The Bells Of Rhymney

The Byrds – She Don’t Care About Time

Roger McGuinn – If I Needed Someone

If Needed Someone

If I needed someone to love
You’re the one that I’d be thinking of
If I needed someone

If I had some more time to spend
Then I guess I’d be with you, my friend
If I needed someone

Had you come some other day
Then it might not have been like this
But you see now I’m too much in love

Carve your number on my wall
And maybe you will get a call from me
If I needed someone
Ah, ah, ah, ah

If I had some more time to spend
Then I guess I’d be with you, my friend
If I needed someone

Had you come some other day
Then it might not have been like this
But you see now I’m too much in love

Carve your number on my wall
And maybe you will get a call from me
If I needed someone
Ah, ah

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball fan, old movie and tv show fan... and a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

41 thoughts on “Beatles Week – If I Needed Someone @christiansmusicmusings.wordpress.com”

  1. Very informative, didn’t know the background on this song. Rhymney was an odd choice for an American band no? It fit the folk rock feel they were creating though. I was aware of The Beatles influence on the Byrds – particularly George’s guitar playing but not the other way around! Was that a Revolution No. 9 joke I just read? Great stuff.

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    1. There was some cross pollination going on with those two. McGuinn was at the top of my favorite guitar players when I listed them…over everyone….cause of his sound. I saw him in 88 or 89…it was great.

      The most maligned song in the world…Revolution #9…

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      3. I saw McGuinn once back in Germany in the ’80s opening solo for Bob Dylan, which was pretty cool. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were also on the bill as the second opening act. That was great since Mr. Zimmerman turned out to be a big bummer.

        A good deal had to do that in preparation for the gig I ingeniously had listened like a madman to the “Before the Flood” live album. Naively, I thought Dylan essentially would replicate that record. Instead, he opened his set with “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and then proceeded to perform songs I had never heard before.

        My longtime music buddy who is a huge Dylan fan cheerfully told me afterwards I had just witnessed Bob being Bob! 🙂

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      6. To tell you the truth Christian…I think him mixing up his songs and the mystery of it…keeps people coming back…kinda like The Grateful Dead….it’s very similiar without the long jams

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  3. Good pick. I’d come close to saying ‘great minds think alike,’ LOL…although it’s not the song I picked, I do reference it in the bit I wrote for this and I think we agree on some of the points. It seems like the first inkling of George coming into his own as a songwriter, and it’s one of the better songs on ‘Rubber soul’ (I actually listened to that whole album just a few days back.) Also, I second your motion for the WORST Beatles song!

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    1. “One of the better songs on Rubber Soul” makes it sound like there are bad ones…other than the overtly misogynistic (but way too catchy for its own good – meaning I hated myself for liking it) “Run For Your Life”, I can’t think of any I’d call bad. My Spanish teacher heard “Nowhere Man” on the way to school one morning and delayed our lesson to play it for us.

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  5. This is a great song because of its simplicity. George uses the “finger movements around the D chord” again in “Here Comes The Sun.” Listen to “If I Needed Someone,” then to “Here Comes The Sun”: you’ll notice that the former sounds a little darker. That’s Mixolydian harmony at work. I could go into the theory, but it makes my brain hurt…

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  6. Christian, you know I’m on Cloud 9 after reading your post. Thank you so much for covering the meticulous details of the tune and how the guitar’s influence moved back and forth. George having Derek personally deliver the record to McGuinn had to be the thrill of a lifetime. I heard a different story about who the song was or wasn’t about but I can’t remember it. Superb choice and write-up, buddy!

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  7. Quote from the book, verbatim:
    “If I Needed Someone is like a million other songs written around the D chord. If you move your finger about you get various little melodies (and sometimes you get various little maladies). That guitar line, or variations on it, is found in many a song and it amazes me that people still find new permutations of the same notes.”

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      1. You’re welcome, and I understand. When I saw you mention the book I just pulled it off the shelf to see what else he said. That was it! Was kind of expecting a little more, but the brevity lends credence to his not thinking much of it…

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  8. Nice choice there very much under-appreciated. I will be honest i knew The Hollies version first! George songs were always worthy, and i am currently back into The Byrds’ Eight Miles High which has magnificent guitar work. Oh, and Revolution no. 9 is still a racket. When I do my Shoulda-Been Beatles Albums track lists feature one day that will not feature…. 🙂

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    1. Yea The Hollies had a single of this in the UK right?
      You know…Revolution #9 has grown on me…I never saw it as a song…just a sound collage…but I will tell you my least favorite Beatles song… Wild Honey Pie….I could listen to Revolution #9 over that. I like “Honey Pie” but hate Wild Honey Pie

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    1. Thanks for doing it dude! I really appreciate it. People don’t seem to be burning out on them…which is great…but we are only halfway through lol

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  10. When you compare this to the song I wrote about, ‘Please Please Me’, the difference in under three years is amazing. And then add another three years, the difference between this and the White Album (and, yes, Revolution No.9 🙂) It’s wild. What a band.

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    1. Heck add another 2 years and you get I Am The Walrus…
      You know…Revolution #9 doesn’t bother me…it’s not a song…it’s a sound montage…now they did a song called Wild Honey Pie…My absolute most disliked Beatle song.

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  11. I like it when the Beatles get folky. I love that The Beatles and Byrds were fans of each other’s work and the cross-Atlantic inspiration really pushed them both to create even better music.

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