I Need You (BDJ arrangement)

“I Need You” was recorded on February 15th at EMI Studio Two. Both George and John played acoustic guitar, Paul played bass and Ringo played drums. Five takes of the song were recorded before everyone was satisfied, “take five” being deemed as best. This ended the night at 10:30.

The next day, February 16th, 1965, they recorded all of the overdubs to “I Need You.” First on the agenda was for George to record his lead vocals and then double-track them. The double-tracked take also included Paul harmonizing with George on the last phrase of each verse, which usually was the phrase “I need you.” However, at the end of the second verse, the words were “you told me,” which Paul hesitated on, no doubt, because he was unsure of what the words were. John and Paul then overdubbed background "aahs" during parts of the verses as well as the bridges.

Another important overdub occurred next, which was George’s lead guitar work throughout the song. He used a foot-controlled tone pedal which was hooked up to the volume of the guitar. (This devise would be more commonly used as a wah-wah pedal very soon afterward by various artists.) Finally, Ringo tapped out a beat on a cowbell during the bridges.

Seeing all this effort spent on "I Need You", it is disappointing to hear how poor the finished track sounds. George sings off-key in several places, the Aah's of Paul and John sound as if they were very tired, there are no typical George fills etc. And there's no guitar solo (while George could play them so well).

I ascribe this lacklustre production to George Martin, who - I suspect - focussed on the Lennon-McCartney songs (who produced the hit singles) and dedicated a minimum effort to the second Harrisong ever recorded.

Room for improvement: added strings and horns to the backing track, slowed the whole thing down a bit, re-pitched the vocals. And added a BDJ solo, recorded in 2 takes, Take 2 being deemed 'best'.