Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 18 February 1965
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Norman Smith
Released: 6 August 1965 (UK), 13 August 1965 (US)
John Lennon: vocals, 12-string acoustic guitar
Paul McCartney: bass guitar, maracas
George Harrison: acoustic guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar
Ringo Starr: drums, tambourine
Johnnie Scott: tenor flute, alto flute
Available on:
Help!
Anthology 2
One of the highlights of The Beatles' Help! album, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away was also the first of their songs since 1962 to feature a session musician.
The song also demonstrates the increasing influence of Bob Dylan upon John Lennon's songwriting in 1965. Interestingly, The Beatles were beginning to record with acoustic instruments at the same time that Dylan was picking up an electric guitar.
That's me in my Dylan period again. I am like a chameleon, influenced by whatever is going on. If Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can. Same with Dylan.
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
Like the title track of the Help! album, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away was a chance for Lennon to lay bare his emotions in song.
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away is my Dylan period. It's one of those that you sing a bit sadly to yourself, 'Here I stand, head in hand...' I'd started thinking about my own emotions. I don't know when exactly it started, like I'm A Loser or Hide Your Love Away, those kind of things. Instead of projecting myself into a situation, I would try to express what I felt about myself, which I'd done in my books. I think it was Dylan who helped me realise that – not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work.
Anthology
The opening lines of The Beatles' song bear a resemblance to I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Have Never Met), which appeared on Dylan's 1964 album Another Side Of Bob Dylan.
Here I stand, head in hands
Turn my face to the wall
If she's gone I can't go on
Feeling two foot small
The Beatles
I can't understand, she let go of my hand
And left me here facing the wall
I'd sure like to know why she did go
But I can't get close to her at all
Bob Dylan
During the recording Lennon mistakenly sang 'two foot small' instead of 'two foot tall'. "Let's leave that in, actually," he told his childhood friend Pete Shotton. "All those pseuds will really love it."
It has been suggested that the song was written for The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein, who was a homosexual. Lennon and Epstein went on holiday to Barcelona, Spain together in April 1963; upon their return rumours began to spread in Liverpool that the pair had shared a sexual experience.
Although this was always denied by the pair, The Beatles' biographer Hunter Davies later claimed that Lennon did admit to him, off the record, that an encounter took place in Spain. "John wasn't a homosexual but he was daft enough to try anything once," Davies wrote in The Beatles, Football And Me, his 2006 autobiography.
Whether the song relates to the incident, or even to Epstein, is debatable. It has also been claimed that You've Got To Hide Your Love Away was about an affair with a woman that Lennon was having at the time.
In the studio
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away was recorded in the afternoon of 18 February 1965. The Beatles taped nine takes, only two of which were complete.
Anthology 2 featured take five, the only other full version recorded. It also incorporated a count-in from the aborted take one, and John Lennon saying that McCartney had broken a glass in the studio.
Take nine was the Help! album version. Track one contained John Lennon on 12-string acoustic guitar, George Harrison on a Spanish acoustic guitar, Paul McCartney on bass guitar, and Ringo Starr playing drums with brushes.
Track two was an overdub of Lennon's vocals.
The third track had more 12-string acoustic guitar, this time played by Harrison, maracas played by McCartney, and tambourine by Starr.
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away was the first Beatles song since Love Me Do to feature an outside musician. Johnnie Scott, a flautist and musical arranger, first recorded a tenor flute as The Beatles taped their parts. He then overdubbed an alto flute part to complete the song.
They told me roughly what they wanted, ¾ time, and the best way of fulfilling their needs was to play both tenor flute and alto flute, the second as an overdub. As I recall, all four of them were there and Ringo was full of marital joys; he'd just come back from his honeymoon.
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn
According to George Martin's session notes, the alto flute was overdubbed on track four. It is unclear which track the tenor flute was recorded on.
Lennon played a 12 string on this, it would be nice if you wrote how many string all guitars in all songs had (except six string guitars, they are unnecessarily to note specifically)
Does anyone else think he is singing about his mothers death. If you listen to some of the lyrics Here I stand head in hand,
Turn my face to the wall,
If she’s gone I can’t go on
Feeling two foot small
Everywhere people stare
Each and every day
I can see them laugh at me
And I hear them say
Hey you’ve got to hide your love away
Hey you’ve got to hide your love away
How can I even try?
I can never win
Hearing them, seeing them
In the state I’m in
How could she say to me
“Love will find a way?”
Gather round all you clowns
Let me hear you say
Hey you’ve got to hide your love away
Hey you’ve got to hide your love away”
Lennon obviously found it hard expressing his mother death and how it effected him. His aunt mimi seemed to want him to carry on as normal, as if nothing had happened, and McCartney also said that it wasn’t macho to cry at death, so you had to man up in Liverpool during the 50’s. I listen to it and think he sounds sad. Either way it’s an amazing song and the story behind it is very well sang and makes people think. I just think the ….”if she’s gone I can’t go on”….and “I can see them laugh at me….” and “everywhere,people stare…” sounds like something that people think around death. Just a thought …..
I think that likely played into the lyrics.
i cry listening to it… lovely.
It’s not an all-acoustic recording because Paul is definitively playing bass on it (rather than guitar)… watch the scene from the “Help!” movie and listen to the record!
I’ve noticed that “acoustic” and “unplugged” recordings often include an electric bass, possibly because they’re easier to amplify without losing sound quality.
Although you are correct about the bass, the scene in the movie proves nothing. Scenes are set-up for cinematic purposes, not accuracy. One scene in the Bahamas (“Another Girl”? – can’t remember which song) shows all four swapping instruments throughout. Meaningless.
The 4-track-recording features:
– the rhythm track with Lennon’s strummed acoustic twelve-string Framus, Paul’s bass and Ringo’s brushed snare (left channel on CD)
– Ringo’s overdubbed tambourine, Harrison’s acoustic guitar and maracas on a second track (right channel)
– Lennon’s vocal and one flute on a third track
– second flute on the fourth track
(Tracks 3 and 4 are mixed in the center)
Es uno de los mejores momentos de Lennon en plan Dylan. El primer verso es realmente impactante
Here I stand head in hand
Turn my face to the wall
If she’s gone I can’t go on
Feelin’ two-foot small…
To me its the best vocal-part John ever did. He sounds so warm, so peaceful, so sad.
That’s debatable. He sings off-key in many instances — BUT he apparently did so on purpose to achieve the Dylan-effect and ultimate sincerity. It is definitely John projecting fully into the song.
And this makes me wonder if the source of this depression was his marital status, “officially” locked to Cynthia and Julian, even though he was hardly faithful, and that exposed to all his friends and entourage. I doubt the loss of Julia play much of a role in the song. It’s one of my favorite Lennon compositions. The cover, by “The Silky” was a huge hit in the New York area, when I was a teen, and still very palatable today.
Best-ever? Not really. Off-key in spots and tired/lazy. It does add to the effect and mood, and may have been done on-purpose. But not the “best” by any means.
The remaster sounds absolutely stunning…you can hear shards of metal from the guitar strings falling on the floor…
The first time that a session musician was recruited by The Beatles to play a “classical” instrument. It wasn’t “Yesterday”.
I think Harrison’s part is incredibly underrated in this song. The part he plays on six string really brings the whole song together, it took me years to notice what he was playing. He’s not playing straight chords as Lennon is, he’s playing a melody. It’s beautiful, and the song would be incomplete without it. Doesn’t trouble me to say that the day I properly noticed what he was playing I just burst out crying. His guitar is way low in the mix. I always just heard the Lennon chords. Listen for the Harrison guitar. It’s worth it 🙂
Totally agree. The ending part of the anthology version is where you really hear it. Superb
I feel like John may have been talking about the days when he had to hide Cyn away from the public. It seems like it was really embarrassing for him to be married and also to have to hide it from everyone.
There’s something odd about the bass. Was it recorded acoustically?
I love the song and love the scene in Help! where they play (mime) it.
The flutes are out of tune though :-(. It always bugs me.
One other really important point: The guitars are all tuned in e minor.
All the guitars are tuned in E minor? Where on earth did you get that idea?
Nobody tunes a guitar to an open minor chord (at least experienced guitarists don’t). There’s not even one minor chord in this song!
he is right. it is in e minor.
No he’s not. Could you be thinking that the guitars are tuned down a step? Which they are not…
The guitars are NOT tuned to e minor.
Sorry, to clarify. The tuning is a lowered tuning.
The guitars are tuned down half a step to D?-G?-C?-F?-A?-D? / E?-A?-D?-G?-B?-E?.
This makes the song in the key of Gb.
Gives it a much more melancholy sound than the standard tuning.
Lots of artists/bands have used this tuning routinely e.g. Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana.
See Shifted Tunings on this wikipedia page for more examples.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_guitar_tunings#Shifted
Rgds
Steve
Paul did exactly this in Yesterday, the common tunning a key lower. But not on this song.
I am interested in this. So how do you play the Dsus4-D-Dsus2 part in the chorus? If that is on a guitar which is tuned down a tone, as you suggest, that would mean making that change to an E shape… or putting a capo on the second fret which would effectively get you back to standard tuning. Or did they detune then speed the tape up so it starts on a concert G as it does on the album?
I loved this song when I first heard this on The Love Songs compilation and then later when I got a copy of Help!, the album it originally was off. I love the scene with this song on it in the film Help! Whilst John Lennon was influenced by Bob Dylan, this was still very much his song and a real step forward in his writing. I just love the opening of this song and its whole feel. A song he was justifiably always proud of.
All i know is that John is incredibly sexy in this video. I want him so bad. Too late. Such an amazing talent. Yoko u were a lucky gal.
When I first saw help in the early 80’s, this was the one song that jumped out at me. I loved it instantly. Still do. It is so well done, easy to play on guitar and nearly perfect (to me). Might be my favorite of theirs attributed solely to John. Just beautiful.
Not sure about the tuning. When I play it along with the recording, I use G to start and it seems fine.
The article says “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away was recorded in the afternoon of 18 February 1965. The Beatles taped nine takes, only two of which were complete. Anthology 2 featured take five, the other full version recorded.”
I’m wondering if this is true because on the Anthology video, there is a version of this song with only John and his guitar, as a tribute to Brian Epstein after the documentary covers his death. This version has a completely different vocal from either the released track or the Anthology CD release. Anybody know where this comes from?
Take #5 has a different mix of guitars than used in the final mix. There is a very obvious classical guitar being played by George Harrison along side of the 12 string that John Lennon played (Possibly the same classical guitar that he used on “And I Lover Her” ). This guitar generally strums a similar part to the 12 string while adding a richness to the overall tone. Both guitars augment melody lines in the rhythm track and a third guitar is introduced in the right channel for the D chord “rundown” with the bass guitar to the chorus line.
On another note….the Beatles always used the piano as a reference to tune their instruments….George Martin would most likely not have tolerated freely tuning by ear when a classical instrument or piano was to be used in the recording. This song is literally only 20 cents flat of A440 (100 cents = 1 semitone). The likely scenario is that the song was minutely slowed down in the mastering process as a matter of personal preference. To be fair, the flute can be lengthened (flattened) to accommodate badly tuned instruments but would normally tune to a reference instrument such as an oboe in an orchestra or the piano in the studio.
Doug,
A question about the beautiful flute section….what key is the flute part played in?
I’m interested in learning that part, as faithful to the original as possible. Many thanks.
I’m having a Beatles Lecture at college and the Prof. said that this song is about Brian Epstein and homosexual love. Totally agree. And the “two foot small” is just another one of John Lennon’s word play.
Actually Paul suggested changing the line to “two foot small”.
My third favorite Beatles tune. Short. Sweet. Impactful. Unforgettable.
You’ve missed Ringo’s tambourine on track 3, and the top of page line-up needs tweaking.