105. If I Needed Someone
Without George, no Byrds.Without the Byrds, no If I Needed Someone
I commented on Think For Yourself that it was the first really striking George song, but noted that it wasn’t actually my favorite of the two George tracks on Rubber Soul. Well, here we are with that other, slightly more preferred track. And the reason why I like I Needed Someone more is actually pretty closely related to its distinctiveness, or lack thereof.
Because the defining characteristic for each of these songs is their guitar sound. Think For Yourself had that skuzzy bass, which was new and surprising. By contrast, If I Needed Someone is instead iterating on a style that was already very much in the zeitgeist. Specifically, the jangly folk rock that the Byrds had sent into the stratosphere in the summer of 1965. George himself was quite clear about this, even sending a pre-release copy to the Byrds and letting them know that the riff and rhythm track were both based on Byrds songs.1
Of course, the Beatles themselves—and more specifically George Harrison—had instigated this trend in the first place, with the trademark shimmering Rickenbacker sound that had astonished everyone the previous year. That’s just how quickly sounds were evolving in this period, and just how intermeshed were the various artists leading the way.
These interactions helps to place If I Needed Someone within a context, and also help to give it some clear structural clarity. And I think that’s what ultimately makes it George’s most successful song to date. That’s slightly different than his most interesting song to this point, which would be Think For Yourself—it has a uniqueness that you don’t hear in this one. But that uniqueness also means it’s just a tad undercooked. It inches toward the idea of something even grimier, but doesn’t quite get there. Still a great song, but not one that feels entirely locked in. Whereas this track feels like a perfect bullseye. They knew how they wanted it to sound, and they got it exactly right.
Along the same lines, the songwriting is also extremely solid—surprisingly so, actually, given that George was still very new to the compositional side of things. But really, when I say it’s ‘solid’ I suppose what I really mean is that it slides in quite seamlessly with the other late-1965 Lennon-McCartney material. Basically, it doesn’t really sound all that distinctively like a Harrison song, so much as it sounds like George modeling the tricks of John and Paul.
In fact, apart from the bridge and the liner notes, there’s not a whole lot here that would make you realize it was a George song at all. The verses and the wordless ‘ahs’ are all done in harmony, with John’s voice actually probably being a little more aggressive in the mix. And while George is clearly singing the bridge, it’s such a Beatles-y bridge—exactly the sort of thing that defined all those famous Lennon-McCartney originals of the previous two years.
Now, it makes perfect sense that George would find himself mimicking the style. It was obviously an exceptionally successful style, and also one that he himself had played a part in helping to create. “John and Paul” wrote the songs officially, but many of them had really been worked out collectively in the studio. In this case, George wrote the song, but clearly wrote in the style of other things they’d also been working on. And they collectively fit it together into a composite whole. So this is a Harrison composition, but it’s also just a Beatles song. Which is to say: it’s really good!
Rather famously, George had a lot of trouble coming up with song titles. And more broadly, seems to have had trouble conceptualizing the lyrics. The classic example of this is shown in Get Back, where he’s demoing Something and clearly knows he’s got an all-timer in his hands if he can just fit the pieces together, but is utterly stuck on the ‘attracts me like…’ line.
I wonder about that when I listen to this song. Among the half-dozen songs he’s written to this point, one was already called I Need You. Now he’s got If I Needed Someone. Was that just a coincidence? An easy reach for something that he’d already gotten ahold of?
And beyond the similarity in title, it also shares the peculiarity of being a ‘love song’ for Patti that pretty clearly isn’t all that much of a love song. I Need You was really a breakup song. And If I Needed Someone isn’t a song for a serious partner; it’s the song you write for a crush who you know you should stay away from, but who you can’t help reach for. It’s gentle in some ways (“Had you come some other day then it might not have been like this”) but also calculated (“Carve your number on my wall and maybe you will get a call from me / If I needed someone”).
I actually think that makes it a Rorschach test of a song. If you want to hear it as sweet and wistful, there’s enough here to sustain that reading. A tender feeling of affection, maybe felt over a summer holiday, but one that can’t be acted on. But you could just as easily read him as a selfish collector of conquests—romancing this girl a bit, sleeping with her, and then causally sending her away with a kiss-off letter: “it was fun, but I’ll be getting back to my real partner now.”
Given what we know about life as a Beatle in 1964 and 1965, the latter seems like the far more autobiographically situated reading. And yet, listen to the sound of the thing, and tell me this isn’t essentially a sweet song. Whatever the literal sentiment of the words, the way it’s being performed tells me that there’s genuine feeling involved.
The Hollies recorded a cover of If I Needed Someone which came out simultaneously with Rubber Soul—both released by Parlophone on 3 December 1965. It hit the top 20 in the UK, making it George’s first appearance as a composer on the hit parade, despite some extremely unflattering comments from John and George himself about their performance.2 Which, to be fair, is not particularly inspired.
Of the contemporaneous covers, I think my preference is for this one from the Kingsmen, which is equal parts gentle and boisterous.
He apparently sent Derek Taylor (their publicist and former Beatles press officer) a letter saying “’If I Needed Someone’ is the riff from ‘The Bells Of Rhymney’ and the drumming from ‘She Don’t Care About Time’, or my impression of it.”
George was quoted in NME the week after the release registering his discontent:
They’ve done it as their new single, but their version is not my kind of music. I think it’s rubbish the way they’ve done it. They’ve spoilt it. They are all right musically, but the way they do their records, they sound like session men who’ve just got together in a studio without ever seeing each other before. Technically they’re good, but that’s all!