It was time for The Beatles to turn a corner in 1965. The onslaught of Beatlemania had isolated the quartet from the outside world while on tour, while their recording contract kept them working at an unsustainable pace. As they sought to expand their sound and move beyond the basic sound of their earlier years, a lack of evolution in live concert sound necessitated that they continue playing hard-driving rock and roll well into their final concerts.
But it wasn’t like The Beatles were looking to abandon rock music. At the end of 1964, the Fab Four released the classic riff-rocking single ‘I Feel Fine’, proving that their dedication to rock and roll was still very much intact. The single’s B-side was even more indebted to the likes of Little Richard and Elvis Presley: ‘She’s a Woman’. With a bare-bones arrangement and one of Paul McCartney’s most raucous vocals, ‘She’s a Woman’ kept the manic energy of the band alive and well as they began to stare down a more psychedelic future.
The conception and recording of ‘She’s a Woman’ happened quickly, with McCartney having the idea of the song just before The Beatles entered the studio on October 8th, 1964. “I have a recollection of walking round St John’s Wood with that in my mind so I might have written it at home and finished it up on the way to the studio, finally polished it in the studio, maybe just taken John aside for a second and checked with him, ‘What d’you think?’ ‘Like it.’ ‘Good. Let’s do it!’” McCartney recalled in the book Many Years From Now.
With a cutting rhythm guitar part by John Lennon and a prominent bass line from McCartney, ‘She’s a Woman’ was kept purposefully simple. “Often one of us would come up with something that put a spark in the recording, and I think the spark on the recording of ‘She’s A Woman’ was the combination of John’s backbeat guitar and my bass,” McCartney observed in his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present.
Only seven takes of ‘She’s a Woman’ were recorded. On take five, the song devolved into a wild improvised jam, with McCartney screaming random phrases and the rest of the band flying off the handle. After six minutes of mayhem, Ringo Starr claims: “Well, we’ve got a song and an instrumental there”. Lennon laughs and informs the others he dropped his plectrum halfway through the track – the first domino to fall in the chaotic recording.
The band composed themselves and got two more takes of the song on record. It would be take six, the take immediately after the raucous jam, that was deemed the master. After a brief dinner break, McCartney added a piano line into the verses while George Harrison recorded a few identical solos that were layered on top of each other. With that, ‘She’s a Woman’ was completed in one day.
Check out the manic take five of ‘She’s a Woman’ down below.
