The Beatles song George Harrison said was like “a million others”

After breaking through in Europe with early hit singles like ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘Please Please Me’, The Beatles began to change the face of pop music with seismic effect. By the time their debut record of 1963 arrived, the band had become a regular presence on several major US radio stations.

With an appetite for global success on the level of their hero Elvis Presley, the Fab Four didn’t hesitate to record their follow-up, With the Beatles, which arrived by the end of 1963. The album housed George Harrison’s first solo songwriting submission, ‘Don’t Bother Me’ and set the band up nicely for their first visit to the US in February 1964. Beatlemania’s arrival in the States can be partly attributed to the efforts of Harrison’s sister, who lived with her husband in Illinois.

The Beatles’ early work was undoubtedly revolutionary in terms of mass appeal and global domination, but the true artistic renaissance would arrive a couple of years later. In December 1965, the sixth studio album, Rubber Soul, heard the group begin to transition under the influence of the dawning hippie age and the astute songwriting command of Bob Dylan.

Influenced by the work of Dylan and Beat Generation literature, simple love songs of yore were supplanted by intriguing tales like ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ and the suggestive hippie ditty, ‘Day Tripper’.

Beyond his landmark introduction of the sitar to Western music in ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’, Harrison contributed two of his own songwriting efforts to Rubber Soul: ‘Think for Yourself’ and ‘If I Needed Someone’. The latter stuck to the band’s tried and tested territory as a love song written for Harrison’s then-fiancée, Pattie Boyd.

Much of the track’s appeal spouts from its tumbling, Mixolydian melody, courtesy of Harrison’s 12-string Rickenbacker. Harrison noted that he had been inspired musically by the work of The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn, who had, in turn, been inspired by Harrison’s work in the early Beatles albums.

Although this sumptuous melody line hits the ear with all intended grandeur, Harrison humbly explained that the song was actually rather derivative and not just of McGuinn’s recent work. “‘If I Needed Someone’ is like a million other songs written around a D chord,” he said via The Beatles Anthology.

Adding: “If you move your finger about, you get various little melodies. 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.”

The Hollies subsequently covered ‘If I Needed Someone’, but their take on the track wasn’t to Harrison’s taste and caused a mid-decade rift. “It was based on the twelve-string figure from ‘The Bells Of Rhymney’ by The Byrds. I didn’t write it for The Hollies. They’ve done it as their new single, but their version is not my kind of music,” Harrison added.

“I think it’s rubbish the way they’ve done it,” he said. “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!”

A week later, Graham Nash, the lead singer of The Hollies, responded to Harrison’s dismissive appraisal. “Not only do these comments disappoint and hurt us, but we’re sick and tired of everything the Beatles say or do being taken as law,” he told New Musical Express. “The thing that hurt us the most was George Harrison’s knock at us as musicians. And I would like to ask this: if we have made such a disgusting mess of his brainchild song, will he give all the royalties from our record to charity?

“I’ll tell you this much: We did this song against a lot of people’s advice. We just felt that after nine records, we could afford to do something like this without being accused of jumping on the Beatles’ bandwagon. We thought it a good song. And still do.”

Adding: “About the crack about us sounding like session men, I suppose he means we don’t have any soul in our discs. Rubbish. We don’t profess to be a soul R&B-type group, and we never have. My opinion of the Beatles hasn’t changed. I still think they’re great, and I’m not going to say anything stupid like, ‘I’m going to burn all their records in my collection.’ No. I Like their music. But knocking comments like the one about us are a load of bollocks.”

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