She Said She Said

"She Said She Said" is a song primarily written by John Lennon (credited to Lennon/McCartney) and recorded by The Beatles for their 1966 album Revolver. George Harrison recalled helping construct the song, which was about one of his and Lennon's first LSD trips.

This song is considered to be the only Beatles song which Paul McCartney did not participate in any part of the recording process.*

Background & Inspiration

In late August 1965, Brian Epstein had rented a house at 2850 Benedict Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills, California for the Beatles' six-day respite from their US tour. The Beatles found it impossible to leave and instead invited guests, including actress Eleanor Bron (their co-star in the film Help!) and folk singer Joan Baez. On 24 August, they hosted Roger McGuinn and David Crosby of the Byrds and actor Peter Fonda.

Fonda wrote for Rolling Stone magazine:
I finally made my way past the kids and the guards. Paul and George were on the back patio, and the helicopters were patrolling overhead. They were sitting at a table under an umbrella in a rather comical attempt at privacy. Soon afterwards we dropped acid and began tripping for what would prove to be all night and most of the next day; all of us, including the original Byrds, eventually ended up inside a huge, empty and sunken tub in the bathroom, babbling our minds away.

As the group passed time in the large sunken tub in the bathroom, Fonda brought up his nearly fatal self-inflicted childhood gunshot accident, writing later that he was trying to comfort Harrison, who was overcome by fear that he might be dying. Fonda said that he knew what it was like to be dead, since he had technically died in the operating theatre. Lennon urged him to drop the subject, saying "Who put all that shit in your head?" and "You're making me feel like I've never been born." Harrison recalls in The Beatles Anthology: " was showing us his bullet wound. He was very uncool."

Lennon explained in a 1980 interview:
We didn't want to hear about that! We were on an acid trip and the sun was shining and the girls were dancing and the whole thing was beautiful and Sixties, and this guy – who I really didn't know; he hadn't made Easy Rider or anything – kept coming over, wearing shades, saying, "I know what it's like to be dead," and we kept leaving him because he was so boring! … It was scary. You know … when you're flying high and "I know what it's like to be dead, man."

Lennon eventually asked Fonda to leave the party.

Composition

Lennon began working on "She Said She Said" in March 1966, shortly before the Beatles started recording Revolver. On the home recordings he made at this time, the song was titled "He Said" and performed on acoustic guitar. Lennon said that the episode with Fonda had stuck with him, and when writing the song, "I changed it to 'she' instead of 'he.'" Harrison recalled helping Lennon construct the song from "maybe three" separate segments that Lennon had. Harrison described the process as "a real weld".

Recording

"She Said She Said" was the final track recorded during the Revolver sessions, and was hastily added when the album lineup was found to be a song short. It took nine hours to rehearse and record the entire song, complete with overdubs. After the recording of the song, The Beatles producer George Martin is reported to have said: "All right, boys, I'm just going for a lie-down."

The creative cooperation among the four Beatles was at its highest during the Revolver period. There nevertheless remained a philosophical divide between McCartney and Lennon, Harrison and Ringo Starr due to McCartney's refusal to try LSD. McCartney took part in the early takes for "She Said She Said" but did not contribute to the finished recording. He recalled: "I think we had a barney or something and I said, 'Oh, fuck you!,' and they said, 'Well, we'll do it.' I think George played bass." Harrison played a Burns bass guitar, which he had used earlier in the Revolver sessions, during initial recording for "Paperback Writer". Harrison also contributed the lead guitar part, incorporating an Indian quality in its sound and providing an introduction that Riley describes as "outwardly harnessed, but inwardly raging". Case describes the recording as "a metallic spiral of guitar and drums as aggressive as anything by the Who or the Yardbirds".

Rodriguez highlights McCartney's walkout as one of "a handful of unsolved Beatles mysteries". When identifying the probable causes for McCartney's uncharacteristic behaviour, he cites later comments made by Lennon: specifically that Lennon appreciated Harrison's tendency to "take it as-is" whereas McCartney often took a musical arrangement in a direction he himself preferred; and that, given Lennon and Harrison's habit of teasing their bandmate over his refusal to take LSD, McCartney possibly felt alienated by the song's subject matter. Lennon expressed satisfaction with the completed track, adding, "The guitars are great on it."

*: Side two of Yellow Submarine soundtrack album consists of original score for the movie composed and arranged by producer George Martin but was credited to The Beatles.