I'm Looking Through You

Story Section status: Outdated

Recording

Equipment Section status: Outdated

Recording Timeline

• 24 October 1965 (Sunday) — original recording, take 1 and superimpositions, EMI Studio Two, 2.30–7.00pm and 7.00–11.30pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ken Scott. Recording: I’m Looking Through You (take 1), then superimpositions onto take 1 in the evening. The version built that day led with handclaps and acoustic guitar, with maraca, organ and electric guitar behind them. It was complete, it was good, and it was set aside; the surviving assessment is that it sounds “just as good as the re-remake”. Two sessions in one day, an afternoon for the basic take and an evening for superimpositions, was the normal shape of a productive Studio Two booking in this period, and it means the version that went into the tape library was a finished record rather than a sketch.¹
• 6 November 1965 (Saturday) — re-make, takes 2–3, EMI Studio Two, 7.00pm–1.00am. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ken Scott. Recording: I’m Looking Through You [re-make] (takes 2–3). Thirteen days after the original, the song was started again from nothing rather than patched. The result was nearer but still wrong — “perhaps a little too fast and frenetic. Otherwise it was similar to the final, released version” — which locates the problem in the performance rather than in the arrangement, and explains why a third attempt was worth booking.¹
• 10 November 1965 (Wednesday) — re-re-make, take 4, EMI Studio Two, 9.00pm–4.00am. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ken Scott. Recording: The Word (takes 1–3); I’m Looking Through You [re-re-make] (take 4). One seven-hour session produced a finished new song in three takes and the third and final rhythm track for this one, “finally made in a way that pleased everybody”. Take 4 is the master behind every released mix.¹
• 11 November 1965 (Thursday) — vocal superimposition onto take 4, EMI Studio Two, 6.00pm–7.00am. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ken Scott. Recording: You Won’t See Me (takes 1–2); Girl (takes 1–2); superimpositions onto Wait and onto I’m Looking Through You. The vocals for this song went on “through the early hours of the morning”, in the last hours of a thirteen-hour session that completed the album, after two brand-new songs had been written and recorded and a shelved Help! track had been dressed up to fill the final slot.¹
• 15 November 1965 (Monday) — mono and stereo mixing, Studio One (control room only), 2.30–5.30pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Richard Lush. Mono mixing: I’m Looking Through You (from take 4). Stereo mixing: I’m Looking Through You (from take 4). Both masters were made in the same afternoon, in the final batch of Rubber Soul remixes alongside You Won’t See Me, Girl, Wait and a second stereo The Word. On 16 November the LP running order was worked out and telephoned over, placing this song third on side B; Harry Moss cut the mono lacquer on the 17th and again on the 19th, and the stereo on the 23rd.¹

Studio Notes

• Re-making rather than repairing — the striking thing about the three attempts is that none of them is a rescue of the one before. Each starts a fresh take number against a fresh basic track, and the abandoned material is abandoned whole. Re-making also resets the overdub work: handclaps, maraca, organ and guitar parts already committed to the October reel had to be played again in November onto a different basic track, because there is no way to carry a superimposition across from one take to another. On a four-track tape that is an expensive way to work — every re-make spends the same four tracks again from scratch and throws away the overdubs already carried on the old reel — and it is a different instinct from the reduction-mix habit the group would lean on within months, where a crowded tape is bounced down to free space rather than replaced. Here the problem was not that the tape was full. It was that the performance was not the one they wanted. The cost is visible in the take numbering itself: four take numbers across three reels, where a song worked up in one session would have run to a dozen takes on one. A high take count usually means a band converging on a performance; a low take count spread over three dates means a band that kept deciding the target had moved.¹
• What the first version had that the last one lost — the 24 October recording is described instrument by instrument: handclaps and acoustic guitar predominant, with maraca, organ and electric guitar, and vocals singled out twice over. The released re-re-make is a different arrangement, not a tidier version of the same one, which is why the assessment that take 1 sounds “just as good” is a judgement about two records rather than about two performances of one.¹
• The thigh-slap percussion — the percussive slapping heard on this track is the same sound Ryan and Kehew identify on Norwegian Wood, where the tape box lists it as ‘claps’ but it “actually sounds more like someone slapping their thighs (a sound also heard on ‘I’m Looking Through You’)”. It is a small but useful correction to the paper record: what the box calls handclaps is a body percussion sound with a duller, lower attack, and it recurs across the album rather than belonging to one song. It is also a reminder of how much of the percussion on these sessions was made by hand rather than by instrument, on an album that was moving away from electric textures anyway.²
• Two phantom credits on one sleeve — the organ the sleeve gives Ringo on this song is inaudible on the record and absent from the tape box, and the Hammond the same sleeve gives Mal Evans on You Won’t See Me is equally undetectable on tape or disc. Two errors on one album cover is a reminder that sleeve credits were written to be printed rather than to document a session, and that where the sleeve and the tape box disagree, the box is the primary evidence. It matters here beyond pedantry, because a reader listening for an organ on a track that has none will hear something else and call it that.¹
• The acoustic turn — this song is one of the tracks Ryan and Kehew name when they describe the album’s shift: Rubber Soul carried no cover versions, and songs such as Norwegian Wood, Michelle, Girl and this one were “more acoustic-based than electric, undoubtedly more of Dylan’s influence”. Ringo called it “the departure album”, and Paul dated the change in who was deciding things to around the same point: “You start off wanting to be very much dictated to… but around about that time we started to take over things.” Three recordings of one song is what that new latitude looks like in the session log.²
• Dry by design — the mixes made on 15 November belong to an album that “saw a significant shift in the use of the echo chamber”. Only a few of its songs carry any audible reverb, and where it is present it is slight: “most of the tracks were bone dry (one would be hard-pressed to find a Beatles song drier than ‘Wait’).” Since nearly every Beatles vocal to that point had been “doused with a measure of chamber”, trying “the exact opposite approach” was the experiment. On this track it leaves the acoustic guitars and the vocal close and unsoftened, which flatters a performance that had taken three attempts to get right. It also leaves the thigh-slap percussion and the acoustic strumming exposed, where a chamber would have blurred both into the same wash.²
• The last album with Norman Smith — both primary sources record it in nearly the same words: Rubber Soul was “his last LP with them”, and it was “the last time the group worked with engineer Norman Smith”. He wanted to produce rather than engineer, and shortly afterwards found a new group called The Pink Floyd and brought them into the EMI fold. Geoff Emerick took the desk from the Revolver sessions in April 1966, and the distance between the dry, close balance of these mixes and what happened to Beatles vocals from that point is the clearest audible marker of the handover.¹,²

Releases

• 1965 UK mono LP — Rubber Soul (3 December 1965, Parlophone PMC 1267, side B track 3) — the mono mixed on 15 November. It runs marginally longer at the end than the UK stereo, which fades earlier. Close, dry and centred, with no chamber behind the voice.
• 1965 US mono LP — Rubber Soul (1965, Capitol T-2442) — the same 15 November mono, in Capitol’s own album sequence.
• 1965 US stereo LP — Rubber Soul (1965, Capitol ST-2442) — the significant territorial variant, and the best-known oddity in this song’s discography. Capitol was sent the stereo mix untrimmed, so the American album opens the track with two false starts on guitar — possibly deliberate ones — that were edited off before the British pressing. Everything after them is the same 15 November stereo.
• 1965 UK stereo LP — Rubber Soul (3 December 1965, Parlophone PCS 3075, side B track 3) — the trimmed stereo: the false starts are gone and the song begins on the first proper downbeat. It fades a little earlier than the mono.
• 1987 CD — Rubber Soul (1987, EMI CDP 7 46440 2) — a new stereo mix for the CD issue. Paul’s vocal sits closer to the centre than on either 1965 stereo, and there is one audible slip: at 1:34 the second note of the third organ figure jumps to the centre while every other note of it stays right. That happens on this CD only.
• 1996 outtake release — Anthology 2 (1996, Apple CDP 8 34448 2) — the abandoned 24 October original, in a mono mix made the day after it was recorded. It is a different arrangement rather than an early draft of the released one, and it is the only official way to hear the version the session log rates as the equal of the master.
• 2009 remasters — Rubber Soul (2009, Parlophone 99457 2) — the stereo remaster carries the trimmed 15 November stereo and the mono companion the 15 November mono; neither is a new mix, and neither restores the false starts.