We Can Work It Out

“We Can Work It Out” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by Paul and John, with assistance from George. It was first issued as a double A-side single with “Day Tripper” in December 1965. The song was recorded during the sessions for the band’s Rubber Soul album.

We Can Work It Out is a song by The Beatles, written by John and Paul and led on vocal by Paul & John. Paul optimism + John middle-eight pessimism = perfect duality. Within the catalogue, its double-a-side thread connects it to Day Tripper. The Rubber Soul double A-side paired with ‘Day Tripper’ represented commercial calculation married to artistic integrity and emotional sophistication. John and Paul’s collaborative composition addresses relationship conflict with sophisticated harmonic movement and optimistic resolution avoiding cynicism. The track’s counterpoint between major and minor harmonic areas exemplifies the album’s technical advancement and increasing compositional ambition.

The session work falls within the band’s Rubber Soul period, recorded 20 October 1965 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road (Studio Two). George Martin produced; Norman Smith engineered. The net result of 525 minutes recording was just two takes, the second selected as ‘best’, with overdubs including vocals which alone took the entire evening session to perfect. Additional vocals were overdubbed on 29 October. Instruments included tambourine, drums, acoustic guitar, bass guitar and harmonium.

• Eight and three-quarter hours, two takes — the song was begun on Wednesday 20 October 1965 in Studio Two, four days after the other side of the single. The net result of 525 minutes recording was just two takes. The afternoon booking, 2.30–6.30pm, produced them; the evening booking, 7.00–11.45pm, was spent entirely on superimpositions. Almost nine hours of studio time produced one usable performance and the things layered on top of it.¹
• The whole band on one track, and no guide vocal — as on the other side of the single, the basic take was cut without a scratch vocal. Bass, drums, acoustic guitar and tambourine all went to track one together, which means the entire rhythm performance of this record exists as a single indivisible layer. Nothing in it can be raised, lowered or moved in any mix ever made, and that constraint is audible in every version of the song.²
• The first take broke on a time change — take 1 came apart at the third of the song’s five shifts into 3/4 time, the time change itself reportedly a brilliant suggestion by George. That is a revealing failure: the arrangement was new enough on the day that the metre caught the players out, and five separate shifts between four and three inside a two-minute pop song is an unusual thing to be learning while the tape rolls.²
• The harmonium went on next, and who played it is disputed — take 2 was complete, and a harmonium part was added to track two. The two primary accounts do not agree on the player. Lewisohn lists the instruments used and names John as the harmonium player without qualification. Ryan and Kehew read the first harmonium part as likely played by Paul, on the evidence that session outtakes clearly reveal his voice intimately close to the microphone on the harmonium track — a second harmonium part being John’s, added later alongside Paul’s doubled vocal. Both readings are recorded here and neither is resolved.^1,2
• Two tracks of voices, and a second harmonium hidden in one of them — track three took Paul’s lead vocal with occasional backing from John. Paul then double-tracked his vocal on track four, while John contributed a second harmonium part to the same track. The consequence is that the doubled vocal and the second harmonium are welded together: the drone under the choruses cannot be separated from the voice that sits on top of it, because they share a track.²
• A television mix exposed the gap — a rough mono remix was run off on 28 October, not for record but for the group to mime to at a Granada Television programme being shot in Manchester the following week. It was only when they heard a playback of this remix that the Beatles realised that more vocals needed to be added to the song. Extra vocals were superimposed the next afternoon, and the mono masters followed an hour later.¹

• The whole band on one track — what that costs forever — bass, drums, acoustic guitar and tambourine were committed together to track one, with no guide vocal to wipe later. Every mix of this song since, including the ones made decades afterwards, has had to treat that performance as a single object: the acoustic guitar cannot be brought forward without the drums, and the tambourine cannot be softened at all. On a record whose character comes from an acoustic strum pushing against a drone, that is the most consequential decision of the session, and it was taken in the first hour.²
• Five time changes, learned on the tape — the song moves between four and three five separate times, and take 1 broke at the third of them. A breakdown at a metre change is not a fluffed note; it means the arrangement had not yet become reflex. The time change was reportedly a brilliant suggestion by George, and its survival into the finished record — despite costing them a take on the day — is the clearest evidence that the middle eight’s lurch into waltz time was heard as the point of the song rather than as a difficulty to be smoothed away.²
• Who played the harmonium, and why the tape cannot settle it — the accounts diverge, and the disagreement is instructive. Lewisohn’s instrument list for the session names John at the harmonium. Ryan and Kehew read the first harmonium part as likely Paul’s, on the grounds that session outtakes clearly reveal his voice intimately close to the microphone on the harmonium track — a leakage argument, not a memory, and a strong one, because a singing player sits at a fixed distance from the instrument mic. Their reading gives John the second harmonium part instead. Both are recorded here; nothing on the tape or in either book resolves it.^1,2
• Two harmoniums, and only one of them can be heard cleanly — the first harmonium sits alone on track two; the second shares track four with Paul’s doubled vocal. That asymmetry has a consequence at the mixing desk and in the listening: one harmonium can be positioned freely and the other is locked to a voice. Brennan’s comparison of the stereo mixes catches this — at the very end of the 1965 stereo the two harmonium parts become separately audible, which is the only place on any release where the doubling is plainly exposed.^2,3
• A television playback changed the record — the rough mono run off on 28 October was never meant to be listened to critically; it existed so the group could mime to it in a Manchester television studio. Hearing it played back was what told them the song was short of vocals, and two hours were booked the next afternoon to add them. A mix made for a purpose entirely outside the record ended up altering the record — and the extra vocals went on the day the mono masters were cut, with no margin at all.¹
• Nine days between “finished” and finished — the song was considered done on 20 October, after 525 minutes of studio time had produced two takes and a full set of overdubs. It was not done. The vocals that the group heard as missing were not added until 29 October, and they were added in a two-hour booking that ended an hour before the mono masters were cut. A record that sounds settled and argued-through was in fact still being altered on the afternoon it was mixed, and the thing that caught the omission was not a critical listen in the control room but a rough tape made for a television studio in Manchester.¹
• The stereo was made twice, a year apart, by two different engineers — a stereo remix was made on 10 November 1965 by Norman Smith. The commonly circulating stereo mixes of this song and its partner were not created until a full year later, in 1966, and were mixed by neither Smith nor his replacement Geoff Emerick. Peter Bown, another respected EMI engineer, carried out the mixes in Room 65 on Studio Two’s retired REDD.37 console. Bown did not mix the songs in the same ‘dry’ manner that most of Rubber Soul had been mixed, adding a more significant dose of reverb to the tracks — so the stereo nearly everyone knows is wetter than anything the group signed off in 1965.^1,2
• An unresolved question about the 1965 stereo — the 1966 remake happened because the original stereo remix, never used, had been scrapped on 9 August 1966. Against that, Brennan’s variation listing assigns a stereo dated 10 November 1965 to the American “Yesterday”…and Today, which would mean the mix reached the public before it was destroyed. The two statements can both be true only if the American LP was cut from the 1965 stereo before the tape was scrapped. The page records the conflict rather than choosing: what is certain is that Britain heard no stereo of this song until the 1966 remake.^1,3