Yes It Is

Story

Recording

Equipment

Recording Timeline

• 16 February 1965 (Tue) — rhythm track, Studio Two — EMI Studios, Studio Two, 5.00–7.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ken Scott/Jerry Boys. Recording: Yes It Is (takes 1–14). The two-hour session followed the afternoon overdub session for I Need You and Another Girl (2.30–5.00pm). Fourteen takes were required to perfect the rhythm track, with take 14 selected as “best.” George Harrison’s volume-pedal guitar was “predominant again” — the second consecutive song (after I Need You the previous evening) to feature the effect.¹
• 16 February 1965 (Tue) — three-part harmony overdub, Studio Two — EMI Studios, Studio Two, 7.00–10.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ken Scott/Jerry Boys. Recording: SI onto Yes It Is take 14. “Three hours for John, Paul and George — all singing live — to get the harmony to everyone’s satisfaction. This was recorded as an unnumbered overdub onto take 14.” The live three-part vocal was recorded in a single pass each attempt, with each new attempt overwriting the previous on the same track — the method that would have generated a new take number “in previous years.”¹
• 18 February 1965 (Wed) — mono mixing, Studio Two control room — 10.00am–1.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ken Scott. Mono mixing: Yes It Is (from take 14), alongside Ticket To Ride, Another Girl, and I Need You.¹
• 23 February 1965 (Mon) — stereo mixing, Studio Two control room — 10.00am–1.00pm. P: n/a. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Malcolm Davies. Stereo mixing: Yes It Is (from take 14) — first in the list of 11 stereo remixes prepared by Norman Smith without George Martin. “Yes It Is remains unissued on disc in this form at the time of writing [1987].” The stereo mix was subsequently released on the 1988 Past Masters compilation.¹

Studio Notes

• Three-part live harmony — the This Boy lineage — The three-part harmony vocal recorded in the 7.00–10.00pm overdub session required three full hours to perfect. All three singers performed live together into the same microphone pass, with each attempt overwriting the previous on the four-track tape. This is the same harmony method used on This Boy (recorded November 1963), which Lewisohn explicitly cites as the stylistic precedent. The difference in method between 1963 and 1965 is the take-numbering convention: on This Boy, each harmony attempt generated a new take number; on Yes It Is, the harmony was overdubbed as an unnumbered SI onto take 14. “In previous years it would have become take 15.”¹
• Volume-pedal guitar — second consecutive Beatles use — George Harrison’s use of the volume pedal on Yes It Is is the second documented instance on a Beatles recording, after I Need You taped the previous evening. Lewisohn describes it as a “foot-controlled tone pedal — later to be known as wah-wah pedal” (on the I Need You entry) and here as a “tone pedal guitar.” K/R identifies the device as a volume pedal and the four-track contents table labels it “Electric Guitar (Volume Pedal)” on both tracks. The volume pedal appears on Track 2 (basic-track guitar) and Track 4 (overdubbed guitar), indicating George recorded two separate volume-pedal guitar parts. On the companion I Need You, K/R identifies the guitar as George’s Rickenbacker 12-string.^1,2
• B-side relegation — “embarrassment of songwriting riches” — Yes It Is was not selected for the Help! film soundtrack “nor was it included on what was to become the Help! album. Instead it appeared merely as the B-side of the Beatles’ next single, ‘Ticket To Ride’, such was the group’s embarrassment of songwriting riches.” The song’s quality relative to its release status — a B-side rather than an album track — reflects the depth of the February 1965 sessions, which produced 11 finished recordings in six days, more than enough to fill both the film soundtrack and the single.¹
• Unnumbered overdub as transition marker — The specific notation that the harmony overdub “in previous years… would have become take 15” is one of Lewisohn’s clearest articulations of the 1965 production-method shift. The four-track overdub technique — recording new material directly onto the master take rather than starting fresh — had been used intermittently since 1963, but by February 1965 it was the default for vocal and instrumental additions. The shift made take numbers a less reliable indicator of the actual amount of work invested in a recording, a theme that would reach its extreme at Trident in August 1968 with Dear Prudence’s “distinctly silly” take-1 statistic across three full sessions of eight-track overdub work.¹
• Same-session microphone configuration — The 16 February session shared its microphone setup with I Need You and Another Girl: “AKG D19c as Ringo’s overhead and an AKG D20 on his bass drum. The D20 remains in use on Paul’s bass rig. John and George’s A.C.100 SDL rigs are mic’d with U47 microphones. John and Paul sing into a U48 set to figure-of-eight.” The three-part harmony would have been captured through the same U48 vocal setup, with all three voices singing into the figure-of-eight polar pattern.²

Releases

• 1965 UK single Ticket To Ride / Yes It Is (9 April 1965, Parlophone R 5265, B-side) — Released mono master mixed at EMI Studio Two on 18 February 1965 (from take 14). P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ken Scott. The B-side placement reflected the abundance of new material from the February sessions rather than any deficiency in the song itself — “such was the group’s embarrassment of songwriting riches.”¹
• 1965 US single Ticket To Ride / Yes It Is (19 April 1965, Capitol 5407, B-side) — US Capitol pressing from the same mono master.
• 1988 Past Masters, Volume One (7 March 1988, Parlophone CDP 7 90043 2) — First stereo release of Yes It Is. The stereo mix had been prepared by Norman Smith on 23 February 1965 but remained “unissued on disc in this form” for over two decades. Past Masters collected non-album singles and B-sides for the first time in a canonical compilation.¹
• 2009 Stereo Remasters — Past Masters (9 September 2009, Apple/EMI 5099969 94392 5) — 24-bit flat transfer of the 1965 stereo master. The 2009 Mono Masters companion carries the 1965 mono master.