Yes It Is

Story Section status: Outdated

Recording

Equipment

Recording Timeline

• 16 February 1965 (Tuesday) — overdubs, Studio Two, 2.30–5.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ken Scott. The afternoon went on finishing two songs begun the day before: an overdub onto take 5 of I Need You and another onto take 1 of Another Girl. The microphone and guitar set-up written up for this day covers all three of its songs, including the one still to come: AKG D19c and D20 on Ringo’s kit, a D20 on Paul’s bass rig, U47s on the guitar amplifiers, a U48 at figure-of-eight for the singers, John on his new Fender Stratocaster and George using his new volume pedal.^1,2
• 16 February 1965 (Tuesday) — recording, Studio Two, 5.00–7.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ken Scott/Jerry Boys. Yes It Is, takes 1–14, the backing track. Take 14 is the one every later step builds on. The by-ear track breakdown puts drums, bass and acoustic guitar together on track 1 and the pedal guitar on track 2, which fits the year’s habit of putting the music on the first two tracks and leaving the other two free for vocals and overdubs.^1,2
• 16 February 1965 (Tuesday) — vocal overdub, Studio Two, 7.00–10.00pm. Same producer and engineers. Recording: SI onto take 14. It took “three hours for John, Paul and George — all singing live — to get the harmony to everyone’s satisfaction.” The by-ear breakdown hears vocals on track 3 and, on track 4, more vocals with a cymbal and a second pedal-guitar part, so the overdub carried more than the singing. The harmony went on take 14 itself and was never given a take number.^1,2
• 18 February 1965 (Thursday) — mono mixing, Studio Two control room, 10.00am–1.00pm. P: George Martin. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Ken Scott. Four songs from the week were mixed to mono that morning: Ticket To Ride from take 2, Another Girl from take 1, I Need You from take 5 and Yes It Is from take 14. The same day’s afternoon and evening went on You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away and two more new songs. This morning’s mono is the Yes It Is on the single in Britain and America.^1,3
• 23 February 1965 (Tuesday) — stereo mixing, Studio Two control room, 10.00am–1.00pm. P: n/a. E: Norman Smith. 2E: Malcolm Davies. Yes It Is from take 14 opened a morning of stereo remixes of all 11 new songs, “made under the supervision of Norman Smith, not George Martin.” Its release history is in conflict. Lewisohn, writing in 1987, has this stereo still “unissued on disc in this form”; Brennan lists it on a 1976 Dutch reissue single and a 1986 British promotional cassette, and on Past Masters, Volume One, issued in March 1988, where it reached general release.^1,3
• 9 April 1965 (Friday) — UK single release. Ticket To Ride / Yes It Is, Parlophone R 5265, the Beatles’ first single of 1965. Capitol issued the same coupling in America as 5407 on 19 April, and on 14 June put Yes It Is on side B of the American LP Beatles VI, after What You’re Doing. From the first take to the British shops took under eight weeks, and the song was recorded in a single evening of that time.¹

Studio Notes

• Two microphones, three singers, one loudspeaker. Overdubbed vocals were sung to the backing track played out loud through the studio’s big RLS10 speaker, and the problem was keeping that speaker out of the vocal microphones. The answer was the Neumann U48’s figure-of-eight pattern, “remarkably effective at rejecting sound arriving from the sides”: turn the microphones side-on to the speaker and very little of it is recorded. For Yes It Is John sang lead into one microphone, while George and Paul faced each other across a second and sang their harmony parts into it. The patterns also kept the lead and backing vocals apart on tape and “allowed three performers to be recorded with only two mics.” Even after the TG desk arrived in 1968 with its relative multitude of microphone inputs, the group sometimes went on recording group vocals this way.²
• Why it took three hours. The three of them sang together, live, and the whole evening session, three hours, went on getting “the harmony to everyone’s satisfaction.” The session sheet logs the result as an overdub on take 14, not as a fresh take: “In previous years it would have become take 15.” The numbering is the clue to the change. All fourteen numbered takes were made between 5.00 and 7.00pm, on the backing; the vocal went on top of take 14 instead of becoming a take of its own. So the count of fourteen measures the backing track only and says nothing about the three hours spent on the singing, which is where most of the song’s five hours went.¹
• Tone pedal or volume pedal. The sources disagree about what George had under his foot. Lewisohn, writing about I Need You the night before, calls it “a foot-controlled tone pedal”, “later to be known as wah-wah pedal”, and here simply a “tone pedal guitar”; Kehew and Ryan call it a volume pedal, new that week, and on I Need You describe the swells as “played by George with his Rickenbacker 12-string and volume pedal”. Which guitar he used on Yes It Is is not stated.^1,2
• A track sheet worked out by ear. The four-track breakdown for this song is not copied from a tape box. Kehew and Ryan mark it as one of the songs whose layout is “presented based on aural evidence”. By ear: drums, bass and acoustic guitar on track 1; “Electric Guitar (Volume Pedal)” on track 2; vocals on track 3; and “Vocals, Cymbal, Electric Guitar (Volume Pedal)” on track 4. If that reading is right, the song has two separate pedal-guitar parts, one on the backing and one added with the evening’s vocals, and a cymbal overdub, but it is an informed listening, not a document.²
• Before the J37. In February 1965 the four-track machines were still Telefunkens: the M10 in machine room 1B and the older T9U in 1A, kept in their own rooms because their size precluded them from being installed in the control rooms. The Studer J37 that changed that arrived in April, after this song was finished. The 18 and 23 February mixes were done in the Studio Two control room, booked on its own for the mornings, with Norman Smith at the desk both times.^1,2
• A stereo made without the producer. The stereo of Yes It Is was the first of a morning of stereo remixes of all eleven new songs, made under Norman Smith, not George Martin; the sheet gives no producer at all. The mix has a dropout, a tape defect, on one word of the first verse, and an extra pedal-guitar note under the opening word. British Parlophone left it out of its 1977 and 1979 collections, allegedly because of the dropout, and used the mono or a new mock stereo made from it instead.^1,3
• The fake stereo on Beatles VI. Capitol never used Norman Smith’s stereo in 1965. The stereo Beatles VI carries a mock stereo that Capitol made from the mono, so a 1965 American listener with a stereo copy heard the mono mix dressed up, not a stereo balance. In 1977 the British and American Love Songs compilations used a second mock stereo, also made from the mono. Both fake stereos descend from the single mono mix of 18 February.³
• An echo in 1969. The three-voice harmony came back at the very end. On 4 August 1969 the three-part harmony vocals of Because, a nine-part harmony built from three voices recorded three times, were finished, “marking a nostalgic throwback” from the last album “to some of the group’s earliest recordings, like ‘This Boy’ and ‘Yes It Is’.” An acetate of Yes It Is, cut in April 1965, also survives.^1,2

Releases

Yes It Is has three versions a listener can tell apart: the 1965 mono; the 1965 stereo, with a dropout on one word and an extra pedal-guitar note at the start; and the Anthology 2 outtake. Until the 1980s, the LPs sold as stereo carried a fake stereo made from the mono instead.

• 1965 UK single — Ticket To Ride / Yes It Is (9 April 1965, Parlophone R 5265, B-side) — the 18 February mono, the only mix issued in Britain at the time. The same mono returned on the Rarities LP (1978–79) and the 1989 CD single.
• 1965 US single and LP — Capitol 5407 (19 April 1965); Beatles VI (14 June 1965, Capitol T-2358 mono / ST-2358 stereo, side B) — the single and the mono LP carry the 18 February mono. The “stereo” LP is Capitol’s mock stereo made from that mono (see Studio Notes). Both LP versions are on The Capitol Albums, Vol. 2 (2006, Apple 57497 2).
• 1976 Netherlands single — R 5265 (in a boxed set of reissues) — the 23 February stereo, on its earliest known issue.
• 1977 UK and US LP — Love Songs (Parlophone PCSP 721; Capitol SKBL 11711) — a new mock stereo made from the mono, not the true stereo.
• 1986 UK promotional cassette — Only the Beatles (Stilletto/Parlophone SMMC-151) — the true stereo’s first British appearance, on a Heineken offer available by mail order for a few weeks.
• 1988 CD — Past Masters, Volume One (7 March 1988, EMI CDP 7 90043 2) — the 23 February stereo on general release: the dropout in the first verse and the extra pedal-guitar note under the opening word are both there.
• 1996 CD — Anthology 2 (Apple CDP 8 34448 2) — an outtake in mono that breaks down partway; at that point it cross-fades into the finished take, newly mixed in stereo. Both mixes were made in 1995 and edited together.