"Think for Yourself" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1965 album Rubber Soul. It was written by George Harrison, the band's lead guitarist, and, together with "If I Needed Someone", marked the start of his emergence as a songwriter beside John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The song's lyrics advocate independent thinking and reflect the Beatles' move towards more sophisticated concepts in their writing at this stage of their career. The song has invited interpretation as both a political statement and a love song, as Harrison dismisses a lover or friend in a tone that some commentators liken to Bob Dylan's 1965 single "Positively 4th Street". Among musicologists, the composition has been recognised as adventurous in the degree of tonal ambiguity it employs across parallel major and minor keys and through its suggestion of multiple musical modes.
The Beatles recorded "Think for Yourself" in November 1965, towards the end of the sessions for Rubber Soul. In a departure from convention, the track includes two bass guitar parts – one standard and one played through a fuzzbox. Performed by McCartney, this fuzz bass serves as a lead guitar line throughout the song and marked the first time that a bass guitar had been recorded using a fuzzbox device, as opposed to manipulating equipment to achieve a distorted sound. The group overdubbed their harmony vocals during a lighthearted session that was also intended to provide material for their 1965 fan-club Christmas disc. A snippet from this session was used in the Beatles' 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine. The song has also appeared on the 1976 compilation The Best of George Harrison and on the 1999 Yellow Submarine Songtrack album.
Background and inspiration
In his 1980 autobiography, I, Me, Mine, George Harrison recalls little about the inspiration behind "Think for Yourself". He said that his intention was to target narrow-minded thinking and identified the British government as a possible source. Partly as a result of the vagueness of his comments, the song has invited interpretation as both a political commentary and a statement on a failing personal relationship.
The song reflects the influence of Bob Dylan, with whom the Beatles had spent time socialising in May 1965, in London, and then in mid August, following the band's concert at Shea Stadium in New York. Just as their songs had encouraged Dylan to embrace rock music, Dylan's work inspired the Beatles, and particularly Harrison, as a nascent songwriter, to address more sophisticated concepts than the standard love song. In addition, since March that year, Harrison's outlook had been transformed by his and John Lennon's experiences with the hallucinogenic drug LSD; in a 1987 interview, he said that the drug had revealed to him the futility of the band's widespread fame. Author George Case groups "Think for Yourself" with two Lennon–McCartney compositions from the Beatles' Rubber Soul album – "I'm Looking Through You" and "The Word" – as examples of how the band's focus had progressed "from excited songs of juvenile love to adult meditations on independence, estrangement and brotherhood". In Ringo Starr's later recollection, Rubber Soul was the Beatles' "departure record", written and recorded during a period when, largely through the influence of marijuana, "We were expanding in all areas of our lives, opening up to a lot of different attitudes."
Composition Musical form "Think for Yourself" has a time signature and is set to a moderate rock beat. After a two-bar introduction, the structure comprises three combinations of verse and chorus, with the final chorus being repeated in full, followed by what musicologist Alan Pollack terms a "petit-reprise of the last phrase" to close the song. The chorus sections contrast rhythmically with the verses, providing a more upbeat mood.
The song's musical key is a combination of G major and G minor. Pollack comments that whereas Lennon and Paul McCartney had regularly employed a major key and its parallel minor to provide an element of contrast in their songs, Harrison's composition ensures that the two modes are "blended", so creating a form that is "neither quite really Major nor minor". In the description of musicologist Dominic Pedler, while G major appears to be the central key, the song's musical premise involves permanent tonic key ambiguity and "restless root movement" through extensive borrowing from the parallel minor key. The G7 chord over the introduction suggests a tonic key of G major and a musical mode of G Mixolydian, yet the verse opens with A minor, the ii chord in Roman numeral analysis, which suggests A Dorian mode, and the subsequent change to D minor then suggests A Aeolian mode, in which the chord represents iv. The immediate shift to a B chord (III in G major) followed by a C chord (IV in G major) creates further ambiguity, since these chords hint at a VI–VII rock run in D Aeolian. During the chorus, Pedler continues, the anticipated tonic-identifying V–I (D7–G7) shift is preceded by an unexpected VI (E/B) chord in second inversion that undermines its tonal direction.
The unusual chord progression is an example of the Beatles' use of chords for added harmonic expression, a device that Harrison adopted from Lennon's approach to melody. Musicologist Walter Everett describes the composition as "a tour de force of altered scale degrees". He adds that, such is the ambiguity throughout, "its tonal quality forms the perfect conspirator with the text's and the rhythm's hesitations and unexpected turns." Pollack also views the composition as musically adventurous; he identifies it as a "curious stylistic hybrid" in the pop/rock genre, comprising blues-inflected motifs within a folk-based framework.
Lyrics The song's message recalls that of Dylan's September 1965 single "Positively 4th Street", as Harrison appears to be ending a relationship, possibly with a lover. The lyrics adopt an accusatory stance from the opening line: "I've got a word or two to say about the things that you do." Author Ian Inglis describes the song as "a withering attack" in which "Harrison's blunt 'I left you far behind' and Dylan's curt 'It's not my problem' [from 'Positively 4th Street'] could be spoken by the same voice." Harrison also incorporates Dylan-esque surrealism in his reference to "opaque" minds and in the line "the good things that we can have if we close our eyes".
According to Beatles biographer Jonathan Gould, despite Harrison having envisaged "Think for Yourself" as a form of social commentary, contemporary listeners most likely interpreted it as a love song, given the limited perception afforded the work of pop artists. As a result, Gould includes the composition among "a new genre of 'anti-love' songs", a style that was inaugurated by Dylan in 1964 and later developed by the Rolling Stones. When read as a farewell to a romantic partner, according to James Decker, an English literature academic and Henry Miller scholar, the lyrics express the view that their relationship is based on a false reality, whereby the individual is submerged within the bounds of the relationship. In the final verse, Harrison urges his partner to "try thinking more", confident that she too will come to see the emptiness in her life choices. While adhering to this particular interpretation of "Think for Yourself", Decker says that "Harrison and the Beatles have thus raised the stakes from the naïve idealism of hand-holding" that typified love songs of the period.
In the opinion of Steve LaBate of Paste magazine, the song "implores listeners to question what they're told and live a more examined, conscious life". Author and critic Kenneth Womack identifies an air of superiority in Harrison's lyrics. In his description, the song represents "the inaugural entry (with shades of 'Don't Bother Me') in Harrison's existential philosophy, later to be adumbrated by Eastern religion and thought, about the mind-numbingly automatic and insensate manner in which human beings undertake their lives in the workaday world".
Recording Basic track The Beatles recorded "Think for Yourself" towards the end of the sessions for Rubber Soul, at which point they were under pressure to meet the deadline for completing the album. Recording for the song, which had a working title of "Won't Be There With You", took place at EMI Studios (now Abbey Road Studios) in London on 8 November 1965. The group achieved a satisfactory basic track in one take, with a line-up comprising two electric guitars, bass guitar and drums. Lennon also overdubbed a keyboard part, played on either a Vox Continental organ or an electric piano.
Fuzz bass part
McCartney overdubbed an additional bass part, which he played through a fuzzbox effect unit known as a Tone Bender. The recording of a bass through a fuzzbox was unprecedented at the time, as was the inclusion of both a standard bass and "fuzz bass" on a song. Gould and Everett consider that the Beatles' adoption of this effect was inspired by the Rolling Stones' 1965 hit "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", on which the distorted, fuzz-tone sound of the lead guitar riff had been a key element. However, Harrison credited Phil Spector's production of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", by Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans – a 1962 recording that, after the distorted lead guitar sound had been created accidentally in the studio, led to Gibson's invention of the first fuzzbox.
McCartney's riff-dominated part serves the role of a lead guitar throughout the track. The inclusion of fuzz bass, and its layering beside a standard bass part, typified the Beatles' willingness to experiment with sound on Rubber Soul. McCartney used a Rickenbacker 4001S, a solid-body guitar that gave his bass playing on Rubber Soul a more precise tone than he had been able to achieve with his usual Höfner "violin bass". Inglis comments that, in its dialogue with Harrison's vocal lines, the "growling" fuzz bass contributes to the song's "persistent mood of menace", while Gould describes the effect as "the snarls of an enraged schnauzer, snapping and striking at its lead".
Vocal overdubs Typical of the group's sound on the album, the song's arrangement includes three-part harmonies sung in homorhythm. Since the band also had to have their annual fan club Christmas disc completed at this time, their producer, George Martin, instructed the studio engineers to set up a second, ambient microphone and tape the Beatles as they rehearsed and recorded their vocal parts for the track. The tapes captured the three vocalists – Harrison, Lennon and McCartney – engaging in humorous banter and often unable to remember their parts. As a rare record of the group at work in the studio, the "Think for Yourself" rehearsal tape has invited comparison with the Beatles' Let It Be documentary film, made in January 1969. Whereas that film documents a period of acrimony among the band members, the 1965 tape shows them, in author Mark Hertsgaard's description, "clearly [taking] joy in one another's company". Once the vocals had been recorded successfully, and then double-tracked, Starr overdubbed tambourine and maracas.