I'll Get You

I'll Get You was written mainly by John Lennon with some input from Paul McCartney on the bridge. The working title was Get You in the End. The duo sang the lead vocals in the recording, made July 1, 1963 at Abbey Road. John also contributed the Harmonica. It is considered unusual because the two sing mainly in unison on this track and there is virtually no lead guitar line. Paul contributed an unusual modal scale in the bridge (with a shift to a minor from D major), in imitation of a similar progression in All My Trials by Joan Baez.

In a later interview, Paul used this song as an example of the influence of Lewis Carroll in Beatles' lyrics, in which the listener is invited to participate in the process by using his or her imagination. In this case, the listener is asked to "imagine I'm in love with you." The lyrics employ the almost continuous use of "yeah," just as in She Loves You and other early Beatles tracks. Lennon said this was just the inherent scouse accent from Liverpool ("no one from Liverpool says 'yes'.") On the European continent the Beatles became known informally as the "Yeah-yeahs."

I'll Get You was released on August 23, 1963 as a single, on the b-side of She Loves You. (It also was on the b-side of the German release the following year, Sie Liebe Dich.) It was released in LP on The Beatles' Second Album in the US and on Past Masters, Volume One. It was not released on a UK album until The Beatles Collection (the Rareties release). Anthology 1 provides a live recording of the song from the October 13, 1963 performance at the London Palladium. The Lennon-McCartney team wrote I'll Get You as a sequel to From Me to You; however, when they came up with She Loves You, the decision was to relegate this song to the b-side. The stereo master of this song has been lost, making I'll Get You one of only 4 Beatles songs never released in stereo. (The other three are Love Me Do, She Loves You and You Know My Name (Look Up The Number).)