We Can Work It Out

We can work it out
The Beatles
publication	December 3, 1965
length	2 min 15 s
Genre (s)	Folk rock
Author (s)	Lennon / McCartney
Cover versions
1971	Stevie Wonder
1976	The Four Seasons

We Can Work It Out ( English , we can find a solution ) is a song by British band The Beatles , released in 1965 and became a worldwide hit. It was composed by Paul McCartney and John Lennon under their joint copyright Lennon / McCartney .

background

Paul McCartney wrote the song after an argument with his then girlfriend Jane Asher in one of the bedrooms at his father's Cheshire estate . The stanzas and the refrain come from his pen , which have an overall rather optimistic mood. John Lennon wrote the pessimistic counterpart in the middle section.

admission

The recordings for We Can Work It Out dragged on for eleven hours over two days. Up until that point, the band hadn't worked on any other song for so long. The song was recorded while working on the album Rubber Soul at London's Abbey Road Studios . The producer was George Martin , assisted by Norman Smith .

On October 20, 1965, the band first rehearsed the song and then recorded two takes . The subsequent overdubbing of additional instruments and vocals took five hours . The distinctive harmonium played by Lennon was discovered by accident in the studio and it was decided during the session to use it. George Harrison's idea to let the middle part of the song end in three- four time only arose during the session.

On October 28, 1965, George Martin made a mono mix of the song, which was not intended for publication. This mix should rather serve as full playback for an appearance on the television program The Music of Lennon and McCartney , in which the band appeared. The band decided to re-record the vocals. This happened on the following October 29, 1965, when more harmonium was added to the recording. The final mono mix was then produced. A stereo version was initially not necessary, as the song was only to be released as a single and in 1965 those were only published in mono. We Can Work It Out first appeared in stereo on June 20, 1966 on the US compilation album Yesterday and Today .

publication

Originally, Day Tripper should be released as the A-side of the Beatles single. However, Beatles executive Brian Epstein suggested that We Can Work It Out would sell better. Lennon disagreed and insisted on Day Tripper as the A-side. Ultimately, a compromise was made, and the single was released on December 3, 1965 as a double A-side at the same time as the album Rubber Soul . It was the first double A-side ever published.

On November 23, 1965, the Beatles recorded three music videos in black and white at Twickenham Film Studios in London, which were sent to television broadcasters. Most of the time, the video showing the band in black suits playing the song was shown.

We Can Work It Out became a world hit and reached number one on the singles charts in Great Britain and the United States . In Germany the song reached number two.

Cover versions

Cover versions have been released consistently since We Can Work it Out , including Petula Clark (1966), Deep Purple (1968), Valerie Simpson (1971), The Four Seasons (1976), Melanie (1978), Chaka Khan (1981) ), Tesla (1990), Heather Nova (2002), Chris de Burgh (2008) or Big Time Rush (2012). A version by Stevie Wonder , which was released as a single in 1971 and reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 , was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1972 (Best Male R&B Vocal Performance).

In 1987, the coverte Austropopgruppe S.TS the song with the German title Red ma us from the .

Paul McCartney released a live version in 1991 as part of the MTV Unplugged concert series . Since he had forgotten the lyrics, the song had to be interrupted several times.

Web links

• We Can Work It Out at www.beatlesbible.com
• Video on YouTube

Individual evidence

1. ↑ [1]
2. ^ Mark Lewisohn: The Beatles Recording Sessions. New York 1989: Harmony Books. ISBN 0-517-57066-1 .
3. ↑ 29 October 1965: Recording, mixing: We Can Work It Out, Day Tripper , The Beatles Bible.
4. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from December 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.