The Beatles song inspired by Paul McCartney’s bass hero
Having achieved global acclaim and a lifetime of riches from a hoard of rhythm and blues style lovesongs, The Beatles began to mix things up a bit. Before we embraced The Beatles of the psychedelic late-1960s, there was a brief interim characterised by a change in pace and increased lyrical diversity. This moment was marked most accurately by the 1965 album Rubber Soul.
It is generally understood that the lyrical maturity attained in Rubber Soul owed thanks to the towering influence of Bob Dylan. The album’s folk-rock tendencies, especially in songs like ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ and ‘I’m Looking Through You’, would reinforce such comparisons.
In the run-up to Rubber Soul, McCartney wrote ‘You Won’t See Me’, another folk-infused track in keeping with the album’s style, but it also had influences rooted in Motown.
McCartney wrote the classic hit about his then-spiralling relationship with Jane Asher. The song first manifested when he was staying at Asher’s parent’s house in London. With Asher away performing in a stage adaption of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations at Bristol’s Old Vic, McCartney’s thoughts began to wonder. ‘You Won’t See Me’ traces McCartney’s frustration and anxiety as he struggled to contact his geographically and emotionally distant girlfriend.
In Barry Miles’ 1997 biography, McCartney described how he constructed the musical side of the Rubber Soul classic. “This was written around two little notes, a very slim phrase, a two-note progression that I had very high on the first two strings of the guitar: the E and the B strings. I had it high up on the high E position, and I just let the note on the B string descend a semitone at a time, and kept the top note the same, and against that I was playing a descending chromatic scale. Then I wrote the tune for ‘You Won’t See Me’ against it.”
“To me it was very Motown-flavoured,” McCartney added, discussing his influences at the time. “It’s got a James Jamerson feel. He was the Motown bass player, he was fabulous, the guy who did all those great melodic bass lines. It was him, me and Brian Wilson who were doing melodic bass lines at that time, all from completely different angles, LA, Detroit and London, all picking up on what each other did.”
James Jamerson was one of the most prolific yet uncelebrated bassists of the 1960s and ’70s. He was usually uncredited but performed on most of Motown Records’ biggest hits over this period, offering innovative bass guitar and double bass lines to jazz, R&B and soul compositions.
As well as Bob Dylan’s folk rock, The Beatles were heavily influenced by American soul music while creating Rubber Soul. The album was named so after McCartney heard the phrase “plastic soul” used to describe The Rolling Stones. The term was commonplace in the ’60s as a descriptor of white musicians who adhered to traditionally Black musical styles.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.