"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. 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. 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, 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.
Contrary to Martin's hopes, nothing from the rehearsal tape was deemed suitable for the Beatles' 1965 Christmas record. In 1968, six seconds' worth of Harrison, Lennon and McCartney's a capella singing – repeating the line "And you've got time to rectify" – was used in the soundtrack of the Yellow Submarine animated film. McCartney subsequently incorporated other segments from the "Think for Yourself" rehearsal into his 2000 experimental album Liverpool Sound Collage. A fifteen-minute edit of the full tape became available unofficially in 1991 on the bootleg compilation Unsurpassed Masters, Volume 7. In 1995, a mix of the song featuring only vocals was among several tracks that were in the running for inclusion on the Anthology 2 compilation album but were ultimately passed over.
Release and reception
EMI's Parlophone label released Rubber Soul on 3 December 1965 in Britain, with "Think for Yourself" sequenced as the fifth track, between "Nowhere Man" and "The Word". The album was a commercial and critical success, although initially some reviewers in the UK were confused by the band's more mature approach. The release also marked the start of a period when other artists, in an attempt to emulate the Beatles' achievement, sought to create albums as works of artistic merit, with a consistently high standard of original compositions and with increasingly novel sounds. Among the albums influenced by Rubber Soul was the Rolling Stones' Aftermath, which included fuzz-toned bass parts on the songs "Under My Thumb" and "Mother's Little Helper".
Author John Kruth writes that, with its vitriolic tone and an "edge" that was unfamiliar in the Beatles' work, "Think for Yourself" was "somewhat startling" to many listeners. In his album review for the NME, Allen Evans interpreted the song's message as "advice to someone who's going off the rails to think for himself and rectify things", and he admired the track's "good tempo and vocal sound". Record Mirror review panel opined: "Nice song but a feeling hereabouts that there's a sameness about some of the melody-construction ideas. Maybe we'll lose it later on …" While recognising Rubber Soul as another example of the Beatles "setting trends in this world of pop", KRLA Beat highlighted the "wonderful sound effect" created by McCartney's fuzz bass and concluded: "a good, strong, driving beat will keep this one on top." Melody Maker said that "Think for Yourself" was among the album's best tracks and also admired its "double tempo" sections and "good chugging maraca beat". Michael Lydon, who interviewed Lennon and McCartney for Newsweek laudatory feature on the Beatles in early 1966, quoted the song's chorus in the conclusion to his 1972 article for The Boston Globe, in which he reflected on the passing of the 1960s cultural revolution. He introduced the lyrics with a statement on the Beatles' impact: "Freedom to have a good time, to boogie, they showed, was a practical possibility for the average human. I'm glad I got the message."
"Think for Yourself" was one of the seven Beatles tracks that Capitol Records included on the 1976 compilation album The Best of George Harrison, released following the expiration of Harrison's contract with EMI. Coinciding with the release of the newly restored Yellow Submarine film in 1999, a new mix of the song was issued on the Beatles' Yellow Submarine Songtrack album.
Retrospective assessment and legacy
Among Beatles biographers, Tim Riley considers the track to be "a step beyond" Harrison's two contributions on Help!, with the fuzz bass providing "just the right guttural cynicism", yet he says the song lacks the "melodic sonorities and layered texture" that distinguishes the guitarist's other Rubber Soul composition, "If I Needed Someone". Riley adds that "Think for Yourself" merely serves to provide contrast with the Lennon songs either side of it on the album.