If you could point to the precise moment when the Beatles’ pivoted from chart-angled pop into their expansive second phase, it’s highly likely to have taken place in 1965. It was the year of Rubber Soul - the record which John Lennon retrospectively cited as the turning point in the band’s songwriting. That album’s broadening musical and lyrical reach was encapsulated by a single which revealed the growing strengths of both Lennon and McCartney. And one magical decision in particular exemplified that like no other.
The Song: The Beatles - We Can Work It Out
The Magic Moment: 0:36 - John Lennon’s profound lyrics, the drop into a minor key and the shift to 3/4 waltz time during the bridge
The Origin
We Can Work It Out’s mesmerising arrangement was assembled during the band’s four-week recording sessions for Rubber Soul in October/November 1965. But its starting point came a few months earlier following a falling-out between Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend, Jane Asher.
Frustrated with trying to communicate his point of view and constantly butting heads with Asher, McCartney channeled this angst creatively into a positive bubble of optimism. He made a song which sought to resolve the tension.
“This particular song [was]: ‘Try to see it my way.’ When you’re a songwriter, it’s a good thing to just go off and get your point of view in a song, and with a Beatles song, if it’s going to be heard by millions of people, you can spread a good message,” McCartney said in his book The Lyrics: 1956 to The Present. “If you wanted to say it in one line, it would be, ‘Let’s not argue’. If you wanted to say it in two lines: ‘Let’s not argue/Listen to me’. Obviously that is quite selfish, but then so is the song.”
Though the verses' reflection of relationship strain was a slight shift upwards in complexity from the more simplistic and sweeter lyrical fare of I Feel Fine, Eight Days a Week and their ilk, the song still fit into a record-selling niche the Beatles had cornered the market on. It was a positive, life-affirming love song.
Unsure of how to expand the song's basic, rolling framework, McCartney took the song to John Lennon's house ahead of the recording session. There, it was elevated into the pantheon of all-time-great singles with the addition of a new contrasting section, conceived by Lennon, that would balance the hopefulness of McCartney's chorus with a reflective, philosophical angle on mortality.
“Life is very short and there's no time
For fussing and fighting, my friend
I have always thought that it's a crime
So I will ask you once again “
"In "We Can Work It Out, Paul did the first half, I did the middle eight,” Lennon told Playboy in 1980. “But you've got Paul writing, 'We can work it out, we can work it out' - real optimistic, y'know, and me impatient, 'Life is very short and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friend'."
To underline the deeper themes of his new section, the music pivots into the relative minor of the verse’s bright D major foundation - a B minor. This then descends its bass note downwards via A, G and F#. It makes the section feel gloomier, reflective and yet somewhat inevitable.
When the song came to be tackled in-studio, it was the contributions of Georges’ Harrison and Martin who solidified the magic of this developing bridge section.
“[George Martin said;] ‘What if I put a harmonium here?’ Paul recalled to Hot Press in 2002. “Now that’s a wacky idea, let’s try it.”
The Mannborg Harmonium added a funereal vibe, and introduced new texture to the Beatles' sonic universe. The harmonium would later appear on a range of the group's more psychadelically-hued material - notably on Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
Meanwhile, it was Harrison who suggested the fairground-recalling 3/4 time that disrupts the buoyant momentum; “George Harrison suggested we try the waltz pattern, with suspended triplets, that ended up giving the song a profound sense of friction and fracture," McCartney said in The Lyrics.
The We Can Work It Out sessions spanned two days - totalling 11 hours total. Up until that point, it was the longest point the four had spent in the studio on any one song.
The song was put out as one half of a double A-side single alongside Day Tripper on the 3rd December 1965. It was the same day the group's most creatively rich record to date - Rubber Soul - hit record stores. Yet, the two songs didn't feature on the album.
Why It's Brilliant
While Rubber Soul also contained a wealth of new ideas, arrangement choices and fresh stylistic leanings, for the single-buying masses who might have taken a while to get their hands on the LP, the single's widespread radio play was their first taste of the Beatle's growing creative ambitions.
It was the moment the Beatles stepped off the lyrical treadmill of conventional love songs, from a boy to a girl (She Loves You is an interesting early exception) and instead offer up a more spiritual, adult lyric.
The bridge section lyrically re-frames the verse’s relationship squabble as being between Lennon and ‘my friend’ - a universal, human term that shifts the song’s emphasis outwards, and sees the band communicate on a wider level.
The reminder of the inevitability of death, and Lennon's call for the ceasing of 'fussing and fighting' were resonant words in the mid-1960s. It's also an attitude that prefigured Lennon's later concerns with conflict around the globe, with All You Need is Love, Revolution and, ultimately, Imagine.
It's a level of profundity that most listeners of the time would certainly not expect from a simple pop band.
Musically too, this moment found the group unafraid of taking a major detour into a whole new section - paving the way for the thrilling song structures of A Day in the Life and the spellbinding Strawberry Fields Forever a couple of years later.
The waltz-time shift and added harmonium highlights their growing musical competency. It's the sound of a group pushing at the edges of what a modern pop song could be.
The Beatles would of course go on to markedly widen the language of popular music. Yet, we'd consider that for most, Christmas 1965 was arguably the moment that made many of their naysayers look again at the Beatles.
They were already signposting that their inevitable legacy as the greatest band of all time was going to be an earned accolade.
The single’s flip side (Day Tripper) ain’t half bad either.
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