Recording: Here, There And Everywhere & Got To Get You Into My Life – 17 June 1966

Friday 17 June 1966 | Recording | Studio Two, EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London, England
Producer: George Martin | Engineer: Geoff Emerick

On Friday 17 June 1966, The Beatles worked at Studio Two, Abbey Road from 7pm until 1.30am the following morning — a six-and-a-half-hour session that completed two of Revolver's most distinctive tracks. Here, There And Everywhere received its final harmony vocals and lead guitar. Got To Get You Into My Life received George Harrison's guitar solo and five mono mixes. By the time the session ended in the early hours of Saturday morning, both songs were, in their essential form, finished.

It was also, as it happens, the same day that Paul McCartney completed the purchase of High Park Farm in Kintyre, Scotland — a three-bedroom farmhouse and 183 acres for £35,000. McCartney was buying a Scottish farm and finishing one of the most beautiful songs he ever wrote, on the same Friday in June 1966. This was the pace of his life.

Here, There And Everywhere: The Final Touches

Here, There And Everywhere had been in progress since 14 June 1966, when the basic track was first recorded, and had been substantially developed on 16 June, when takes 5–13 were recorded, a reduction mix was made, and McCartney's varispeeded lead vocal was added. By 17 June, the song was close to complete. What remained were the finishing touches that would give the recording its final character.

On this session, Paul McCartney added harmony vocals for the lines “Love never dies / Watching her eyes” — a specific, targeted overdub rather than a wholesale re-recording. These harmonies sit in the finished recording with the warmth and precision that characterises everything about the song: close, intimate, perfectly placed.

George Harrison then added lead guitar — a subtle contribution that completes the song's sonic texture without drawing attention to itself. Here, There And Everywhere is not a guitar showcase; it is a song built around voice and harmony, and Harrison's guitar serves the song rather than the player. That restraint is itself a kind of artistry.

The song was completed the following day, 17 June, having been built across three sessions in four days — a remarkably concentrated creative process for a recording of such apparent simplicity and ease.

Got To Get You Into My Life: Harrison's Guitar Solo

Got To Get You Into My Life had a longer and more complex recording history than Here, There And Everywhere. The song had been begun during the second Revolver session on 7 April 1966, and had been developed across multiple sessions in the weeks that followed. On 18 May 1966, vocals, organ, and tambourine had been recorded onto the track, along with a trumpet and saxophone overdub that would later be processed further.

On 17 June, George Harrison overdubbed his guitar solo — dropping it into a track that already contained the 18 May vocals, organ, and tambourine. The solo can be heard from 1'45 to 2'06 on the finished recording — a 21-second passage that sits at the song's climactic moment, driving the track forward before the final verse.

Harrison's solo on Got To Get You Into My Life is one of his most effective on any Beatles recording. The song is, in essence, a soul record — McCartney's love letter to marijuana, disguised as a straightforward love song, built on a brass-driven arrangement that owes more to Stax and Motown than to anything in the British pop tradition. Harrison's guitar solo fits the soul idiom precisely: it is melodic, rhythmically assured, and emotionally direct, without the blues-rock vocabulary that characterised much of his lead work elsewhere.

Got To Get You Into My Life: The Song

Got To Get You Into My Life is one of the most unusual tracks on Revolver — and on any Beatles album. It is a soul song, built around a brass section rather than guitars, with a driving rhythm and a vocal performance by McCartney that is among his most exuberant on record. It sounds like nothing else The Beatles had recorded before, and it pointed in a direction — towards American soul and R&B — that McCartney would continue to explore throughout his career.

McCartney has confirmed that the song is about marijuana rather than a person — a fact that was not widely known at the time of the album's release in August 1966, and that gives the lyric a different character in retrospect. The “you” of the title is not a lover but a substance; the “every single day of my life” is not romantic devotion but chemical dependency, described with the enthusiasm of recent discovery. McCartney had first tried marijuana in 1964, introduced to The Beatles by Bob Dylan, and the experience had been significant enough to inspire a song.

The brass arrangement — trumpets and saxophones — had been recorded on 18 May 1966 and would be further developed on 20 June 1966, when the last of the five mono mixes made on 17 June was treated with additional brass and woodwind through tape copying and remixing of the 18 May overdub. The result is the dense, layered brass sound that defines the finished recording.

Five Mono Mixes

Towards the end of the 17 June session, five mono mixes of Got To Get You Into My Life were made. In the Abbey Road process of 1966, mono mixing was the primary final step — the mix that would be heard by most of the audience, on most of the equipment available to them. Stereo was a secondary consideration, aimed at a smaller audiophile market.

The five mixes represent the standard Abbey Road practice of making multiple attempts at the final mix and selecting the best — or, in this case, using the last as the basis for further work. The fifth and final mono mix of 17 June was the one taken forward to the 20 June session, where it received the additional brass and woodwind treatment that completed the song's arrangement.

Revolver: The Album in Progress

By 17 June 1966, Revolver was approaching completion. The album had been in production since 6 April 1966, when the first session — for Tomorrow Never Knows — had established the experimental direction the group intended to take. In the ten weeks since, they had recorded some of the most adventurous music of their career: Eleanor Rigby, Yellow Submarine, Taxman, Love You To, I'm Only Sleeping, And Your Bird Can Sing, Doctor Robert, For No One, She Said She Said, and the two songs completed on this session.

The album would be released on 5 August 1966 — seven weeks after this session. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums ever made, and the sessions of June 1966 — including the completion of Here, There And Everywhere and Got To Get You Into My Life on this day — were among the most productive of the entire recording period.

The contrast between the two songs completed on 17 June is itself a measure of Revolver's range. Here, There And Everywhere is intimate, acoustic, built on close harmonies and a string-quartet sensibility. Got To Get You Into My Life is extrovert, brass-driven, rooted in American soul. Both are unmistakably Beatles. Both are unmistakably 1966. And both were finished, in their essential form, in the same six-and-a-half-hour session at Abbey Road.

Key Facts: 17 June 1966

• Date: Friday 17 June 1966
• Location: Studio Two, EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London
• Producer: George Martin
• Engineer: Geoff Emerick
• Session times: 7pm – 1.30am (following morning)

Here, There And Everywhere:

• McCartney harmony vocals added: “Love never dies / Watching her eyes”
• Harrison lead guitar added
• Recording history: basic track 14 June; takes 5–13, reduction mix, varispeeded lead vocal 16 June; completed 17 June

Got To Get You Into My Life:

• Recording begun: 7 April 1966 (second Revolver session)
• Vocals, organ, tambourine, brass overdub: 18 May 1966
• Harrison guitar solo overdubbed: 17 June 1966 (audible 1'45–2'06 on finished recording)
• Five mono mixes made: 17 June 1966
• Final mono mix treated with additional brass and woodwind: 20 June 1966

Studio Two at EMI Studios, Abbey Road — where Here, There And Everywhere and Got To Get You Into My Life were completed on 17 June 1966, as part of the Revolver sessions that ran from April to June 1966.

The Beatles: Revolver

Two songs completed in one night. The album that changed everything, built session by session at Abbey Road in the summer of 1966.

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