I Need You

I Need You is a Beatles song on the album Help!. It is the second George Harrison song the band recorded after two albums without any songwriting contribution from Harrison. The song was performed in their second film, Help!.

Composition and recording
The song, simple in arrangement, was recorded on 15 and 16 February 1965. It is commonly thought to address Harrison's relationship with Pattie Boyd, whom he had met in March 1964 while filming A Hard Day's Night. (They married in January 1966.)

The recording's distinctive lead guitar cadences, achieved by Harrison's first recorded use of a volume pedal, are based on common guitar suspended chords in the key of A, forming the introduction and most of the verse of the song and giving a quasi-modal effect that is relieved in the verse by a line in the relative minor (with a simple backing harmony from Lennon and McCartney), the whole making a fourteen-bar ternary verse-structure. This, after a repeat, segues easily into a second, bridge melody that introduces a cowbell for contrast and is based on a simple IV-V-I chord progression that passes through the dominant key to resolve back on the verse. Many such aspects of the song are developed in Harrison's song "If I Needed Someone" on the group's next album, Rubber Soul.

Credits

 * George Harrison – Lead and Harmony Vocals, Lead Guitar (1963 Rickenbacker 360/12), Acoustic Classical Guitar (1950 José Ramírez De Estudio)
 * John Lennon – Harmony Vocals, Snare Drum
 * Paul McCartney – Bass Guitar (1963 Hofner 500/1), Harmony Vocals
 * Ringo Starr - Guitar Tapping (1962 Gibson J-160E), Cowbell
 * Credits per George Martin's handwritten notes

Other versions
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers played the song in tribute to Harrison at 2002's Concert for George.

Les Fradkin has an instrumental version on his 2005 release While My Guitar Only Plays.

On their 2009 release The Whirlwind, |Transatlantic released a mashup of Harrison's composition and the song of the same name by the band America.

Trivia

 * This is the first released song since "Don't Bother Me" to be written and sung by George.
 * John plays drums on this song instead of Ringo