You Won't See Me Reviews

	Reviewed by Ian MacDonald, in Revolution in the Head: Another number marking McCartney's disenchantment with Jane Asher (who had temporarily left him to work in rep in Bristol), YOU WON'T SEE ME is a three-chord trick based on The Four Tops' then-current hit, "It's The Same Old Song" [1]. Pitched a minor third below its model, McCartney's tune opens the intervals out (B, D, A instead of E, F, D), but the debt is still clear. (Ironically, Holland-Dozier-Holland had chosen the title because their song was a shameless rewrite - shuffling a C-Dm-F-G progression - of their previous number for the Four Tops, "I Can't Help Myself".
	YOU WON'T SEE ME shared the weariness of NOWHERE MAN and needed something to lift it. Unfortunately, the group were too tired by late nights to come up with anything, and simply repeated NOWHERE MAN's irritating 'ooh-la-la-la' backing vocal formula. This would have mattered less if they hadn't decided to programme the two tracks next to each other: the most inept piece of sequencing on any Beatles LP. Redeemed by the interest of its bass-line - very free in McCartney's liberated style - YOU WON'T SEE ME soon founders under the weight of its own self-pity and expires long before straggling to the end of an unusually protracted fade.
Notes: These are also the chords of EIGHT DAYS A WEEK. Talking to Playboy in December 1984, McCartney grinningly admitted: "We were the biggest nickers in town. Plagiarists extraordinaires."

Reviewed by Ian MacDonald, in Revolution in the Head:

Another number marking McCartney's disenchantment with Jane Asher (who had temporarily left him to work in rep in Bristol), YOU WON'T SEE ME is a three-chord trick based on The Four Tops' then-current hit, "It's The Same Old Song" [1]. Pitched a minor third below its model, McCartney's tune opens the intervals out (B, D, A instead of E, F, D), but the debt is still clear. (Ironically, Holland-Dozier-Holland had chosen the title because their song was a shameless rewrite - shuffling a C-Dm-F-G progression - of their previous number for the Four Tops, "I Can't Help Myself".

YOU WON'T SEE ME shared the weariness of NOWHERE MAN and needed something to lift it. Unfortunately, the group were too tired by late nights to come up with anything, and simply repeated NOWHERE MAN's irritating 'ooh-la-la-la' backing vocal formula. This would have mattered less if they hadn't decided to programme the two tracks next to each other: the most inept piece of sequencing on any Beatles LP. Redeemed by the interest of its bass-line - very free in McCartney's liberated style - YOU WON'T SEE ME soon founders under the weight of its own self-pity and expires long before straggling to the end of an unusually protracted fade.

Notes:

These are also the chords of EIGHT DAYS A WEEK. Talking to Playboy in December 1984, McCartney grinningly admitted: "We were the biggest nickers in town. Plagiarists extraordinaires."

Posted: 26 February 2024